I was just wondering how this all ended up working out? 

I'm interested also to know if, when working mostly with VSTs libraries placed on the slave, is better to invest on a powerful processor to be installed on the slave or on the master?

If I have on my master a 3,33 Intel Xeon Six Core (Mac Pro), and I buy a slave computer with an i7 or i9 and 128Gb of ram to handle VSTs, will it be sufficient to work flowlessly on my master in Cubase with around 80-100 orchestral VST tracks?

I know this has been discussed a lot, but I never seemed to find a straight answer: powerful CPU on master, or slave?

Thanks in advance!  

Hopefully, others may chime in, but i'd say it just depends. Probably why you dont get a straight answer. Libraries are different, what you are doing, how big buffers are, etc. Lots of variables  come in to play.

Generally speaking, the DAW machine needs fast realtime processing. VST slaves need lots of cores and ram. 

It also depends on what you are running on the master. Are all the VSTs going to be on the slave? Are you running resource intensive plugins on the DAW master? 

I personally dont do any serious orchestral stuff, so my setup needs may be different than yours.

I have also found dedicated Network cards used to link DAW to Slaves is important. Dont run remote control software over the same NIC as you are running VEP. Little things like that can make a bif difference in stability.

If you are not resource contraint, then get as much CPU power as you can afford. With the cost of RAM being so high these day, make sure you really need 128GB. It may be better to spend the extra $6-700 on CPU.

Thanks a lot Synetos, super useful! 

I tend to run just a limiter or mastering tool like Ozone's on the bus....just to glue together the sound in very subtle settings....that might completely change after the composition phase is finished and I go in "mix phase".

Can I ask something else which bugges me? I'm sure this is a stupid noob question but....I was wondering....if I send automation messages from my master to VSTs in the slave through VEP (dynamics, volume, keyswitches, microphone volumes in spitfire libraries) will these automations be correctly recorded in Cubase, just like if VSTs were on the same computer of the DAW? 

Would you give me some advice on a good dedicated Network card? Perhaps one that can link together one master to 2 slaves. I might use an old iMac or a macbook pro as 2nd slave just for a couple of libraries if needed.

Do you think an i9 processor would be overkill? Or Xeons would be better, for any reason? I just started looking at new processors and I'm not very expert, I have still many google searches to do 😊
I understand the importance to invest now, to have something that can work well also in 5-7 years. So I'm ready to invest up to 1500-1700€ fora processor. I'm just very confused by the amount of models. Don't even know if for large VSTs templates is more important the number of cores/threads or the frequency.

"Dont run remote control software over the same NIC"...what is a NIC? Sorry, can't get the acronym meaning 😛

If I don't run remote control, I'll probably want to use a separate display for the slave, so to control all parameters of VSTs on a separate screen?

The idea to save some money on RAM to invest more in a CPU is a great one, as RAM can be added later. Thank you! 

Sorry for asking so many questions....I just thought to use VEP and 2 computers one week ago!

@Synetos said:

Hopefully, others may chime in, but i'd say it just depends. Probably why you dont get a straight answer. Libraries are different, what you are doing, how big buffers are, etc. Lots of variables  come in to play.

Generally speaking, the DAW machine needs fast realtime processing. VST slaves need lots of cores and ram. 

It also depends on what you are running on the master. Are all the VSTs going to be on the slave? Are you running resource intensive plugins on the DAW master? 

I personally dont do any serious orchestral stuff, so my setup needs may be different than yours.

I have also found dedicated Network cards used to link DAW to Slaves is important. Dont run remote control software over the same NIC as you are running VEP. Little things like that can make a bif difference in stability.

If you are not resource contraint, then get as much CPU power as you can afford. With the cost of RAM being so high these day, make sure you really need 128GB. It may be better to spend the extra $6-700 on CPU.

There are many variables in figurng out the best setup for your particular workflow. It was pretty much trial and error to come up with something that works for my setup and how I like to operate.

Personally, I would rather have multiple slaves machines running i9's than big beast running Zeons. Which is better? again, it depends...blah blah blah. :)

NIC= Network Interface Card

I have had good luck putting multiple NICs in my machines and then all my VEP connections are run thoug their own switch. Here is what I am running in my PC's.

• Intel Gigabit CT PCI-E Network Adapter EXPI9301CTBLK
• NetGear 5 Port switch (GS105NA)

I use RDP to control my machines from my main DAW, but I have it on its own network. I dont run anything else across my VEP network connections. I block the VEP app at the firewall level on the nics I dont want popping up when trying to connect a RACK instrument.

Another thought: While this forum is helpful, there are other resources much more active where these kinds of topics are discussed alot. VI-Control is one that I have learned a lot from just reading other peoples discussions on the same topics myself. There are many users of VEP on that forum. This forum is useful too, particularly with VEP issues. But, it can also have alot of cricket sounds at times when one is asking for suggestions. Just my experience. YMMV

https://vi-control.net/community/

So, I studied a little bit online, and tried to make a configuration for a Slave computer.

Do you think this system would be optimal for a Slave to be used with VEP and large orchestral templates?

Would these components cause any issue/incompatibility if used together? 

SLAVE CONFIGURATION:

Processor: 16 Core Intel® Core™ i9-7960X (2,8*GHz) 22 Mb cache

Motherboard: ASUS® PRIME X299-A : ATX, USB 3.1, SATA 6 Gb/s

RAM Memory: 128 Gb Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2666 MHz (8 x 16 Gb)

Graphic Card: 2 Gb NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 1030 - DVI, HDMI

Hard Disks:

Boot Disk: SSD EVO 1 To Samsung 860 2,5 SATA 6 Gb/s 

Libraries Disk: SSD EVO 4 To Samsung 860 2,5 SATA 6 Gb/s 

Power supply: CORSAIR 550W TXm SERIES™ 80 PLUS GOLD

Cooling: Noctua NH-U14S Performance

External Case: FRACTAL DEFINE R6 NOIR 

LAN Port: PORT 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN (Wi-Fi Not included)

Other Ports: MIN. 2 PORTS USB 3.0 ET 6 PORTS USB 2.0 back + MIN. 2 PORTS front

Thanks a lot again!

Seems like a nice box. I dont have any experience with the i9.

UPDATE:

I'm running some tests to understand where my current bottleneck is when playing lots of voices from many orchestral VSTs, from my current Mac Pro setup.

- I need to use a high buffer in the audio card to avoid the real time playing getting stuck.

- Kontakt "disk" light goes often to red. Almost always, in busy passages.

- In the mac's "activity monitor", the cpu usage stays under 25%, which seems good to me.

- The 20 Gb of RAM are almost entirely used as soon as I open a busy cubase project.

This makes me understand what follows, but please correct me if I'm wrong:

- I need to switch to SSD drives to avoid glitches and kontakt "disk" to go to red.

- Cpu seems to dojust fine for now

- I need more ram.

- Willing to add a slave system, the current Mac would be released from all the cpu and ram work with samples, so it should ran smooth, perhaps I should just use SSD as boot drive, and add a bit of RAM on it, but processor should be fine, if working mainly with samples?

What do you think? 

Thanks again.

Are you running VEPro on your MacPro? If not, that is where i would start and run it as local host to get all your VST's outside the Cubase processing space.

What is your audio interface?

My audio interface is an Apollo Quartet.

I still have to buy VEP, I don't use it yet! I'm looking forward to use it in master/slave configuration. All I'm trying to understand is if I can keep using my Mac Pro as master, and a new powerful pc as slave to load VSTs with Vienna, and if all of this setup will solve my current problems, or if there will still be a bottleneck caused by my processor on the mac pro (3,33 GHz Six Core Xeon dated 2012...)

Thanks

I would try VEP in local host mode right on your current DAW, before even buying a slave machine. You might be suprised and not even need another machine.

+1

I use a late 2013 MacPro (3.5 GHz; 6 cores Xeon E5; 64 Gb Ram; SSD). Full orchestra set-up (about 60-80 tracks) with VEP and Logic (buffer = 512 samples) : always below 35-45% available processing power. I tried Synchron Strings too with success.

Much simpler to manage than the master/slave configuration (which I used a few years ago).

Claude

@Synetos said:

I would try VEP in local host mode right on your current DAW, before even buying a slave machine. You might be suprised and not even need another machine.

Thanks for chiming in Claude. 

Can I ask what's your usual workload with orchestral libraries? Which ones do you use, Spitfire, Orchestral Tools?

Also, what were the complicate things to handle in a master/slave configuration? I know there would be a learning curve to do some thing but....which would be the constrains of having all libraries on a slave through VEP ?

Hey folks,

I'm continuing my journey to build my first slave computer to be sued with VEP and my Mac Pro master...
For the slave motherboard, I'm trying to understand which one would work at best with a i9-7960X processor.
I was almost going to pick a Asus Prime x299-A, but then a guy on another forum told me that this motherboard doesn't have a strong enough VRM for my processor, because the processor is a HCC= High Core Count.

Now, the other options available on the website of the company that will build my PC are:

- Asus Rog Strix X299-E
- Asus Rog Rampage VI Extreme (expensive…worth?)
- Gigabyte X299 UD4 PRO

I have zero experience, could you advise if any of this will give justice to the 

i9-7960X prcessor and allow it to work at full power?

Thanks in advance to anyone that will chime in and help!