@ribeye said:

Yes. Same happening here. The sampler computer running Ensemble Pro 7 is pretty much the same but Cubase is loading much slower the templates with the connection plugin to the VE Pro 7 samplers. Feels like it is taking longer to establish tracks/connection to the sampler for every instance. 

It's bad enough that we're rolling back to VE Pro 6. Can't work like this. This is with Cubase 10 latest on Windows (as is the VE Pro)

I just rolled back to VEP6 (latest version), but now its totally unstable too.  I can't even load an old viframe tutorial file (from VSL website), that has been working fine before today.  Crashes VEP6 while loading it, tried repeatedly and rebooted, etc..  it won't load.  I don't know if my system is broken now or if VSL broke the latest version of VEP6, but anyway, support ticket is in and I'm waiting to hear back

Update to the above.  I have VEP6 (latest version) running fine again.  For anyone that decides to rollback to VEP6 on a mac, watch out for the following thing:

On VEP7 they renamed the name of the VEP server app bundle to remove the words "(64-bit)" from the app bundle name.  Previously under VEP6, this was the name used for the 32bit server.

So after I rolled back to VEP6, I tried to launch it by using the icon in my dockbar, which had been configured for VEP7 to point to the app bundle WITHOUT the words "(64-bit)".  After rolling back, the dock icon was now pointing to the 32bit server and I didn't realize it.  

When I tried to load a viframe into the 32bit server, it was crashing, who knows why.  But after correcting the dock icon to point to the VEP6 bundle with "(64-bit)" in the app bundle name, it now seems to be humming along fine....

Same issue here. 

I rolled back to VE Pro 6 for the time beign

Ve Pro 7 with Cubase combo was just impossible to work with. Cubase would take an hour and a half to load up and would take an hour every time I was exporting a mixdown...... well its back to normal with Ve Pro 6 now. Hope they can figure it out soon

VEP 7 has been extremely unpredictable and inconsistent, temperamental, or the system is temperamental with it. Yesterday learning automation from BFD3 would beach ball o' doom each time. Today not at all.
I experienced slowness in other ways and then didn't. All very stable and responsive today.

@TimBlast said:

Same issue here. 

I rolled back to VE Pro 6 for the time beign

Ve Pro 7 with Cubase combo was just impossible to work with. Cubase would take an hour and a half to load up and would take an hour every time I was exporting a mixdown...... well its back to normal with Ve Pro 6 now. Hope they can figure it out soon

Sounds like coupled behavior on crack. I run decoupled with Nuendo, I don't see that at all. The load of VEP 7 has definitely been snappier here. Systems differ widely.

There are already two updates - less than a week after the initial release. 

Anyway I notice a slight increase in idle cpu compared to last version of VE6 but absolutely no other issues - this is on a project inovlving 77 channels/VIs,  and 900 articulation sets within all custom matrices, MIR pro  on every channel.  Works exactly like VE6 except with all the new features. So this is one system not experiencing any of the issues reported here. 

Though - this is the standalone version - a single VE running 4 MIDI ports on a 12 core Xeon Windows 10 slave wth 64GB ram.  

Based on these reports, I did another comparison of CPU usage between VEP6 and VEP7 on Mac. Here is an excerpt of my findings:

• 100 instances of Vienna Instruments Pro, Staccato String patch
• Logic project playing back 2 bars of random notes
• VEPro instance uses narrow channels in mixer, regular channels in channel pane.
• VEPro window maximized on 3840x2160 monitor (full resolution, no Retina tested)

Observed average process CPU values during playback and (idle):

VEP6 Maximized: 136% (37%)
VEP7 Maximized: 100% (31%)
VEP6 Minimized:  37% (29%)
VEP7 Minimized:  30% (22%)

An Instruments run of both version also confirms the above findings. VEP7 also feels more responsive during playback compared to VEP6.

I had the same good results using VE7 that MS mentioned from my latest project - a MIR mix of my Romantic Symphony.  It uses 923 separate articulations on 80 custom matrices performing very smoothly and loading quickly the following instrumentation:

8 Flutes 

5 Oboes

4 Clarinets

4 Bassoons

Contra Bassoon

2 C trumpets

B flat Trumpet

Cornet

2 Flugelhorns

8 horn ensemble dividied accurately into 2 or 4 divisi parts using a combination of 2 - 4 horn ensembles or 4 solo horn/Dimension horn combinations

4 Trombones

Bass Trombone

Tuba

Vienna Konzerthaus Organ

Timpani

Percussion ensemble

5 gongs

cymbals and anvil

glockenspiel

2 sets chimes

Harp

Appassionata Violins

Orchestral Violins

Chamber Violins

Solo Violin 1 & 2

8 Dimension Violins divided into 1 & 2

Appassionata Violas

5 Dimension Violoas,

Solo Viola

Appassionata Cellos

Solo 

Cello 2

6 Dimension Cellos

Orchestral Basses

Chamber Basses

4 Dimension Basses

Well that is very frustrating.  Because VEP7 uses 10-20% more cpu when the window is active for me here.  I have reverted to VEP6 and run exact same project and VEP6 is using less CPU.  Both VEP6 and VEP7 use a significant amount of additional CPU when the VEP window is open vs when its minimized.  Personally I think that is concerni as well.  Its even worse with a retina display.  VEP7 is just a little worse then VEP6, those are MY results.  I spent an entire afternoon running a precise test that would gather the results in a repeatable and exact way to be sure and I shared the test case with VSL.  I can observe the additonial CPU usage as a percentage in the activity monitor and I have observe it in the loadavg value.  they are correlated values.

If their answer is that their results are opposite of mine, I don't knwo what to say other then we have opposite results and that is frsutrating because my results are what they are.

I will not be able to run any more tests because the past few days I wasted of time with VEP7 and I am now reverted to VEP6 and will not try VEP7 again until at least a month goes by and poblems are more resolved.

regards

I was wondering if it has to do with using it within a DAW - as I think I mentioned this is strictly done with the standalone version on a slave.  

if you have it on a slave and you are accessing the slave via remote desktop, and the remote desktop window is closed, then that is the same as VEP7 window being minimized.  Run your test with the VEP7 window showing on a screen somewhere and updating its UI elements...

Actually I'm not accessing it that way - I am using MIDI interfaces.  Very old-fashioned.   

does the slave machine have a window showing the GUI?  Is it a mac?  If its a mac and you have a screen, then run the test with VEP window open and closed, watch the CPU when you have the VEP window open for a bit and closed for a bit.  I think its probably a mac issue as well.  I have found that the problem is worse when I have my monitor in retina mode as well.

No it's Windows 10. 

You guys got me to do more work....

Here is the test I ran and the results....

The test was performed by using a tutorial score from VSL website, specfically the E.T. Score, but you can perform the the test at home with any project you like.  I basically ran the following command during the same 3 minutes of playback for the score I chose.

[code]iostat -w 3 -I -c 60 | awk '$1 !~ /^disk/ && $1 !~ /^KB/ { print $10 }'[/code]

That looks at average user CPU% every 3 seconds and spits out 60 samples over a 3 minute period.

So what are the results?  You can see a more complete collection of the data here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H40bkgaJ0F7VDcjhQvZlUEqCARCVLb_b/view?usp=sharing

But to summarize as average CPU% over 3mins period:

Vep6 minimized Retina display:   38.82% 

Vep6 Minimized Non-Retina:  38.12%

Vep6 Active Retina Display: 51.62%

Vep6 Active non-Retina:  49.37%

Vep7 Minimized Retina: 39.12%

Vep7 Minimized Non-Retina: 38.10%

Vep7 Active Retina: 57.93%

Vep7 Active Non-Retina: 47.93%

Summary

1. The VEP gui on both VEP6 and VEP7 takes significant CPU overhead for whatever its doing when its not minimized.
2. With the VEP gui minimized, VEP6 is slightly more efficient then VEP7 but by less then 0.5%, which is statistically irrelevant.
3. With the gui Active in non-Retina mode, VEP7 is slightly  more efficient then VEP6 by a factor of 1.5% difference, which is also somewhat insignificant.
4. With gui active in Retina/HiDPi mode, VEP7 is less efficient then VEP6 by a factor of 6%, which is somewhat significant.

Overall I think the fact that VEP needs 10-20% of CPU just to display the GUI is concerning, apparantly this was the case on VEP6 as well.  VEP7 appears to be slightly more efficient in the GUI in non-retina, but signficantly worse with Retina display.  The above is on my system, which is MacPro 5,1  12x3.33 ghz cores, 128GB ram.  Metal-capable display adapter.  Nothing else running during the tests.

ps - I ran tests with Cubase earlier, but don't have the exact results now, but in general I say that Cubase performs much much worse then LogicPro, which is what I used for the above.  Add 20-30% CPU for each of the results above, as far as what to expect from cubase, which I often saw peaking at 95% cpu utilization with the VEP gui showing.  the test above also did not have any cpu heavy plugins.  All just ViPro instruments and VSL instrument playback, MIRPro and one instance of Miracle.  Projects with synths and more FX processing I would expect to be worse.

@TimBlast said:

Same issue here. 

I rolled back to VE Pro 6 for the time beign

Ve Pro 7 with Cubase combo was just impossible to work with. Cubase would take an hour and a half to load up and would take an hour every time I was exporting a mixdown...... well its back to normal with Ve Pro 6 now. Hope they can figure it out soon

Sounds like coupled behavior on crack. I run decoupled with Nuendo, I don't see that at all. The load of VEP 7 has definitely been snappier here. Systems differ widely.

Yeah I run the VE Pro decoupled as well. It might also be network or cpu related, ve pro 7 hangs every time cubase tries to "change the condition" for exaple connecting to the server, starting mixdown, closing the session.

First of all, let me reassure you that we take any reports about CPU usage seriously, since we want VEPro to be as efficient as possible.

A busy GUI code, updating meters, peak displays, MIDI activity and other things, will always use some CPU power. The cost for updating such things tend to be a bit higher on MacOS than on Windows, due to blitting being a more expensive operation on MacOS. I don't find the CPU usage of VEPro as such to be in any way abnormal for the amount of work that is done.

In order to shed some further light on this topic, I created a performance comparison project, trying to isolate the impact of GUI updates on project performance. The results from this test, and the 16 possible test permutations, can be found in the linked PDF.

If anyone wishes to look further into the measurement data, or reproduce these findings - I am also enclosing the project files

Test Results (PDF)
Raw data and project files (ZIP)

Thanks,

Martin