VI MAC G5 Performance

[Bruce]

I have Vienna Instruments now running on 2 G5's. 1 is a 2.0 Dual and the other is a 2.5 Dual . Both have Motu 2408mk3 audio, 3 drives and 3.5 Gig Ram. Host app on the 2.0 is Logic 7.2, host app on the 2.5 is Digital Performer 4.6. I have been using the Pro Edition for a year on the Dual 2.0.

My observations;

Clicks and Pops galore at 512 buffers on both computers with 10 simple Vienna instruments, 1 complex and 20 more EXS instances on the Dual 2.0.

A limitation of 4 -6 extremely complex VI's on the Dual 2.5 under DP 4.6 hosting the sequencer a buffer of 512. Both have performance meters spiking.

So, the performance isn't quite stellar yet but I am wondering do I need 2 Quad G5's to run my setup. I would like to add a lot more somplex instruments. Will the upcoming VI update take care of these concerns? Would adding 2 Gig of RAM reduce the CPU spiking?

[Happy Tree Friend]

Maybe this problem is caused rather by the speed of the harddisks...
I have often dropouts with the EXSII VSL samples; that's why i'm thinking about
making a system of 4 drives at Raid0 that Julian uses.

BTW: for an enclosure for 4 drives, i started the following thread:

http://community.vsl.co.at/viewtopic.php?t=7913&iframe=true

Greets:
HTF

[Bruce]

Thanks HTF! I am not sure if it's the drives or the CPU's? You may be correct and yes I did look at the drive thread. What is the cost? Anyone using a Quad with the VI's?

Updating the G5 2.0 to System 10.4.5 since my last post did improve performance a bit which is nice.

At least the VI's don't just disappear sometimes like the EXS's instruments do especially the Harp which gets used a lot.

[Bruce]

Running Activity Monitor showa CPU % User: about 30- 42.5 % in a busy passage
% System: 9.9 to 22. That should leave enough CPU headroom?

Disk activity shows a lot of green spikes to the top of the chart. Do I interpret this to mean that yes- my drives are the problem? Thanks!

[JWL]

Bruce--

Have you tried raising DPs buffers and using CueMix for low/no-latency monitoring? Sorry if this is a silly question..

Best,
JWL

[Bruce]

Thanks JW - I raised Logic to 1024 from 512 and it's much better but still a few spikes/pops in busy passages. Must be the drives. I thought SATA drives were the cat's meow in terms of performance, I don't get the Raid thing. Why is it so much better?

Rasing DP to 1024 is not at all satisfying to perform on with a noticeable key delay. I'm using Logic as a slave- it feels tighter than DP at the 1024 buffer setting.

[Happy Tree Friend]

@Bruce said:

Must be the drives. I thought SATA drives were the cat's meow in terms of performance, I don't get the Raid thing. Why is it so much better?

Hi Bruce,
I send a picture from the sonett SATA controllers:

http://www.sonnettech.com/imgs/imgs_prods/esata_II_graph.gif">

I thought about this controller:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo-x_esata44.html


Greets:
HTF

[Bruce]

Thanks Tree Friend. If you use the Sonett Card then you could just add the G5 Jive to hold internal Sata drives? Does this replace the Mini G or do you still need the card to go with the Mini G? At $ 199 it's not too expensive. But when you add the card the Mini G and 4 drives for EACH computer it all stacks up BIG. I could trade in my G5's and get 2 Quads for that kind of cash. What am I missing here? I keep thinking that the CPU is a problem.

[Bruce]

Another Observation: EXS vs. Vienna Instruments. Well 1 thing I don't get with the new VI's are complete dropouts I get with Logic/EXS. Timing: The VI timing is far better than Logic/EXS. No need to run the tune 3 or more times to 'warm' up the drives and get the pizzicatos playing in sync. So the VI is looking good in comparison to the EXS. It's also easier to edit. The VI needs more horsepower than the EXS.

[JWL]

@Bruce said:

Thanks JW - I raised Logic to 1024 from 512 and it's much better but still a few spikes/pops in busy passages. Must be the drives. I thought SATA drives were the cat's meow in terms of performance, I don't get the Raid thing. Why is it so much better?

Rasing DP to 1024 is not at all satisfying to perform on with a noticeable key delay. I'm using Logic as a slave- it feels tighter than DP at the 1024 buffer setting.

Did you try setting up a MOTU CueMix? That will take care of the midi latency... With CueMix, you could raise your buffer even higher... Just make sure that the CueMix window is "on top" and not DP's or VI's.

Quick spikes in DP are inconsequential, according to MOTU-- sort of a fluke more than anything else unless you are hearing clicks or dropouts. Sustained high CPU indicators are more serious.

[JJRoach]

Bruce,

I'm sure this is totally a stupid question to ask you since it's so basic, but which machine in your setup is the master?? are all audio interfaces slaving to the same source?...i recently solved this issue myself, as I had audio interfaces out of sync and causing some (ok...more than some) pops...and sometimes stuck keys.

Josh

[julian]

@Bruce said:

Thanks Tree Friend. If you use the Sonett Card then you could just add the G5 Jive to hold internal Sata drives? Does this replace the Mini G or do you still need the card to go with the Mini G? At $ 199 it's not too expensive. But when you add the card the Mini G and 4 drives for EACH computer it all stacks up BIG. I could trade in my G5's and get 2 Quads for that kind of cash. What am I missing here? I keep thinking that the CPU is a problem.

Hi Bruce,

I purchased a G5 drive and installed it with x3 400GB drives. The installation failed as the 3 additional drives would not boot as they tripped the power supply (I already had the second slot in the G5in use with a 250GB drive) Also the Jive internal drive mounting bracket does utilise a lot of the empty space in the G5 and this does have an effect with air circulation so when I did manage to get all drives to boot (by sequentially connecting the power leads!) The G5's fans kicked in a lot so noise levels were high.

The cheapest solution is to get a fast SATA1 or 2 drive of 320/400/500GB and put it in the 2nd slot of the G5. The next step in speed would be a RAID then you will need a SATA card and a number of drives plus somewhere to mount them.

Performance on a single G5 2.5 with a seperate single fast drive should be better than you are currently describing.

Julian.

[Bruce]

JJ: thanks but right now both machines are running independent analog outs to an anolog mixer

JWL: I didn't realize that Cue mix can affect the buffer settings. I will look into this.

Jullian: Thanks for sharing your drive experience. I certainly don't want my G5's heating up- no way. If using a 2nd Sata 2 drive in the internal slot how would you format it? Can you share your VI 's performance on your setup?

.

[julian]

I'v always found most reliable performance out of one computer. If it is well configured and a recent G5 it should be fine. You have to freeze stuff occassionally but still even very large orchestrations are fine. The song I'm currently working on has 55 EXS 24's running VSL Pro Ed and 6 instances of Vienna I plugs. 10 space designers and perhaps another 16-20 plug-ins. At it's maximum density I would guess that there are about 100-120 parallel voices being required from the samplers.

I can't quantify it yet as I haven't had time to change a pro ed orchestration to Vienna Instruments (also without the unreleased instruments I can't anywa) but I do have the feeling that compared with EXS 24 (Logic/Mac platform) set ups the Vienna Instruments are currently creating a greater load per orchestration than the Pro Edition - you would expect a 50% increase just for the 16bit/24bit transition but it does feel to be greater than this.

It could be the fact of AU vs EXS which has been streamlined and works a treat within Logic for example I do find Stylus RMX to be a resource pig as an AU.

I would hope within 12 months we will be able to have Quad processors running on both Mac and PC platforms with the VSL stuff working a lot faster and leaner (and using all 4 processors)

With regard to formatting a second hard disc in a G5 - just format it without journaling, no need to partition unless you have a particular requirement and make sure you don't use over say 70-75% of the drives capacity if you want the quickest transfer speeds. (Data reading/writing to the inner parts of the disc are slower due to the slower effective speed of the disc rotation - and these parts are written to last)

hope some of this helps


Julian