Whoa!! I'm still trying to get my head around this issue!! [[:|]]

Mini bus speed = 167 Mhz
2.0 Dual bus speed = 1Ghz


...Yeah...I don't get it either...!

Josh

Hey Josh--

You feel like taking a road trip down-coast to check in on SVK? I'm right up the street from you!! [[:|]] [:D]

@homebilly said:

try this

To each Audio Instrument track insert an I/O plug-in. (Stereo>Logic>Helper>I/O).
When the I/O Plug-in pops up on the screen, assign any bus to its output (1-2, for instance) and assign another bus to its input (1-2, for instance). Then put the plug-in into BYPASS mode. This forces Logic to treat this channel as a live input, thereby eliminating any latency that would otherwise occur.


from the old EXS 24 / VSL as slave instructions

Could it be? The same homebilly from U-nation?

@JWL said:

Hey Josh--

You feel like taking a road trip down-coast to check in on SVK? I'm right up the street from you!!

Do you mean on the street of confusion???!

Yeah, a visit with SVK would probably teach ANYONE a thing or two.

Josh

I'm going to have to try Wormhole again. It was totally unusable when I tried it on two G5s.

Nick,

Perhaps there's been a wormhole update since you last tried?...just thinking out loud here. Good luck.

Josh

Wormhole update....

for latency issues...be sure you're using Gigabit Ethernet.

Josh

I'm using gigabit ethernet. But of course I'm going to have to try again.

I think you need to take the host into account when you're making the machine comparisons. Someone posted that Vienna Instruments performs better in DP5 than in Logic - not that I want to spread rumors, because I haven't installed DP 5 yet (it just got here).

But it doesn't surprise me that an Intel Mac works better. I found the performance in Windows to be ahead of the Mac (at least in Logic) at this stage, and some of that could just be the processor. However, you can also access a total of 5GB on a G5 (3GB for Vienna Instruments + 2 in other samplers), so it's not like the Mac is a total dead loss for this application. [:)]

Good points Nick. ...but you already knew that!

Josh

There seems to be some confusion about the bus speed here... The front side bus speed on the Mini is 667 MHz, not 167 MHz. That would be a huge, and totally unnecessary bottleneck. The bus speed is certainly playing a large part in the performance increase between the old G4 Mini and the Intel one -- obviously, processor design and speed are huge, but the bus has to keep up as well.

J.

JBM,

Pardon the incompetence here, but which bus speed are you talking about?? bus speed for firewire hubs, bus speed for the proccessors??? I got a little lost on that.

...I bought a mac mini two days ago and maxed out the ram...running it as a slave, Logic slave, with MIDI over LAN and wormhole...it's BEAUTIFUL. I ran out of RAM before processor ceiling (I think...hard to tell...ran into some trouble, but didn't really investigate to see if the problem was freedom, overworking the eXt. hard drive where the sounds were, or midi info crap that I hadn't cleaned up yet)...PS...running a woodwind section on a mac mini, 7 instances of VI, 1 picc, 1 flute a3, 1 oboe a3, 1 clarinet a3, 1 bassoon a3, 1 contrabassoon. all running pretty simple matrices though. It definitely out-performs my g5 single 1.8 with 4 gigs of ram in it (only can run a percussion and harp section on it...tried running that plus a small brass section...not pretty...it sucks too because I got this G5 for $1000 bucks in september...I should have waited till the minis came out!!!)

Josh

Josh, are you running the VI on the internal hard drive? Also, what kind of latency are you getting with wormhole? Lastly, what AU host are you using to stack up the seperate VI instances? Thanks [;)]

Well, I was just surprised by your mentioning the bus speed on the Mini as being as low as 167 MHz, which didn't make sense to me. However, it's no secret that Apple generally finds some way of crippling the lower-priced machines to push people toward the pro machines; or at least that was common practice in the past. A good example is the older G4 733, against its brother the G4 867. The 733 had only a 256k L2 cache and NO L3 cache, against the 867's 2MB L3 and was terribly slow as a result, even though the processor speed _seemed_ to be very close. A lot of people didn't check the detailed specs, and were sorely disappointed as a result -- pretty hopeless for running audio.

So, though I was surprised, it wasn't beyond imagining... I went to the Apple page and checked the Mini specs but it is, in fact, a 667 MHz bus. phew! The front side bus is between processor, chipset, and RAM, basically. The later G4s had a bus way behind the times, and it was a substantial bottleneck. In fact, one of the biggest improvements made for the G5 was actually the bus and logic board re-design; the processor was a big improvement, but the bus was probably bigger. Anyway, firewire is firewire. It can be affected by crappy controllers (generally try to find Oxford chipsets for drive cases, if you can), but the spec remains the same.

J.

Actually, I'd be curious to know how Wormhole is doing as well. I bought it last year sometime, but haven't made much use of it since, due to the latency problems mentioned before. However, if I do get into Intel Mac slaves, and the latency problems are cured, I'll probably give it another go...

J.

Hey all,

In response to the Wormhole questions...in my experience, it's been running great...however, I've run into some problems that I'm still trying to pointpoint the issues...latency is NOT an issue...but I tried the following first:

here's what I have in my room:
Master: String section and brass section sit here...G5 dual 2.7, 6 gigs of RAM running Logic 7.2

Slave 1: G5 1.8 Single, 4 gigs of RAM running Digital Performer (I tried using Plogue Bidule, but had some problems...which I'll explain later)...Harp and Percussion on this computer

Slave 2: Mac Mini Intel Duo with 2 gigs of RAM...running Logic 7.2...the Woodwind Section sits here

I tried setting up in the following fashion (If you'd like to skip my lengthy description of the problems...skip to the next paragraph)-
I had problems with the Dummy Instrument:
At first, I tried putting a Wormhole instance on every instrument in the slaves so that I could route the audio back into Logic and come out the Instrument Track... by doing this I was trying to have my master look like everything would be internal...and actually, have the audio routing and mixing process be just like I was running everything internally. This required about 15 Wormholes. However, for some strange reason, at some point, the Dummy instrument I was using as an insert in my master would crash Logic...and after doing so, seemed to be permanent damage...what would cause the crash is after a bunch of instances, whenever I'd bring up the interface for the Dummy Plug-in (I should reinforce that I'm talking about the Dummy ...not to be confused with the actual Wormhole plug-in...I was using the dummy to activate the instrument track in Logic so that I could use it), and in doing so, would crash logic, and then I couldn't open the original file ever again witout crashing logic...and it definitely wasn't some sort of problem with CoreMIDI or something like that, since I tried restarting the computer and reloading...also, after 1 crash, I could open up another logic song and use Dummy instances...really weird....so I guess you could say I never got to really stretch my legs with this setup.

-after dealing with the above issue, I set up in the following way:

Slave 1: (perc/harp)..used MIDI from Master to control levels, then just brought 1 master stereo pair back to the master...and used a send inside the master for reverb (I probably should have done 2 stereo pairs...1 for main returns and 1 for reverb send returns to the master for processing)

Slave 2: same as slave #1

the ONLY latency (noticeable to me, anyway) came from my G5 slave #1, which I really believe was due to either computer lmiitation (the 1.8 couldn't even handle the whole percussion section well...grr) or a latency thing in Digital Performer...and in Logic, I simply set the delay for those instruments with a -140 (which ....I think , are ticks). I didn't notice any latency in the Mac Mini...but this was with woodwinds...easier to tell with percussion...however, I did have sextuplets (at a quarter=130) and they sounded VERY together with the Strings I had running internally.

I didn't get any clicks or pops (unless it was just my G5 1.8 sucking)...


There's the update. Unless I find more problems, I'll continue to happily use this setup.

Josh

PS

I was running these:
Full string section (2 vln, 1 vla, 1 cello, & one bass)
1- piccolo
1=flute a3
1-oboe a3
1-english horn I
1-clarinet a3
1-bassoon a3
1-contrabassoon
1-trumpets a3
2-horrns a 3
1-trombones a3
1-tuba
1-harp
1-sus. cymbal
1-timp
1-glock
1-vibe
1-snare
1-tam-tam
1-thundersheet

Thanks!

That's good to know. I'm probably going to add a MacBook into my current 2.8 P4 + dual 1.8 G5 setup. The dual 1.8 doesn't do as well as I hoped it would either (must be some questionable altivec optimisation or something), but that machine will probably be replaced sometime in the next 6 months, or so, by whatever Apple comes out with in the way of Intel-based towers. In the meantime I'll update my Wormhole and give it another try. Thanks again.

J.

jbm,

yeah, my 1.8 single processor G5 is...well, pretty much sucking with VI..and I don't think its VI...I mean, VI is processor heavy, but I'm a little upset that I just spent $500 on RAM this weekend for the 1.8 when i could have just bought another mac mini..maybe I'll find a better use for the 1.8... unless I'm wrong, and someone else out there is using a single processor G5 successfully, in which case, I'll be happier and will go back to reevaluate the system...I mean, I couldn't even run the percussion section I specified above on the 1.8..I had to record it in 2 sections (that is, 1/2 of the instruments at a time)..

Josh

PS...what's altivec optimization??