VI comes in both version, PC and Mac.

Jerome

I know it comes in PC and MAC, but I was wondering roughly how many midi tracks/articulations could I run on the 8-core mac with 8 GB RAM? Before it starts to drop notes?

How would performance wise be putting symphonic cube on the above MAC with say running two 2.6Ghz PC's with 2 GB RAM compare?

welcome Simsy,
to answer your other question: chris kardeis from the VSL team recently used a logic song with about 30 VI instances on a quad core macPro with 8 GB RAM for a workshop demoing the creation of an orchestral piece (i think some space designer reverb added).
it is also reported, that 40 VIs can lead to core audio overload and you should consider that several altiverbs or other plugins might stress your machine additionally.

in case the macPro cannot handle all needed instances in your setup (eg. because running out of memory) you could still move one or more collections to a second machine (PC or mac doesn't matter as jerome mentioned), you would just need a second ViennaKey to hold those licenses.
christian

ps: IIRC it was intended to publish the demo song i've been referring to above, but of course this wouldn't make sense without having the symphonic cube already ... i'll ask if there is something like a track-list naming the used patches.

posts overlaped ... id say you could only compare two core 2 duo PCs with 4 GB RAM each to a 8 core macPro - this should perform rather similar, possibly you'd even need to trick around less with memory usage, but midi and audio routing becomes more complicated ...
christian

Hi,

Just to claify, you said 30 instances, do you mean 30 midi tracks/ articulations or can you load 8-16 articulations per instance. Therefore that means 30 x 16, which would be 480 midi tracks/articulations?

If this is the case, I could do all my work on my mac.

simsy, we understand an instance of VI as one player as plugin to one midi track. into this VI you can now load your matrices/patches - there are preconfigured ones or you could create personal presets according to your needs / the needs of the current piece, this could be a single articulation or a full 12 by 12 matrix (the latter might eat up your available memory rather quickly)

did you already watch some of the video tutorials - they should show more than i could try to explain here.
christian

Ok, I understand better. You are loading 30 instances, that use keyswitching to swap between articulations.

I never really use keyswitching and rather have one midi track per articulation (legato, stacato) etc.

Can I open one instance of vienna, load legato, staccato, pizz into the matrix and then have three midi tracks in DP trigger each of these articulations?

uhh, i always thought this would be very welcome and one of the greatest features in VI to have all articulations in a single midi track ... you could use any controller instead of keyswitches (learn function) and many changes are already covered by the performance detection.
christian

>Can I open one instance of vienna, load legato, staccato, pizz into the matrix and then have three midi tracks in DP trigger each of these articulations?

Loading different articulations (up to 144) into a matrix is no problem. However, it's not possible to have the articulations assigned to different MIDI channels within the VI, as the VI has no MIDI channel select function - it operates in MIDI omni mode. So to avoid overloading your computer with too many instances, you will almost certainly have to get into switching between articulations.

Hi

Thanks for your help!!! You have been great!!! Can you just clarify a few more things for me then I will be fine

1) I cannot have different midi Tracks in DP control different articulations in the matrix of one VI instance, I need to use keyswitching?

2) Is 12 the maximium articulations in one instance of VI?

3) When you said I can load 30 instances in of vienna, are these all loaded with 12 articulations, or roughly ho many articulations can I run in each without my mac droping notes?

4) Roughly running VI in my 8 core mac pro with 8 GB memory, how many 2.66 Ghz PC's with 2 GB is this the same as running vienna?

5) And finally (I bet your glad!!!), how much memory can vienna access on my mac? I read that until the 64 bit version of mac OS and a 64 bit version of DP and vienna is released, the full 8 core will not get used? Also there is a limit to how much memory can be accessed?

If you could answer these last few questions, I would really appreciate it!!!!!!

Thanks,
Simon

but you could have different instances of VI in different midi tracks loaded articulations from the same instrument (that's how i understood the last question) ... of course this is not the most efficient way to use VI players as they are designed.

12 keyswitches for presets x 12 cells horizontal (controller assignable) x 12 cells vertical (controller assignable) x 2 a/B select = 3456 articulations

how far you can load your computer depends on: type and size of articulations, what else is installed and running on your computer, number and speed of harddisks, type and latency of soundcard (quality of drivers), to name a few ...

in a simple calculation one 8 core macPro with 8 GB equals 4 2 core PCs with 2 GB - but depending how far you would be willing to configure your macPro to get beyond the 4 GB limit per 32bit application i'd say you get more out of the 4 PCs (trading in other complications like routing, setup, maintenance, blablabla)

christian

WOW you've been great. The best support I've ever had!!!

If you can answer me this last questions, I promise to leave you alone!!

1) How much memory and processor power can vienna access? Is this restricted until the 64bit OS is released?

2) Is vienna planing on releasing a 64bit update soon after the 64 bit OS is released?

3) Finally, is there any education discount on products offered? [[;)]]

@Another User said:

A Mac Pro 2.66 GHz/9 GB RAM with OS 10.4.9 and Logic Pro 7.2.3 was used at NAMM 2007 and Musikmesse Frankfurt at our booth for presentations. A complete orchestral arrangement was played on this machine, consisting of 22 Vienna Instruments instances (approximately 250-300 voices) and CPU load was at 30 % per core and it worked perfectly.

How much you can actually load depends on your resources. However, VSL-VI is set up to theoretically load in a lot more than what tends to be physically available on any one system. One will sooner find the limits of their computers before they find the limits of VSL-VI.


4) Roughly running VI in my 8 core mac pro with 8 GB memory, how many 2.66 Ghz PC's with 2 GB is this the same as running vienna?

Certainly, memory plays a part, but it's not always a one-to-one ratio where performance is concerned. There are benefits to using more than one machine because the CPUs are devoted to different tasks, different hard drives and their busses are dedicated to their own tasks.

But with today's machines, I wouldn't recommend settling for less than 4GB installed. Your DAW *can* access *up to* 4GB, probably a little less. Your OS will need about 512MB to run, so by the time you are done with the DAW and OS, you could easily have only 1GB remaining to deal with the samples where a machine with only 2GB is being used.

Granted, it works well, and Jerome has put some Mac Minis to work in this respect (8 or more!). Others are using PC farms with 2GB, but there are limits on what can be loaded into 2GB and certain limits inherent in the OS and hardware-- for now.


5) And finally (I bet your glad!!!), how much memory can vienna access on my mac? I read that until the 64 bit version of mac OS and a 64 bit version of DP and vienna is released, the full 8 core will not get used? Also there is a limit to how much memory can be accessed?

If you could answer these last few questions, I would really appreciate it!!!!!!

How memory is used and how CPUs are used are two different things.

VSL-VI, OSX, and DAWs on the Mac are 32-bit apps. This means that any single 32-bit app can access *up to* 4GB of memory. Running a host outside of your DAW can make good use of memory over 4GB, so if you have 8GB installed you could run instances as plugins in your DAW's mixer while you also run a second host outside of your DAW and route the audio back into your DAW for mixing. You could also run standalone instances outside of your DAW to make more use of the 8GB RAM.

As far as CPU goes, all Cores will be working to process data running on your entire computer.

But one computer will not do it all. Again, there are the issues of voice limits (300 voices seem to be something you can expect, according to Maya--- maybe more?), hard drive seek and transfer times, buss bandwidth, etc. There are a lot of factors at play that impact on what you can do.

It's nice to know, however, that with the top-line MacPros you can do substantially more that you could ever do on PPCs.

I hope this helps explain things in basic terms. I'm sure the VSL team and other members might have more to say on this.

simsy, as any other 32bit app VI is limited to 4 GB, in reality a little bit less ... and yes, VSL is planning to relase 64bit versions.
unfortunately VSL currently does not offer educational discounts.

jwl, thanks for stepping in - i couldn't find the exact number of tracks and might have exaggerated the number of instances used, but 30 seems thoroughly realistic in certain cases.

as a sidenote: didn't you notice a loss of performance using 9 GB (4 x 2GB + 2 x 512MB) compared to 8 GB?
christian

Hey, JWL

Thanks alot, that was really great information!!!! I am thinking that I might just purchase the vienna stuff I want and stick to the mac for now and if the need arrives start adding PC's using Midi over LAN. Vienna is cross platform compatible? (if you purchase sya strings you get the windows exe and the mac version)

@Another User said:

as a sidenote: didn't you notice a loss of performance using 9 GB (4 x 2GB + 2 x 512MB) compared to 8 GB?
christian

A loss? Good question.

What I notice more is the substantial improvement over performance with my G5 2.5 PPC Dual with 8GB installed.

The jury is still out on the MacPro. I've read that one should install RAM in "fours" for the best performance, but I've yet to determine if I've actually seen 8GB performing better or 9GB performing worse. There's something in this that doesn't make sense.

So far, I don't see any difference. If you have some specific numbers on this from real-world experience, I'd appreciate any info you'd have to offer.

That I can run more than 6 instances (as I could on my PPC) is cause for celebration. That this number has increased by a factor of almost 5 on the MacPro has had me smiling since the day I got VSL-VI installed.

@Simsy said:

Hey, JWL

Thanks alot, that was really great information!!!! I am thinking that I might just purchase the vienna stuff I want and stick to the mac for now and if the need arrives start adding PC's using Midi over LAN. Vienna is cross platform compatible? (if you purchase sya strings you get the windows exe and the mac version)

Very cool, Simsy.

Yes-- VSL-VI is cross-platform, Mac and PC.

Midi over Lan is a good thing! [[;)]]

Yeeha!!! Off to see what I can afford now!!! Thanks very much to cm and JWL for all your help, it has been great!

JWL, yes the macPro board and several intel boards are almost identical - AFAIK they use the intel 5000X chipset, which has a special way of accessing memory modules - every two sticks (dual channel) at two branches, only *symmetric* placement results in best performance

i have posted this specs formerly:
http://vsl.co.at/upload/users/449/dualchanneldualbranchmemory.png">
christian

Thanks, CM.

I saw that before getting the MacPro, but at present I've not noticed a performance difference in real-world usage. That's not to say it's not real, but perhaps I've not pushed my MacPro to the point where any benefits would be apparent.

In fact, I'm only on my third cue on the MacPro using the 9GB. What I might do later this week is to remove the 2 x 512 and report back to you any differences I've seen.

It seemed essential to at least install a matched set of four RAM sticks (2GB each), so that's what I started with.

I can't find the Apple Developer document at the moment, but the issue of not mixing DIMMs of different sizes and speeds seemed to be limited to pairs and not for the entire system. Some of the information on this is not entirely clear, and some reports even from Apple appear to raise as many questions as they answer.

As mentioned, performance on my G5 2.5 Dual PPC was woefully disappointing. I have no complaints so far with the way things are running on the MacPro. I'm still not sure that any differences have yet revealed themselves on my system as being significant.

Have you done any personal testing to confirm the specs you've posted?