OF COURSE!!! Ok, so I just finished a session recording myself heavy breathing, multisampling and looping as I went. I now have a ready-made porn-flick soundtrack tool ready for anyone dubiously lucky enough to be using VSL for such soundtracks!

I have always thought that a lovely bit of sensitive orchestral music would be so much more suitable as accompaniment to two or more people indulging in beautiful acts!!! (before anyone flames me, my tongue is in my cheek as I type, so to speak).

CM,

you mentioned way back in this thread that other additional DSPs had been considered for MIR. I had hoped that it would be available to run on the Powercore platform (I currently use a firewire powercore alonside Logic). Using such a universally available crossplatform device seems logical to me...or am I way off here on the requirements of MIR?

The main idea behind the MIR is a native engine, as computers get faster and faster over the time. - That said, there is still an option for additional hardware being involved.

Please - we try to be as talkative as possible, but we can't discuss the final appearance of a product that is in its late development stage, but not _ready_ for the market yet.

Thanks for your understanding.

Dietz

no problem, I understand. I'll be interested to see exactly how it is achieved.

Your interest is higly welcome, John (... of course this is true for all our esteemed forum-members, too).

@hermitage59 said:

We're all going to need an extra screen to see what Mir's doing. Aren't we?

I use a Belkin switcher which allows for a single screen, keyboard and mouse to control 4 PC's. They also make them to control 8 PC's and even MAC and PC. Still plenty of other things to think about but I wouldn't worry about extra screens.

I'm using a KVM switcher myself, but I wonder if this is going to be possible for that much longer. The new Windows Vista operating system requires a monitor with CP hardware built in that ties it to a specific computer. We may well end up needing a separate monitor for every PC we use.

Lee Blaske

It would be beyond ridiculous if KVM switches didn't work with the next version of Windows. And if you couldn't unplug one monitor and plug in another one if you damn well felt like it.

But even if what you say were true, I think the KVM switch loads the input even when it's switched to a different monitor, and it would becomes the ID.

... that's what somehow usable KVMs are already supposed to do with mouse and keyboard connectors also ...

but i think this is a misunderstanding: high resolution digital TV signals (same for DVD) will need a CP chip in the monitor for digital input - if they have not (or are connected via VGA) they will show low resolution (in best case) ...

christian

Ah. That's different. Thanks CM.

By the way my IOgear 4-port Miniview USB KVM works fine - with the exception that once in a while I have to power it on and off after first starting up to get my Windows machines to see the USB keyboard and mouse. But that's probably not the switch's fault, since it works fine on my Macs every time.

(Not a religious comment, just a USB comment - I'm not a USB fan at all.)

nick, this is a plug'n play issue i've also noticed often after a fresh install of windows - the USB keyboard is recognized as HID (human interface device) and not immediately useable after it has been detected (besides the fact that a motherboard has to support USB keyboards).
this is related to the order drivers are loaded - the keyboard driver is loaded very early during the boot process and USB device recognition happens later.
christian

Thanks cm. Is there a way to change that order, or does one just live with it (since it's not the end of the world)? For example, can you put a space at the beginning of one of the driver's names - or conversely a Z - to move it earlier or later in the list?

unfortunately not (at least using this method) [;)] but once the keyboard has been detected it should work everytime even during boot and after switching. if not you may need to enable *USB keyboard support* in your BIOS or change your KVM. i had one from ATEN with USB on the PC side and PS2 on the keyboard side - this was more or less unuseable and i had to change it to a KVM with USB on both sides and a *real* USB keyboard
christian

It doesn't sound to me like MIR is an elite product for the few but a necessary solution for what is now impossible: correct placement in space of each and every instrument. Gigapulse is designed to do something like this but you're out of processing after you place a couple instruments. So if there are (say) presets to chose from where all the VSL instruments are placed right where they belong and with processor issues, that would be great.

Dave Connor

And I agree with him.
Far from being an elite product, it seems VSL is trying to work with all of us, by configuring programming in such a way that mkaes it possible to get the best out of the samples, and provide a workaround the limitations in soft and hardware, so we don't have to.
I see that as something for everybody.

Our collective continuing problem is the inability of the hardware to keep up.
The common sense, non elistist approach, is to bolt on another machine, with the advantage of additional processor(s) and ram. Even i understand that.
And what's an additional Pc cost these days?
500 pounds for something reasonable that's capable of running MIR? Say 750 pounds, for a dual processor, multigig ram spec, for a program that Sir Dave of Langeles rightly says will actually do what we've been trying to muddle through with in stereo, no matter how 'enhanced' that stereo may be?
I see it as a simple solution to a challenge that's been going on for years, and as Sir Dave also said the solution gets even easier with presets.
Turn on, select preset, play orchestra with everyone sitting in the right place spacially, not in one long aural line across the front of the stage.
As as i wrote earlier, i'm keen to finish the project by finding out if it's possible to place samplers across the 'boxes', sharing the load, and increase the available track count.
Far from being elitist, i'm getting the impression we're all closer than ever before to realising the dream of everything working at once, without having to workaround.
The price of VSL is a serious but sensible figure for a serious and sensible investment. I would think it sensible to purchase a setup that allows VSL to be the Rolls it is, and not handle like a Ford.
3 Boxes, shared load, and the potential for no freezing or bouncing?

I can live with that.

Regards to you all,

Alex.

... to keep expectations from going up through the clouds ... [:)]

The MIR will be able to do a healthy amount of real-time processing, with carefully chosen curtailment (is this the proper word?) within the actually necessary amount if IR-data to give the user a meaningfull and convincing auditive impression. The _full_ load of several hundreds of IRs will still have to be rendered off-line, until computers are powerfull enough for our needs.

Sharing the processor-load between several machines is of course a tempting scenario, but I can't promise that this will already be possible in the first incarnation of the MIR. We'll see ... [;)]

Dietz,
So would it possible (leaving MIR aside for a moment, so you don't feel I keep pressing the point) to do this with a work box (sequencer), and a server?

Regards,

Alex.

Uh - I'm not sure if I really understand the question ....? Sorry, Alex [[:|]]

Dietz,
In the discussion, the point's been raised about multiple boxes. This may be speculation, but i wondering if a computer as a workhorse, housing the sequencer could be wired to a server containing samples, 'Mir' etc. Would there be a benefit to this in terms of latency, playback etc. Do any of you use a server to house samples and play them back from an attached computer? The reason i ask is because i don't know if a server would be (a) more or less stable, and (b) whether the server's on board processors could do a better job of playback with less latency. If so, i'm thinking and wondering if MIR could also sit on the server and be useable.

Regards,

Alex.

That's beyond my technical knowledge as well as my real-life experience. Maybe Chris Marin (CM) can chime in here, with some educated opinions ...?

well, to house samples on a server (eg. for shared usage from several giga-slaves) is a realistic scenario - given the storage is fast enough and the network is gigabit ... no problem at all (the inconveniance with giga 2.5 was that the quicksound database didn't accept net-shares to list the instruments, exs accepts links to shares). the term *server* should be understood in a functional way here, no need for special motherboards, memory or processor (filesharing is a boring job for a computer).

latency originates only marginally from a processor - it comes from (physical) midi devices, soundcard buffers, drivers, ect.
each machine with reliable (must not mean expensive) hardware, a carefully installed (and a little bit downsized to the needs) operating system and not running too many applications (which in most cases have never been seriously tested to work side by side) runs stable. some for years.

i'd like to see MIR as a complex sound processor - here we had to look carefully at short processor pipelines (to avoid dropping of too many miscalculations), a well sized processor cache, as much GHz one can get, fast memory and bridges (between PCI-bus, RAM and processor) and a performant technology to feed MIR with the dry audio streams. the machine itself and the OS can be a streamlined server or workstation (there are lots of services nobody really needs on an audio workhorse)

the output format and device is then a matter of taste ... probably the data has to be gathered as audio tracks/files on a disk. considering the various reported (and encountered) problems having a series of applications running on a single machine i feel it would be a good idea to let MIR run on a dedicated computer.

christian