I should start off by saying that I am a Mac user - - and use PC's only when compelled to. That's my preference - - nothing more. 

Now that's out of the way, I'd like to suggest that everyone involved in this discussion take a deep breath and relax a little. The Mac vs. PC thing has always struck me as having a tone of quasi-religious conflict with each side nursing a sense of injury. People have different experiences and form opinions based on these experiences - - so, as in religious conflicts, neither side may think the other can fully understand or appreciate the truths of which they are so certain.

Leaving this aside,  developers will, I fervently hope, continue to develop for both platforms. According to the developers I know, at one time or another, both Microsoft and Apple have been sources of immense frustration. I think one can safely assume that VSL wants to have satisfied customers - - regardless of the platform a particular customer prefers. In addition, developers are compelled to take economic reality into account - - in this case the reality is that, outside  the U.S., the PC share of the professional music industry market is significantly larger than the Mac share, whereas, in the U.S., Macs have a large share of the professional music industry market. I'm sure that no developer whose audience is this market both in the U.S. and elsewhere would willingly want to forgo sales to either part of the market because of prejudice against one platform or the other.

I am sure that the folks at VSL will release a 64 bit version of VE as soon as it is possible. (I'm not mad at ShirtPocket software because they have yet to release a Leopard compatible version of SuperDuper - - a backup program that I have come to depend upon. The folks at ShirtPocket say they will release it as soon as it's ready - - and they develop only for Macs.. I believe them.)

So perhaps we should all agree to be friends and notice that developers and customers depend upon each other. I also think that we should be grateful for the creativity and excellence characteristic of VSL products - - as well as the creativity, generosity and intelligence of forum participants who so frequently come up with solutions to each other's technical problems.

Stephen 

i'd say it has become quiet because everything has already been said ... several times actually. not windows dictates a political situation, but C++ dictates development. same reason why there is no option to use the .NET framework or C#. less cost per unit would be nice, but not for any price - performance rules. give us the tools, we give you the applications.

christian

 Christian:

I really did hope that everyone was taking a deep breath, but now I'm not sure what your most recent post means in practical terms. It is, after all Apple's decision regarding Carbon that seems to be the source of your frustaration - - a decision over which people who use Macs had no knowledge, influence or control. (I'm sure if they'd known this decision would cause enormous frustration to developers whose products are important to them, they would have voted against it overwhelmingly.)  Most of your customers, I'd guess, are musicians who, as much as they know about music, may have little understanding of the programming issues that have currently frustrated you. What they do know is that they thought highly enough of VSL to make significant investments in its products. Those of your customers who use Macs simply want to be assured that VSL  is committed to continued development of OSX versions of these products that have - - or will have - - functional parity with Windows versions. In other words, right now, they want to know if VSL is still committed to releasing a 64 bit version Vienna Ensemble for OS X. This question is, I believe, worthy of a direct answer.

I think our newsletter three weeks ago was quite clear.

http://vsl.co.at/newsletter/74/newsletter.html

Quoting the last feature of this newsletter:

"Mac version: 32-bit for Mac PPC and Intel, 64-bit version coming soon"

best

Herb

@stevesong said:

 Christian:

 

In other words, right now, they want to know if VSL is still committed to releasing a 64 bit version Vienna Ensemble for OS X. This question is, I believe, worthy of a direct answer.

 

 Herb:

Thanks very much for reiterating VSL's original statement regarding this issue.

Sometimes a discussion can go off on a tangent that leads to confusion regarding basic issues. As I said earlier, most VSL customers likely have little knowledge of the technical issues involved or appreciation of the kinds of justified frustration a developer might feel when confronted by decisions by companies like Apple and/or Microsoft that throw a monkey wrench into their work. In other words, they probably have little first hand knowdelge of what terms like "Carbon," Cocoa," "C++," "Objective C," "C#," etc. actually mean - - other than what can be gleaned from advertising copy or superficial press reports. For Mac users, what they may have heard - - if they paid any attention at all to these things - - is that Cocoa is "cool," and Carbon "belongs to the past." As I also said previously, I think it safe to assume that, if Mac users had known that Apple's abandonment of a 64 bit version of Carbon (which was included in some earlier seeds of OS 10.5) would present a significant problem to developers whose products they depend on, they would have voted, overwhelmingly, against this decision. (Not necessarily because they had a serious grasp of the technical issues involved, but because they simply would have wanted development of products important to them to proceed without difficulty.) 

In observing the intensity of feeling among Mac users, one has to take into account that they have often had the experience of being treated (not by VSL!!!) as second class citizens. There are still, for example, quite a number of websites that can be accessed only by Internet Explorer running on a PC, unfulfilled promises from developers that OS X versions of their software were in development and planned for release - - statements from some companies implying that Mac users have simply purchased the "wrong" computer and ought to "get with the program" as dictated by Microsoft. Given this experience, it is not entirely surprsing that some Mac users may have their suspicions easily aroused - - even when such suspicion is not justified by the facts.

We are all grateful that VSL exists and that it carries on its tradition of excellence, creativity and disciplined craft in a world where commitment to anything other than "fast money" is increasingly rare. 

@stevesong said:

even when such suspicion is not justified by the facts.

 Jerome:

Right now I am running significantly over 3GB of samples on two standalone instances of VE on my G5 (with two instances of Altiverb 6) and they are all playing without incident. So, even without a 64 bit version of VE, one can achieve a lot.  (The fact that this works so well has inspired me to order that last GB of RAM for my G5 - - currently equipped with "only" 7GB.)

The fact that a 64 bit version of VE was not available on the same day as the Windows version seems mostly - - or, no doubt, entirely - - the result of the fact that Apple discontinued the 64 bit version of Carbon about 3 months before the release of OS 10.5 - - after announcing at the 2006 World Wide Developers Conference that they would continue its development and including it in early seeds of OS 10.5 given to developers.

This is simply a fact with inevitable practical consequences. Developers who believed what Apple told them have been suddenly thrust into the position of having to rewrite their software in accordance with Apple's recent decision on this matter. You might notice that MOTU has not announced a 64 bit version of Digital Performer (Mac only), that Apple did not release a 64 bit version of Logic 8, that it will likely be years before Photoshop and MS/Office are available in OSX 64 bit versions. Even, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, ShirtPocket software (a Mac only developer) has not yet released a Leopard compatible version of SuperDuper - - a back up program relied upon by many Mac users. Many of the delays in releasing 64 bit versions of OS X versions of software are directly attributable to Apple's decision to abandon Carbon. I very strongly suggest that you read the article I suggested in an earlier posting - - found at:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/6

The writer of the article of the article, John Siracusa, is a Mac programmer who thinks that Apple's decsion on this issue will be proven correct in the long run, but is acutely aware that Apple's decision to abandon Carbon has had and will have a predictably negative practical impact (for a while, at least) on many developers. Read the article!!!

If the folks at VSL say they are committed to release of an OSX compatible 64 bit version of Vienna Ensemble, I believe them - - and I don't think it's their fault that they could not release such a version "on the same day" as the Windows version. I think you might also forgive Christian's frustration with Apple's decision, since he is one of those taken by surprise and someone who works daily in the salt mines of programming. 

I think we should all stay friends. 

Stephen 

P.S. I'm using FireFox 

 All this arguing about Mac vs. Windows, no doubt, reflects all kinds of things regarding the state of the world, the sociol-economic factors that may have led to the dominance of Microsoft (not, originally, of Windows) in the corporate computing world, etc. etc., usw.

On the other hand, here on this forum, I am reminded of a story told to me by a couple who are my friends. For the sake of their privacy, I’ll refer to them as Jane and John.

One evening Jane and John found themselves in the midst of one of those heated, intractable arguments that couples sometimes get into. Each was certain of her or his own righteousness, possessed by a sense of cosmic injury and convinced of the utter impossibility of it all. So they decided to sleep in separate rooms. But Jane and John also had a dog, fortuitously named Puck (his real name), after the imp of English folklore and Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Long experience had taught Puck that it was a serious error for any reasonable dog to overestimate human intelligence. So, he decided to take action. He went to John’s room and barked, then to Jane’s room and barked some more. Both told him to be quiet, but he paid no heed to their commands and continued barking, more and more loudly at each of them in turn - - just as he had refused to remain silent when he was scolded for trying to advise them that they'd left a pot burning on the stove or, on another occasion, warn them that a bear was ransacking their car outside their cabin in the north woods.  Eventually, as on those previous occasions, they caught on. Each began to laugh and heard the other’s laughter, got out of bed, met in the hallway, hugged, said they were sorry and went to sleep in the same bed. Puck wagged his tail, happy that his intervention had worked.

jerome, a tiny correction: i'm not one of the main developers, i'm only managing IT and some support. of course this often implies requests from and communication to the developers.

miklos, i'd like to give an answer to another question which is IMHO more to the point: i'm considering a framework to be not the ideal tool for developing applications having their main focus on performance. as some might have already read above: this applies to all platforms.

steve, your posts seem to be the real essence of this thread ;-)

christian

@stevesong said:

The fact that a 64 bit version of VE was not available on the same day as the Windows version seems mostly - - or, no doubt, entirely - - the result of the fact that Apple discontinued the 64 bit version of Carbon about 3 months before the release of OS 10.5

@Jerome said:

Read my last post again - I was not talking about the non-release of VE 64-bit on the same day than the Windows version. I was talking about the 32-bit Mac version which was *not* released on the same day than the Windows 32-bit version, and when it did, it was as a *beta*. J

I've read your post several times. The fact is that the delay was so short I don't remember it and that VE currently works well on Macs. May I suggest that you read the Ars Technica article I cited - - and the story of my friends' dog Puck....... 

I'm interested in giving this a try.  Assuming one can get Soundflower working properly (haven't used it yet), how is one routing MIDI from, say, DP to a standalone instance of VE?

--Chuck

Silly question?  Will open standalone instances of VE simply publish their MIDI inputs to DP?

--Chuck

Activate the IAC driver in Audio MIDI Setup. Do this by double clicking on the IAC driver. A dialog box will appear. Make sure that "Device is online" is checked. Creat the requisite number of ports (each port is capable of 16 channels). Once you've done this, DP will see the IAC ports as another MIDI interface and you can choose them as MIDI outputs. Then you assign the IAC port and channel in VE so that it receives the MIDI data from VE.

I don't recommend SoundFlower as, every time I've tried it, I've gotten random artifacts (clicks and pops) during playback. If you have an interface such as those made by RME that has the requisite software, you can connect any input to any output and use it (the RME or equivalent audio interface) as the output device. If you have a interface such as the MOTU 2408 which does not currently have such software but does have 3 ADAT inputs and outputs, you can run a short fiber optic cable from Bank C's ADAT output to Bank B's ADAT input. Then assign each instance of VE's to output on a Bank C stereo pair (e.g. assign the first output to channels 17-18. etc.).Then create an AUX channel in DP, assign its Input to channels 9-10 and its outputs to channels 1-2. Thus the audio signal will be sent back into DP allowing you to use whatever signal processing is available within DP. I am currently using this setup without any problems. If your MOTU 2408's ADAT Inputs and Outputs are already occupied, you can purchase a 2408 I/O Expansion unit (the PCI 424 card allows for 4 I/O units). 

Thanks, that's great information!

I use a MOTU 828 Mk2 which I gather will allow me to use lightpipe cable to route up to 4 stereo pairs out of and back into the mac, which assuming stereo outs would be enough for 4 instances of VE.  The digital ins and outs are lying fallow now anyway.

Excellent!

--Chuck

Chuck: 

Glad I could be helpful. Keep us updated on how things work. If at some point you want to try using a software "audio pipe," some people report getting good results with the freeware application Jack OS X, but it's a lot more complicated than SoundFlower.

Good luck,

Stephen