Hi Dietz,

I know you are probably very busy at the moment [;)] and I appreciate your help. But I do have some final MIR questions that I hope you could help me with.

1) Running on the above spec'd machine, which I think is very like your own test machine - Intel i7 965 3.2GHZ with 12GB Ram. How many vienna instruments can MIR run? For example, how many can it load at once into MIR? And how many can all play at the same time?

2) I understand that MIR is also a final mixing point as well as a reverb unit, so it needs an audio interface to output the audio. But how do you get the Midi into MIR? Does it, like Vienna Ensemble 3, appear as a multi channel virtual instrument that you just insert into a channel on your DAW? Or can you use a midiOverLAN product to route midi over ethernet? Or do you need 2 midi interfaces?

If it is a midiOverLAN product, what product do you use to connect a Mac Pro DAW machine to the PC MIR Server? (I am a little confused about how you can send midi from a Mac DAW to a PC slave)

I really appreciate your help!!! If you can answer these last few questions it would really clear up any last few queries that I have. Then all I need to do is buy it [:D]

Interesting DG. I sold my better interfaces to help pay for my Apogee Symphony system which is attached to the Mac. Apart from that the only interfaces I have left is an Apogee Duet (which doesn't have windows driver) and my M-Box. 

Do you think I need to purchase an audio interface for the PC? What would you recommend?

... OTOH the FireFace offers multi-client drivers, which would help a lot in a setup where you plan to use the seqencer on the same machine as MIR.

So, will the 920 work?

 yes it will, though we cannot say currently up to how many instruments on stage with which plugins inserted ...

IMO it is not the best idea to buy the slowest processor of the i7 series just for MIR .... if you think the 965/975 is too expensive consider at least the 940, 950

of yourse you can choose a smart for driving in indanapolis or monza, but more efficient would be a porsche ;-)

christian

Thanks CM!

One last question is worth paying the extra money to get the 975 over the 965? Will we see much difference in performance? Is there any real difference in the architecture?

Thanks!

D0 stepping, ~3% more power at ~3% less heat dissipation (= 3% less power consumption), here in austria 2,8% more expensive

hth, christian

Hi CM

As always you know your stuff!!! So D0 stepping and an additional 3% power, will this make any difference to MIR? Will I be able run run a few more instruments than if I used the 965 chip?

Just need to know if it is worth spending the extra money!!!!

Simsy - you have to be aware that whatever hardware you buy now: There will _always_ be faster and cheaper stuff, just a few weeks later. 8-/

Of course,  if the CPU is a bit stronger, you will be able to use a few instruments more, or have lower latency with the same amount of instruments. But make sure that you components are _all_ in the same league. It doesn't make sense to have a slightly faster CPU when the graphics card is the actual bottleneck, for example.

HTH,

Thanks Dietz,

This is finally what I have settled on

Intel i7-975 3.33 Ghz

Asus Rampage II Extreme Intel X58

Corsair Dominator 12 GB (6x2GB) DDR3 1600Mhz Tri-Channel RAM

Also, a Profire Lightbridge to get the audio back to my DAW machine. Just until MIR Premier is released [;)]

So, before I finally hit the order button. Can I get the OK from you guys?

 Simsy, looking into your registered products i'm under the impression you might run short with 12 GB (what would be sufficient for the special edition) - i'd consider to instantly start with 24 GB ...

system: ~ 1GB, IR: ~ 4GB -> ~6 GB left for loading patches .... if that is according to your usual method of arranging its OK though.

sidenote: you also may find needing to spread the sample content across 2 disks

christian

Re: RAM

In a stress test I ran today, I had 50 indivdual VIs playing glitch-free at the same time in stereo, latency set to 1024 samples, CPU @ 80%, with a system comparable to the one you outlined above (12 GB RAM). I used 11.2 GB RAM for this setup, with Nuendo 4 for MIDI output on the same machine.

Taking into account MIR's abilitiy for dynamic processing (only those VI's that really play will use MIR's convolution core and thus tax the CPU), you will most likely run out of RAM before the CPU overloads. :-)

HTH,

Hi CM,

Yeah, on my current VE 3 slave I have a lot more RAM than that. But the i7 motherboards only have 6 DIMM slots and it is very hard to find more than 2GB DIMMS without them being really expensive!!! I might load 12GB in for now and have to reduce my template until 4GB DIMMS come down in price.

Do you know of any relevantly cheap 4GB DIMMS?

Also, Dietz, very interesting with the 50 instruments!!! That is very impressive, is there a dramatic fall in number of VI's when you reduce the latency to 512? Really looking forward to this product by the way!

Can't believe you guys are online on a Saturday night [:D]

 Kingston ValueRAM DIMM Kit 12GB PC3-8500U CL7 (DDR3-1066) (KVR1066D3N7K3/12G) 3 x 4 GB is sold heree for about EUR 1.000.-

(note: having 2 modules per channel will drop memory bus frequency down to 1066 anyway)

interestingly the server modules (for XEON 5520 series, ECC) are sold for EUR 200.- per 4 GB module .... strange, isn't it?

christian

@Dietz said:

In a stress test I ran today, I had 50 indivdual VIs playing glitch-free at the same time in stereo, latency set to 1024 samples, CPU @ 80%, with a system comparable to the one you outlined above (12 GB RAM). I used 11.2 GB RAM for this setup, with Nuendo 4 for MIDI output on the same machine.

 DG, please keep in mind this is on an i7 system and reduction of latency increases CPU load, not necessarily in a linear manner though.

more powerful systems (eg. using 2 x XEON W5580 = 16 virtual cores) will help, but i', not sure if 128 would be even possible ... maybe wait for the 6 core XEONS announced for early 2010

christian

EDIT: i just noticed that obviously it _is_ possible to get down to 128 on a 2 x XEON 5580W machine - this is more than i dared to hope for ...

@cm said:

 DG, please keep in mind this is on an i7 system and reduction of latency increases CPU load, not necessarily in a linear manner though.

more powerful systems (eg. using 2 x XEON W5580 = 16 virtual cores) will help, but i', not sure if 128 would be even possible ... maybe wait for the 6 core XEONS announced for early 2010

christian

EDIT: i just noticed that obviously it _is_ possible to get down to 128 on a 2 x XEON 5580W machine - this is more than i dared to hope for ...

Hi guys,
Don't know if anyone still remember me.

I've finally settled down for graduate. So finally I can get back to VSL community. Also finally I ordered VI for myself - although only Solo Strings I and Appassionata Strings I. 2500 dollars is a lot of money in China, espeically for a student:)

Looks like you guys are talking about supercomputer now! MIR is definitely a mir-acle:), this will render my research useless:) But I'm glad that such an easy to use environmental reverb exists. Although I don't know if I can buy that after its getting out. But I will buy it immediately if I can.

I'm now using a dual quad Xeon 5410 with 8GB RAM. I have to say that core number is only one question. Applications have to be fully optimized for multi-thread or multi-core in order to make full use of CPU. There are some problem with DAW on windows. I'm using Ableton Live now but I found that Live will drop out even my CPU has only 50% usage. I just hope that MIR is fully opitimized for multicore. cause in my view, multi-IR convolution is kind of parallel work so It is great for multicore.

Also, Core i7's integrated on-chip memory controller and L3 cache design can greatly improve memory performance. So I think that's why VI will run faster on i7. But i still believe memory bandwidth is only one factor on processing power. Processor's raw power will always be the most important factor.

and BTW, there always been supercomputer somewhere. I've seen 256 Xeon CPU server when it's 2002 in my city's electricity control center. Although these machines are for industrial control or more mission critical environment like finacial data center or something like that. My point is that there always are ways to build SMP(Symmetrical Multi-Processors) computers with 64, 128 or more CPU or cores using Server CPU like Xeon. But this always is my fantasy to have such a computer for music production :)

And, I don't think my 8 core Xeon 5410 with 8GB RAM will be enough for MIR and VI....may be

Also, BTW, it's good to be back.