@dbudde said:

OK.  I have 16 connected in Logic.  8 from each server.

Hadn't tried that.  So the limit on a single machine running OSX it 256 which I would have thought is plenty for all.... although that said you only get 3GB for the 32bit VEP instance to play with.... 

@timkiel said:

Hadn't tried that.  So the limit on a single machine running OSX it 256 which I would have thought is plenty for all.... although that said you only get 3GB for the 32bit VEP instance to play with.... 

At one point some time ago (I believe with some version of the original Vienna Ensemble), it was posible to create a duplcate copy of the application and rename it so you could run multiple instances of it to get around the instance limitation.  That doesn't seem to work with VE Pro.    I don't know if it still works with the old VE.

I haven't gotten to metaframes or automatic loads. But if we were to run both 32-bit and 64-bit for the sake of more VE's, I wonder how metaframes would interpret that. Is information distinguishing the two platforms embedded in a metaframe? Could we automatically load both servers on power-up? Otherwise, we're talking a manual load for one or the other before we could launch a Logic file accessing both bit sizes. 

We all draw our own lines. Personally, I won't include sounds in a core template that require a manual launch before the DAW is opened. Heretofore, I open Logic, it loads the sounds, and I'm ready. Now we have to pre-launch VE PRO. But that in turn can be automated according to the manual. So the question is, can we automate both bit servers on one power-up using metaframes?

I imagine a few think all of this is much ado about nothing. But when you're in the middle of a major template rebuild relative to our recent leap in memory access, you want to be careful with your choices, as you'll live with them for another season of composing. My own templates last about twelve months, until user insight and version advances make an update unavoidable. 

The goal never changes: large memory loads that are easy to access (to open and consult while composing) on a per articulation basis. 

 You save a metaframe for each server.

I haven't tried loading both servers automatically on boot up.

DG

@plowman said:

I haven't gotten to metaframes or automatic loads. But if we were to run both 32-bit and 64-bit for the sake of more VE's, I wonder how metaframes would interpret that. Is information distinguishing the two platforms embedded in a metaframe? Could we automatically load both servers on power-up? Otherwise, we're talking a manual load for one or the other before we could launch a Logic file accessing both bit sizes. 

You can set the 'open with' parameter in the info pane of the metaframe file to distinguish which app gets loaded with a specific metaframe file.  However this doesn't work quite the way I'd expect it to.  If you set the 64-bit one to use VE Pro Server (64-bit) and the 32-bit one to use VE Pro Server, then when you double click one then it opens with the right version.  When you double click the other one, then it just doesn't open. 

However, if you select them both and  then right-click and select open then they both open their respective apps.  So, this seems a bit strange but there is one way to make that work.

Piece of crap license control center can't find my dongle when I place VE metaframe files as login items.

"However, if you select them both and then right-click and select open then they both open their respective apps."

Yep. Confirmed. Either / or, or both at once, but never one after another. Oh, what a weekend it's been. 

Soon I hope to discover what Login Items does with this curious fact. If I put in both the 64-bit and 32-bit metaframes, I'd think that they would load sequentially, which is to say, the second wouldn't load. We'll see. 

If you can figure out how to get the license to recognize just after boot let me know what you did.

Identical result. Syncrosoft kicks out the error message. If only one server (32 or 64) metaframe is in Login Items, that file loads. If two metaframes are in Login (both 32 and 64), neither item loads. In one attempt, both servers were in the Activity Monitor, but neither could be used. 

I can also verify that the latest eLicenser download doesn't change the result. 

That dual selection, manual "Open" was a good call. Now, ironically, we can't put EITHER of the metaframes in Login, and both must be manually, simultaneously launched. Not going to happen here. I must be content with the 64-bit server, take the eight instances it gives me, and re-think options.  

VE PRO is amazing software, vanquishing soundcards and mixers and wires and worries. We only dreamed of this power a few years ago. Threads like this discuss the one element that is least fantastic, the local hosting limits. I know people worked extraordinarily hard to create this tool.

Well, it is always possible to write a script that would run them one after another and run the script at the login. Just a thought...

One after another doesn't work normally, why would this work in a script?

Edit:  Correction ... it does work if you open with app explicitly.  Opening by double clicking the mframe file does not work (even when the file is associated with the appropriate app.

dbudde, are you using Automator? I am curious to know how you are telling it to select the application once it is launched and File / Open from within that application. The closest I can get to opening the metaframe within the application is "Watch me do," and that has been tricky because the desktop topography changes. 

Perhaps you are using AppleScript. 

I don't have a working script yet.  But I can make it work manually in the finder by double clicking the first mframe file.  Then select the second mframe file and right click and slect 'open with' and select the appropriate app.  For whatever reason 'open' or double click doesn't work for the second file.

I tried to get these same commands to work in Automator, but it won't work.  I also tried with various amounts of delay between opening the first and second file.  Nothing works when trying to script this.  There must be a bug somewhere in the app association mechanism either in VE Pro or in OS X.  I don't know.

Boy, have we been traveling parallel universes. In Automator, I was throwing every command I could find at this, including Pause and Hide Applications. I brought it to the point where the mouse would click the second VE instance (the server window after it was launched, to set up a File / Open menu). Onscreen it looked right, but I still got an error. 

In a bug-free world, we'd just drag both metaframes into Login Items and go make music. 

My apologies for interrupting the flow of consciousnes but - Back to re-visiting the original topic of this thread:

Does VE Pro only recognize 8 instances in localhost mode (on the same machine as the DAW host software) or only 8 instances total (on localhost and x number of slaves)?

Jack

I believe the answer is eight instances per server.