Vienna Symphonic Library Forum
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  • Effect of Adjusting the Number of Threads in VE Pro

    I am so impressed with what you all have acheived with VE Pro.  I had a full orchestral template of 15GB of samples loaded last night on my Mac Pro (2.66 8-core) and it barely taxed my CPU!  I used to run a similar template with external versions of Kontakt (routing audio with Soundflower and midi via IAC protocol) and my machine would choke.  Bravo VSL!!!

     What I did find odd was that initially, VE Pro indicated 80-90% CPU usage with a setting of 12 threads, but as I adjusted the number of threads downward, CPU usage decreased significantly such that at 4 threads I was barely showing 20% CPU usage in VE Pro.  Why is this?


  • If I can briefly hijack your thread...I'm also getting great results with one machine now...thanks to the fab VE Pro and other

    strategies.  But I'm curious how much RAM you have on your mac.


  •  16GB


  • thanks...same here.  That's very good to know.  I'm getting high loads but haven't tried to push the limits yet.


  • Please remember that the threads setting is PER INSTANCE, so setting this so the total amount of threads will be ABOVE your number of cores (or virtual cores), will just cause a degradation of performance.

    For an (old) 8-core machine running a single instance of VE Pro alongside Logic I would probably keep this setting between 4-6 threads, depending on the distribution of workload. Worth noting is that currently the CPU measurement does not show completely accurate numbers. We are looking at improving the CPU meter in the future.


  • "PER INSTANCE" of VE Pro or VE Pro Server?


  • "PER INSTANCE" of VE Pro or VE Pro Server? 


  • An instance being a VE Pro standalone session or a single instance in a VE Pro server list.

  • if I understand you correctly, each instance in a VE Pro server list can have its own thread setting, which must not exceed the total number of threads available (16 on the latest Mac Pros) or face performance degradation.  Regardless, does the thread count on the output of the server list represent: 1) the average thread count of the instances in the list, 2) the highest thread setting in the list, or 3) the sum all instances?  In other words, with a server list of 3 instances with thread settings of 4, 8 and 12, is the thread access of the server 8, 12 or 24?


  • last edited
    last edited

    @aplanchard said:

    In other words, with a server list of 3 instances with thread settings of 4, 8 and 12, is the thread access of the server 8, 12 or 24?

    With a server containing 3 instances, the thread settings of 4, 8 and 12 would give 12, 24 and 36 threads respectively. If you are using 3 instances on an 8-core machine, I would thus recommend to set the server thread count to 2. (3x2=6)


  • thanks for clearing that up Martin.  I to made the mistake of having my instances set to 4 cores.  So every instance window I have on my project (4) had been set to 4.  I haven't had any issues but from what you are saying, it would be best for me to set them all to 1, to balance out the 4 cores.

    Maestro2be


  • That sounds like a good plan!