Jumbo Frames will increase network latency, but may reduce pops and clicks. Increasing your soundcard buffer (or VE Pro multiplier), will increase your latency but will also reduce pops and clicks. Which one works best will depend on your system. Confused? I'm afraid that you'll just have to try it and see. Jumbo frames can be turned on and off via the Properties panel of your network card. AFAIK they have to be turned on for all machines in the network.

DG

Thanks DG - right now I handle pops/clicks with soundcard latency increases - but I'll give this a go.  Thanks for the 'how to'.  All the best,

As it turns out my Master (W7) and one xp64 farm unit have 'Jumbo Frame' as an option.

The two other xp64 farm units only have 'Maximum Frame Size' (both are set at 1514).  

Could I set both of those to some HIGH number - perhaps similar to one of the 'Jumbo Frame' options given - i.e. 8 or 9KB MTU (as optioned in Jumbo Frames)?

Otherwise soundcard adjustments are my only option (or replacing the NIC's on the two farm units).  Since there is no real guarantee of performances increases I'll likely not do that.

Thanks for your feedback.

Rob

@Rob Elliott said:

As it turns out my Master (W7) and one xp64 farm unit have 'Jumbo Frame' as an option.

The two other xp64 farm units only have 'Maximum Frame Size' (both are set at 1514).  

Could I set both of those to some HIGH number - perhaps similar to one of the 'Jumbo Frame' options given - i.e. 8 or 9KB MTU (as optioned in Jumbo Frames)?

Otherwise soundcard adjustments are my only option (or replacing the NIC's on the two farm units).  Since there is no real guarantee of performances increases I'll likely not do that.

Thanks for your feedback.

Rob

Jumbo has to be on with all machines on the network, or none of them. Of course there is nothing to stop you trying this out for yourself.

Alternatively as network cards are so cheap, you could always pick up a couple of cards that do have the Jumbo option and try it out.

DG

I tried 9k yesterday, and my machines got pissed off at me.

Maybe if I had a faster host?

I reverted tp 1500 and all is back to normal.

@jeremyroberts said:

I tried 9k yesterday, and my machines got pissed off at me.

Maybe if I had a faster host?

I reverted tp 1500 and all is back to normal.

LOL. Nothing worse that getting a slapping from the help....!

DG

I use 9000 MTU on two macpros, and it caused no issues. seems like better performance, but I can demonstrate nothing really.

Just got a new MacPro and i installed VEPRO on my old G5 to use it as a Kontakt slave. 

I'm using a 10/100 Linksys DSL router/8 port switch and i've got to say that it works like a charm..!?! It's not even gigabit.

Haven't tried a power session yet but i had 5 or 6 Kontakt tracks running plus an instance of Toontrack EZ Drummer.

I must also say that the feel is fantastic playing drums live from the keyboard. I don't feel the latency. The buffer settings on my MacPro are at 256 in Digital Performer 7.2

I'm starting to think my G5 will be the bottleneck before the 10/100 connection starts being a problem.

BTW i tried connecting the MacPro into the G5 using the second Ethernet port on the Mac Pro and even though i wasn't using a crossed Ethernet cable the G5 appeared on the MacPro's Desktop and i could use Remote viewing but VEPRO did not see the G5. Anybody tried using a crossed connection with success?

Best,

Claude

Thanks all for you replies. I would say  - for the very same template - 75% of the time I can run on the preferred 256K latency in the master soundcard (with three farm units).  The other 25% of the time are pops and clicks (all other things being equal).   At those times, I set the master soundcard to 512K and just avoid uptempo percussion / strings cues [:P]

Seriously - I have been (since VEPRO) trying to coorelate between the good times and bad and for the life of me cannot find a coorelation.

I have learned that MTU 9000 (Jumbo Frames) is NOT SUPPORTED on Mac G5 2.0, 2.5 and 2.7 dual CPU machines, although the OS will let you select it! Yikes...

Read about Jumbo Frames here...

Make sure all devices on your network and set to MTU 9000 and be certain that all switches, routers, etc... can support it. And then your overall network performance will increase substantially.

Yeah, it would seem to follow that it will improve the performance of the network. seems to here.

I am getting really good performance right now, a rather large couple of metaframes on one slave and 128 in the RME Buffers in Cubase on the master, everything clear. fully produced sound, the kind of thing which I wouldn't get as regular plugins without most of it freezed, with buffers of 1024.

@ civilization 3:

Cubase on a Mac or PC? Just interested in latency here. Sorry it's a little OT.

B

I'm using Cubase 5.5.2 on a MacPro, older quad 2.66ghz. Using vstis as plugins was quite problematic, no hope of workably low latency before VE Pro networked to the slave octocore. My current project is pretty loaded and my buffers (RME Multiface 2) give me a reading of combined I/O ~11ms latency, using the x2 setting in VE Pro and given the latency compensation it's not so bad.

A try at this kind of project would involve a lot of freezing tracks and buffers always @ 1024; in fact such a project would just be too problematic without this network handling. Cubase is not the best idea on a Mac, but VE Pro has allowed me to keep using Cubase, which is what I'm used to. 5.5 improved the multicore handling significantly IME.