There are various options. Assuming that you want to stay with OSX (which won't give you the best VE Pro slave) then there are various things to consider:

1. You will be able to load less with the 4 Minis, because you have the OS overhead on each computer to take into account.
2. It depends what Virtual Instruments you are running as to whether or not you will get better performance with a Mac Pro.
3. SSD will load your samples quicker, but is unlikely to improve performance. The exception would be if you wanted to run Kontakt (for example) at a lower pre-load buffer. However, be aware that SSD is not performing well on OSX for many people, so you may see little to no benefit.

DG

@DG said:

(which won't give you the best VE Pro slave)

@DG said:

 However, be aware that SSD is not performing well on OSX for many people, so you may see little to no benefit.

DG

just be a little bit patient !!!! 

In my opinion you get far more bang for your buck with a PC slave (rather than OSX). Why are you only looking at Macs?

I use OSX and Logic on my master machine (just in case you thought I was biased). [;)]

M

@DG said:

(which won't give you the best VE Pro slave)

VE Pro runs more efficiently under Windows than under OSX.

DG

@DG said:

 However, be aware that SSD is not performing well on OSX for many people, so you may see little to no benefit.

DG

just be a little bit patient !!!! 

Cyril, I'm not sure that there is anything to be patient for. Apple seems to have had very little response to the many complaints about the lack of performance using SSD with OSX. Also, now that Thunderbolt is out, I'm not sure that there is much incentive to do anything about it. I suspect that the full potential of SSD with OSX will only be seen with an external drive connected via Thunderbolt.

DG

Personally, I'd go with a PC slave before getting any mac to use as a slave machine.  But my mac pro is handling everything I need, with my current setup it's plenty, I have no need for a slave machine.

@DG said:

Cyril, I'm not sure that there is anything to be patient for. Apple seems to have had very little response to the many complaints about the lack of performance using SSD with OSX. Also, now that Thunderbolt is out, I'm not sure that there is much incentive to do anything about it. I suspect that the full potential of SSD with OSX will only be seen with an external drive connected via Thunderbolt.

Apple is improving SSD support.  Recently it was found that 10.7 has TRIM support, after that new MB air models included it for the latest version of 10.6 (in both cases, just for the apple SSDs but I expect that to get updated to support all).

In terms of performance on mac, it seems more dependent on the software.  PLAY doesn't work well on SSD/Mac, and it sounds like the vienna stuff isn't really optimized for SSD on either platform.  But Kontakt has major gains on SSD, mac and PC.  That, along with major improvements on mac/ssd with other types of software, makes it seems like it's much more an issue for third party devs to fix than something on Apple's side.

A new update is currently in testing, which improves SSD loading performance. For one user with an SSD RAID on Mac, loading speed has increased from10-15MB/sec to roughly 480MB/sec. With this update - disk speed is the only limit to loading speed.

@MS said:

A new update is currently in testing, which improves SSD loading performance. For one user with an SSD RAID on Mac, loading speed has increased from10-15MB/sec to roughly 480MB/sec. With this update - disk speed is the only limit to loading speed.

A new update of VI & VIPro. We have implemented a workaround to get around some of the pitfalls of the OSX kernel.

Hello,

this increase of performance sound amazing. But what does RAID mean in this case and which SSD do you recommend for a Mac Pro. Should I wait till the faster ones come out end of April?

Thanks

Alfred

> But what does RAID mean in this case

raid 0 is about 1.5 the speed per disk, more disk you have, faster is the loading

the 490 mb/s test was done with a 11 GB template on a 4 x 64 gb crucial  raid on a Rocket raid sata III, a 11.83 GB template was loaded in 50 secs  using VE pro server and VI pro

> which SSD do you recommend for a Mac Pro.

Sata III if you can have a SATA III card in your MAC (like the Rocket Raid)

> Should I wait till the faster ones come out end of April?

up to you !

Thanks for your advice Cyril,

I don´t know if my Mac Pro 12core takes the SATA III, but I hope so.  Do you win performance only when you load the instrument or does the SSD increase the performance during playing too?

loading and playing

No problem to put a sata III card in your Mac

Crazy world - this morning I found out that my official mac-trader installed Western Caviar green HDs instead black ones on my new Mac. So maybe the exchange will bring me some gain of performance. We will see...

What do you think about a Western raptor? Is this kind of HD out of time now? It´s no so expensive...

Raid 0 of HD is also a solution now, this as soon the fix is out

If you leave in France in Paris I can sell you an 8 out Rocket raid PCI E with 6 raptors

Best

Cyril

Wow, that seems to be a great thing. How many Gb does it have?

 it is 6 raptors 10 000 rpm of 32 gb, so you have a raid 0 of 192 GB

They have SE PLUS and Appassionata already loaded

Would you still be of the same opinion now that Lion is out?  My MB Air screams with the SSD and Lion - but I haven't really tasked it yet.  Just looking for some feedback.