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  • Stuck & Missing Notes

    I'm experiencing significant problems involving missing and stuck notes.

    Presntly I'm attempting to use the following setup:

    MacPro (dual Quadcore 2.9.3, 24 GB RAM, OS 10.6.8, MOTU 2408 mkIII audio interface, MIDI Time Piece MIDI Interface.) as a "slave" machine running Vienna Ensemble Pro (64bit) Version 4.1.8861 as a stanadlone.

    Computers are connected via a D-Link Gigabit switch. Computers have static ip addresses. Screen Sharing is Turned on so that I can see the screen of the MacBook Pro on the screen of the Mac Pro.

    The MIDI Source is a MacBook Pro (4.1), Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.5 GHz, 4GB of RAM, OS 10.6.8) running Finale 2010. I use Finale as a compositional environment. When the music is written I transfer the composition via a MIDI File to Logic in order to make a performance.

    MIDI Connection between the two computers is achieved by ipMIDI (made by nerds.de)

    The idea is to treat the MacPro as one would a spearate synth/sample player. In designing this setup, I was motivated by the fact that simply running Finale 2010 on the same MacPro with VE PRO as one might expect to do, causes problems involving frequently missed or stuck notes. My reasoning was this: Finale 2010 is not multi-processor aware and is not 64 bit. When running it on a MacPro it claims to be using 110% of available processing power when playing back a simple file. It, therefore,, seemed to me that it would be best to completely isolate Finale from VE PRO. (Please note than when playing very complex files with Logic on the same MacPro with VE Pro,  Activity Monitor shows much less use of available processing power.

    Despite my attempt to isolate Finale from VE PRO, I still get frequent missed or stuck notes. This seems to have gotten worse with newer version of VE and VI PRO. I have not yet installed VE PRO 2 nor performed the alterations to the samples that using it appears to require.

    I am very much interested in acquiring & using MIR PRO and VE PRO 5, but am worried that I will face the same problems I've described.

    As I see it, some possible sources of this problem are

    1. inherent in Finale 2010 (Similar symptms were exhibied by Finale 2006 but not by Finale 2005 or 2008.)

    2. A problem with ipMIDI used in conjunction with VE PRO

    3. Problems that specific to the interaction of Finale 2010 ipMIDI and VE PRO that would disappear with VE PRO 2 and an accompanying update of the Sample Files.

    4. Problems that would disappear if I used the server version of VE PRO (the reason I don't do this is that while the MacPro is equipped with the latest MOTU 2408 PCI-e card, I have only an ancient MOTU 828 MK I Firewire interface for the MacBook Pro and this interface is significantly inferior in audio quality to the 2408.

    5. Problems that would disappear with MIR PRO VE Ensemble PRO 5.

    I would be most appreciative of anyone's insght and help.

    Thanks,

    Stephen


  • Further research:

    I have two clones of the main startup drive.. Starting from the oldest of these, and playing the same Finale file (on the MacBook Pro using the setup I described earlier and an ostensibly identical copy of the VE PRO file there were no stuck or missing notes. Thinking that this clone might have an earlier version of the VE PRO software, I checked: the same version of VE PRO (version 4.1.8861) is installed on both drives. Nonetheless, playing the same Finale file with an apparently identical VE PRO setup on the main drive - - rather than the clone - - results in stuck and missing notes. Next check might be to copy the VE PRO file from the clone to see if somehow the file on the main drive has become corrupted.