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  • Software/hardware update questions

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    Happy New Year and hello and thanks in advance for any help/insights.

    I am a user who hasn't upgraded my system in over 3 years (software or hardware). I've essentially been using Vienna Ensemble from the first version, and the original included Vienna Instrument player, along with the SYmphonic CUbe (with a few extended/additional Vienna libraries).

    My machine, about 3.5 years old, is

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    Dell Precision WorkStation T7400

    Chipset

    IntelĀ® 5400 Chipset
    At the core of Dell Precisionā„¢ 64-bit dual-socket workstations is the Intel 5400 chipset, designed to support the technologies that can open up performance-impacting bottlenecks in primary subsystems. Power users and the application providers who support them - have access to more bandwidth, more compute power than the previous generation, and to massive memory expansion up to 64GB2.

    ===========

    I stuffed 24 gb of ram into it, and Windows XP 64bit was my OS.

    I had a 250gb WD as my system drive, and then two additional slave drives to house my samples. The machine has been essentially dedicated to Vienna only and I run nothing else on it. I was not using this machine as my DAW...just as a slave/host for Vienna samples. I didn't upgrade for so long as my system ran nice and stable, and I was simply lazy. I am certain I can find answers to my questions through searching these forums (and I am looking), but please, if someone could chime in on any of these queries I would greatly appreciate.

    Well, all good things come to an end, and my system drive died on my recently. This is forcing me to rebuild and finally upgrade. I am sure that Vienna has substantially improved since then, so here are a few questions. Sorry for the lack of brevity, and don't feel the need to answer everything. I'm just in serious catchup mode and need input.

    1 - Given I was happy with the performance of the machine, I assume I can continue to use it with decent results even if I upgrade to the latest Instrument player as well as the latest Ensemble. Any thoughts or comments?

    2 - When I originally built and configured this machine, I recall having an issue with the number of instances of the instrument player I could have plugged into Ensemble (it was less than 100). This forced me to build very large matrices in order to have access to most of what I wanted. While it worked, it wasn't the easiest solution, and I would have preferred to spread things out a bit more across a larger number of midi channels. So have things improved in this sense?

    3 - Also, related to question #2...because I was creating larger matrices to accomodate more sounds, I would often run into the problem where I was unable to utilize two articulation simultaneously because they essentially occupied the same midi channel (the articulations were part of the same matrix). Has this been addressed?

    4 - Are the recent versions of Ensemble/Instruments intelligent in the sense that it detects when samples are already loaded, and doesn't waste ram (reload copies of samples) if I load other matrices (or mutliple copies of the same matrices) that wish to utilize identical samples?

    5 - I am thinking of replacing my now broken system drive with a solid state drive, as it will only need to be large enough to accomodate the OS as well as the Vienna software. Is this the approach you'd take? Any foreseeable problems given the age/specs of my system?

    6 - Has Vienna created new, downloadable presets/matrices that cover most or all of the articulations to make it relatively easy for a user to get going? I suppose if the '# of player instances limitation' issue has been resolved, I could just rely on the original presets, but let me know if most people still customize as much as I had originally needed to (by combining things into larger matrices) in order to overcome any obstacles.

    7 - Are there presets that utilize the mod wheel to combine (Xfade) some of the sustained string patches to create natural swells, etc.?

    I'm sure I'll have a number of other questions, but this is where I'm starting. Again, thank you anyone for taking time to respond!

    Robert
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    Another question...

    As stated above, I was using Win XP 64bit, as at the time Win 7 was not supported. Since I am rebuilding, what are most using these days? Win 7 64bit? Are there advantages to one OS versus another as far as Vienna is concerned?

    Thanks again.