@civilization 3 said:

if that machine uses DDR3, you are wasting 8 gigs of that RAM. Also I would  advise you to let Apple stock it only with the minimum as their price is seriously gouging the customer on it, get the lion's share from another vendor.

Sorry to say that you dont know what you are talking about.

If you compare a DELL server to a MACPRO (they have both Xeon processors) the Mac is a little bit cheaper.

What is expensive with Apple, is Memory, but it it is easy to buy it elsewhere

You have to complain to Intel because most of the price of a Macpro is in the processors, Just look at the price list of an 6 core Xeon processor, it was 1500 $, if you have 2, like in mine, it was 3000$

The new Xeon processors 8 core are going up to 2057 $ each !!!!!

Today 32 GB with a full orchestral template is not enough !

My 97 Vi 2 template on ssd with pre-load buffer set to 4096 uses 59 GB (I load only the preset levell II of each instrument)

I have heard rumors that the preload buffer could be reduce more with next version

If I was you I will wait a few days for next version

Do you own a Mac now ?

If yes it will be wise to keep it and use it as a Master with Logic pro running on it and have the your VE pro with your 80 VI and MIR running on your new Macpro

@civilization 3 said:

If you want to seriously utilize MIR Pro, you'll be dealing with a LOT of latency and it will mitigate how many instruments quite a lot. it isn't really enough machine for both to be honest. If I were to purchase MIR Pro I would need a third robust machine. I have a macpro 8-core, 24 gigs, four internal drives 2.93; I would port the audio coming back to the DAW to an instance just dealing with MIR Pro on a dedicated machine. It's a true hog in my experience demoing it on a quite similar machine as yours. 

Did you try MIR pro ? 

lol as they say, all I said was apple will gouge you on the RAM which I know from having paid it, and replaced it.

I demo'd MIR Pro, I'm very interested in it but my system does not live up to it the way I want to work, which is low-latency. to be worthwhile I would want a machine about as strong as my 8-core for just it. the OP said 80 tracks and all, that's going to make you max out latency-wise.

I found out here about 3-channel RAM vs 32 gigs; and I found installing RAM you install by threes. so you'd be buying uber-expensive RAM that isn't doing anything for you, 2 8 gig sticks.

Cyril & Civilization 3

Thanks for your advice.

I have a G5 at present and have wanted to upgrade to a MacPro for 3 years.  I will be ordering it with only 6GB of RAM and beef it up to 32GB using another supplier.  

I have not been able to test MIRPro because of the limitations of a PPC G5 but I am hoping that a robust MacPro machine will do the job.

Hoping to be able to run my orchestral template using only the new machine.  But if this is not enough maybe able to use the G5 as a slave with VEPro.

Regards

Mirabile

@mirabile said:

Hoping to be able to run my orchestral template using only the new machine.  But if this is not enough maybe able to use the G5 as a slave with VEPro.

Regards

Mirabile

You have not understand how VE PRO and MIR PRO are intergrated !

You cannot use your G5 as a slave ! It has to be use as a MASTER and WILL RUN ONLY LOGIC 

Your Macpro will be the slave 

How it is working :

MASTER :

a) Logic sends the midi notes and audio tracks to the slave *  and **

SLAVE :

b) the slave converts the midi note to sample,

c) if you need to EQ you will add an EQ in the VE Mixer (you can EQ, before or after sending it to MIR)

d) then VE will send the sample or the Logic audio track to MIR for positioning/reverb (MIR is an Insert in VE Mixer)

e) All VI and AI are mixed in VE

f) The stereo or the 5.1 signal is send back to Logic

MASTER

 The Master is doing the output monitoring / bouncing. 

There is a good chance that the Macpro you have chose will do the Job in stereo 

If you have a sample of your music you can send it to me and I will test it on my Macpro. But I will not be able to do it before the 25th of March

Best

Cyril

well, one should use the more robust machine for the heavy lifting, which VE Pro and/or MIR Pro is going to be by far compared to the sequencer's load unless you're doing heavy audio work in it. if you have VE Pro 5 there isn't a lot of call for doing any FX in Logic. So in that scenario certainly go for Logic on the g5 machine.

If I really felt I needed MIR Pro and could raise the funds for it, I would do this: I would take the returning instrument channels from my first slave and port them to a third machine/second slave to VEP 5 as audio to instance of MIR Pro/VEP 5. IE: VEP5 as an insert or send from the sequencer to an instance of VE Pro 5 that does not host instruments, just audio channels with MIR Pro as an insert.

I will not recommend with any confidence, to foster a belief one is going to find joy on a single machine doing all three, say Logic, symphonic type of arrangments with virtual instruments and MIR Pro. MIR Pro uses SERIOUS resources. This is a little bit reminiscent of the gigastudio days, you just had a dedicated computer or ten for it.

@mirabile said:

 MacPro 2.4GHz 8 core with 32GB RAM

if that's the machine, that uses DDR 3. TRUST ME, 32 is not divisible by three. you'll be getting 8 GB of RAM that's more or less a waste. Ask around here if you don't believe me.

mystery double post

@mirabile said:

 MacPro 2.4GHz 8 core with 32GB RAM

if that's the machine, that uses DDR 3. TRUST ME, 32 is not divisible by three. you'll be getting 8 GB of RAM that's more or less a waste. Ask around here if you don't believe me.

I dont understand ! why divisible by 3 ?????

8 x 4 GB or  4 x 8 GB = 32 GB

If you dont have enough memory to have all your orchestra loaded in memory your system will keep swapping, reducing the number of VI !

To monitor this you must run the utility "activity monitor" select system memory and watch if swap used if greater than zéro 

it's triple channel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-channel_memory_architecture#Triple-channel_architecture

I have installed RAM in a mac pro 8-core with DDR 3. The OS tells you how to install it and it's by threes.

Apple is not being 100% forthright putting 8, 16, or 32 in there. "The architecture can only be used when all three, or a multiple of three, memory modules are identical in capacity and speed, and are placed in three-channel slots. When two memory modules are installed, the architecture will operate in dual-channel mode.^[9]"

to the OP: actually with Apple sticking 6 1 gig sticks in there, and you want it filled up, you're taking that 6 gigs out to begin with. it's your money. I wasted enough myself on this issue!

 Gents

As I stated earlier I have a PPC G5 which will not run Logic 9, because logic 9 can only run on an Intel Mac.  So I cannot use the G5 for sequencing if I want to use Logic 9

Also from your latest post civilization 3 a MacPro can only have 6, 12, 24 and 48 GB's of RAM and work to its full capacity.  Is this correct?

Regards

Mirabile

You can go to 64GB but you must use special rams and remove all installed RAM

To have an idea go on crucial.com, select Apple and your computer and it will give you what you can put in your computer

example for my 12 core

24GB kit (8GBx3)
DDR3 PC3-10600 • CL=9 • Dual Ranked • Registered • ECC • DDR3-1333 • 1.5V • 1024Meg x 72 • • Part #: CT1469655

(0 Ratings)

Memory Type: DDR3 PC3-10600, DDR3 (ECC)
Maximum Memory: 64GB
Slots: 8
Each memory slot can hold DDR3 PC3-10600 with a maximum of 12288MB per slot.*
*Not to exceed manufacturer supported memory.

VSL Community

Decided to go for MacPro 12 core 2.66GHz with 500GB SSD and 2 x 1TB Hard Drives.

Do I need to get a mac mini to use MIRPro effectively or can I run everthing off one computer?

Regards 

Mirabile

@mirabile said:

VSL Community

Decided to go for MacPro 12 core 2.66GHz with 500GB SSD and 2 x 1TB Hard Drives.

Do I need to get a mac mini to use MIRPro effectively or can I run everthing off one computer?

Regards 

Mirabile

Hi Mirabile,

 VE/VI and MIR will run on the fastest computer Logic will run on the MAC mini

You can put your system on a 128 GB ssd too

If I was you I will buy 2 x 250 ssd and put them in Raid 0 to put your VSL lib, you can always add another ssd of 256 gb to have 750 gb 

Best

Cyril

In general, it is not very good to use RAID drives for samples. Putting the libraries on the drives separately will allow you to utilize the parallel access of your drives without the need for block synchronization.

@MS said:

In general, it is not very good to RAID drives used for samples. Putting the libraries on the drives separately will allow you to utilize the parallel access of your drives without the need for block synchronization.

pease give us figures ? give us a template so we can try it on our various configurations !

I have been using Raid 0 for my samples since year, all the bench I have done so far are showing that they load much faster on a raid 0, more you have drive in the raid 0 faster it is.

The only thing with raid 0 is if you have a problem with one drive everithyng is lost, so you must have a backup of your lib on a HD

If you RAID the drives, all heads need to synchronize for data load. Thus, your access time per sample will be the minimum of one disk's access time, while having the samples on different disks will allow all drives to seek to different samples independently. It gets a bit messy with library distribution over the drives however, since it is hard to evenly spread out a library across several drives.

give us a template that we can test !

How about you test yourself?

One interesting test would be to use IOMeter and set it to 100% random access with 16k block reads. This simulates sample streaming and loading rather well. Test it on a single drive and then the RAID respectively. Then multiply the IOPS result with the number of drives for the non-raided test, and you'll get a decent estimation of (theoretical maximum) performance.