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  4. Problems with crack/clicks/distortion in VEP5 on MAC but not on PC

  • Problems with crack/clicks/distortion in VEP5 on MAC but not on PC

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    Hi all... I'm setting up my new DAW with 1 master Mac Pro (12-core, 16GB RAM, 4 HDD) and 2 slave PCs (8-core, 16 GB RAM, SSD). All the samples I've loaded in my two PCs work perfectly through VEP5 on my Mac Pro and plays out smoothly. There is no distortion at all even though I've loaded lots of instruments on the slaves. I have a problem with my master Mac Pro though. I've loaded the instruments on the master, which I want to tweak while composing, so that's why they are on my master. Here is a screen shot of my setup: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2425732/VEP5_setup.png I have a 32-bit version of VEP with such things as NI Electric Piano, B4 organ and HALion. I have a 64-bit version of VEP with such things as EWQL Storm Drum + Silk + RA, Spectrasonics Omnisphere + Trilian + Stylus RMX, Kontakt with only 1 piano loaded, and NI synths: 3 X FM8 + 2X Massive + 3 X Absynth. After loading the Silk + RA instruments I got lots of distortion while playing on the keyboard... on ALL instruments (also those from my slaves???). Then I found out, that if I chose lesser threads per instance in the VEP properties on my master this got better (still some clicks though). If I DISCONNECT one of the instances from VEP on my master my problem goes away.... I don't get it! It's not like I've overloaded the system. As far as I know I shouldn't have a CPU problem (the meters in Cubase and Activity Monitor are not even showing close to problematic) just by loading all my instruments... I'm only loading the instruments in RAM and I have half of my RAM memory left as free. The other thing is, that I've loaded twice as much in my PCs with greater number if instances in VEP and the properties set to 2 threads per instance even though it's only 8-core with no problems at all.... So what am I missing. Please someone enlighten me!! Thanks in advance!!
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    well, if you're running a sequencer on the same machine as VEP, you should not expect the same performance as where you don't. 

    and you should not believe that you need to max out your CPU to get some audio breakups. Have you raised your latency? You don't necessarily have the cycles to perform that you expect you have.

    first thing I would do is consolidate what's on that master into one instance of VEP. NB: I don't use my master for anything but sequencing today. 

    But, now that I see 'Cubase'... Cubase is notoriously inefficient on Mac, which is one reason I wouldn't use VEP on the same computer as. 
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    never mind, see subsequent post.
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    If I were you I would use one of the windows boxes as a master. I'm serious. Cubase will run far far better and you should use the 12 cores as a slave really.
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    Ok, cool. Thanks for your answer. I run Cubase since it work much better for my purpose than Logic. And every time I've had PCs as my masters.... I always had crashes every day. Once you go mac you never go back. So Cubase and Mac will have do the job :-( It sounds good to have all instruments on my slaves. The problem is just, that my slaves are in another room and the instruments I have to tweak in the plugin window do need to be located on my master.... I've played around with my buffer settings and the threads-per-instance and this seems to have an effect. But no real logical effect. Sometimes it helps and other times it doesn't give sence. I'm afraid it has something to do with EWQL Play. I've read numerous things about PLAY, Kontakt & VEP not having a good time together. I had another composer in the studio today and he just told me, that he stopped using PLAY since it always created technical problems with all his other plugins/software. I think I'm going the same way. Another thing I will try is to load PLAY inside Cubase and have everything else on my master in VEP...
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    Yeah, I have to use Cubase for a number of reasons. I considered a windows box for my master but I just couldn't pull that trigger.

    the latency is simply going to be a lot higher under OSX. I do alright but I just don't try to host VEP on the same machine as Cubase.

    I use very little Play. I have had to isolate it and render the Play I did use, which is very limited, not-large things and get rid of it in the instances. It wouldn't play with Kontakt owing to memory servers... that however was the older 32-bit only version... the last time I used it, it didn't hurt me. (tho It loads slower here than Kontakt or VSL by far.) I won't invest in EWQL any further for a lot of reasons.

    on your master, which has three times the cores as mine you should have better luck than I do, but the real bugger in your system is Cubase [and VE Pro] on the same machine I believe.