My setup consists of a "workstation" computer running Sibelius/Reaper, and a separate "server" computer running VE Pro, with most of the VSL SE loaded and "preserved". I very rarely reboot the "server": when not in use I just hibernate it to save the planet (and my electricity bill). And if Sibelius or any other dodgy software on my main computer crashes and forces a reboot, I don't have to wait 20 minutes while all the VSL samples are loaded. So I can fire up Sibelius and within seconds, I'm up and running.
I'm currently evaluating Notion as a replacement or alternative to Sibelius. While Notion officially supports the above setup, it does so in a very kludge-like way: you have to create a dummy staff for each VE Pro instance, and then set up instrument changes at the start of every staff to tell Notion to use a particular VE instance and channel number. With a typical score using 20+ instruments, this makes initial score setup extremely tedious. But worse than that is the fact that it's all done by channel numbers rather than instrument names, so any changes within the preserved VE Pro instances will have to be reflected in any old scores in order for them to continue to work. I often go back to old scores to re-work or adapt them. This is definitely a step backwards compared with Sibelius 7!
The only way out seems to be not to use VE Pro, but to run Notion on the same machine as the VSL libraries, and just use individual instances of VI (or VI Pro). With a bit of juggling, I could do this. But that would set me back to the situation where the VSL libraries have to be reloaded every time I reboot, or load a new score in Notion. I remember that scenario from pre-VE days: I don't have time for that many coffee breaks!
I understand that installing an SSD would make the library load time much quicker. But is that the only answer?
