Best Performance - MIR Pro with Cubase 7

[Silentforcestudios]

Hi,
some months ago I changed my complete settings and also DAW (but wasn't able till now to really focus on it). What I am asking myself now is what is the most efficient way to get my system work.
My orchestral Template is primarily based on VSL Instruments (hosted in the VI Pro Player). Just the Strings come from the Play Engine (bad engine, but thats another topic) and one Kontakt Instrument (Glockenspiel) and I control all tracks with VSTExpression Maps I am currently writing myself (as the pre-made ones do not fulfill my personal needs).

As you might guess from the heading, I use the MIR Pro (primarily the Teldex Studio). Now I am wondering how to get my Instruments (all of them) into the MIR and back into Cubase in the most efficient way.

I see 2 ways (if you would know more and better ones, please tell me):
1) Open an VST Instrument (F11) in Cubase, select the VST3 Vienna Ensemble Pro 5 and then hosting all Instruments in one Vienna Ensemble Pro 5 Instance. Then setting up for each Instrument a MIDI Track, connect it to the respective Track in VE Pro 5. After that, setting up everything in VE Pro 5 according to my needs (EQ etc.), make stems for each group and route them back (as audio-tracks) into Cubase 5.
So basicly: Let VE Pro 5 hosting the Instruments and Cubase just sending the MIDI and receiving back the Audio.
2) Setting up all Instruments and the whole mix in Cubase itself (so making e.g. an Instrument Track for each VI Pro Instance) and then putting in the MIR Pro as an insert effect to all the tracks I want to be connected to MIR Pro.
So basically letting MIR Pro work as an audio Effect Plug-In and let the rest inside of Cubase.

My question to you: Does anyone have any experience in how the performance of MIR and VI Pro changes when it is hosted by Cubase 7 (or another DAW might be also interesting) or by VE Pro and what does perform more efficient in terms of CPU (spikes), RAM Management etc.? Or is it related totally one the computer system or maybe it doesn't make any difference at all?
Sadly I cannot perform this test yet myself. As I said, I moved from a whole different system and DAW (or better said I used a notation programm) and I am still in preparation of everything. So I would kindly ask if someone has already experience with that ;).

I appreciate every answers from you and thank you in advance for reading this looooooooong text ;)

Kind Regards,
Christian

[Dietz]

Hi Christian,

It's more or less a question of your preferred workflow. As long as you are using mostly VI Pro, you're most certainly better off with scenario 1 (i.e. using MIR Pro within VE Pro). That way you can make use of all advanced features which aren't available with VI Pro / MIR Pro alone, like auto-guessing Instrument Profiles, global RAM optimizing etc.

If you plan to use many "raw" audio signals inside MIR Pro, or like to do lots of audio processing by means of Cubase's built-in tools (be it the plug-ins, or advanced automation), then I would advice you to stay inside Cubase alone, using MIR Pro in its plug-in version.

HTH,

[Silentforcestudios]

Hi,
thank you for your reply Dietz :)

So I can just decide upon my workflow preference and I don't have to worry to much about the performance? Because my worry was that, for instance, it could be said: When loading so many plug-Ins Cubase does not handle the RAM or the Playback so well so you would have an performance increase from about 20% (in RAM or CPU) if you use that. Or: Transfering the data back and fourth cost to much performance, it's better to stay in the DAW.
But when this is just a minor issue in the overal performance, then I can really focus on what I would prefere myself. I am not quite sure yet actually. Both ways have their advantages.

btw.: Talking about the Auto-Guessing Feature in MIR Pro. I have two small bug in there (surely you know already but as you working on a new patch as far as I know, it's maybe good to say:
- Oboe vienna does not work with auto-guessing
- English Horn french is connected wrong. When I have English Horn french in the slot it loads the profile of English Horn vienna.
It should be mentioned here that both are from the Single Instruments - Standard Collections.

Kind Regards,
Christian

[Dietz]

Maybe I didn't make it clear enough: You will encounter performance issues earlier when you're planning to send lots of audio streams to VE Pro / MIR Pro. OTOH, VE Pro makes more sense when you work with the same setup for different pieces (as you don't have to reload everything each time you switch between projects), and the RAM-handling of VE Pro might be a bit more balanced.

As far as MIR Pro is concerned, it shouldn't make much difference performance-wise whether you're deciding to go the VE Pro-route, or use it as VST plug-in inside Cubase.

@Silentforcestudios said:

[...]

btw.: Talking about the Auto-Guessing Feature in MIR Pro. I have two small bug in there (surely you know already but as you working on a new patch as far as I know, it's maybe good to say:
- Oboe vienna does not work with auto-guessing
- English Horn french is connected wrong. When I have English Horn french in the slot it loads the profile of English Horn vienna.
It should be mentioned here that both are from the Single Instruments - Standard Collections.

[...]

 

Thanks for reporting! As far as I know, this implementation error went unnoticed up to now, but as a matter of fact it is already corrected with the upcoming next release of MIR Pro. 😊 ... We ran into it ourselves when working on MIRx. In any case: I will make sure that it's _really_ working as expected now.

Kind regards,

[Silentforcestudios]

@Dietz said:

Maybe I didn't make it clear enough: You will encounter performance issues earlier when you're planning to send lots of audio streams to VE Pro / MIR Pro. OTOH, VE Pro makes more sense when you work with the same setup for different pieces (as you don't have to reload everything each time you switch between projects), and the RAM-handling of VE Pro might be a bit more balanced.

As far as MIR Pro is concerned, it shouldn't make much difference performance-wise whether you're deciding to go the VE Pro-route, or use it as VST plug-in inside Cubase.

Thank you for your reply again 😊. Really appreciate it.
Just one litlte thing: Do you mean with "Audio Streams to VE Pro / MIR Pro" real audio streams or also MIDI Streams? Reason is that I usually don't use audio streams at all in my Presets or in my work (or when I use them, they usually don't go into MIR Pro).

My typical setup more or less looks like this:
- 48 Instrument Tracks (so VI Pro, Kontakt 5 and Play 3 (currently, soon Play 4 I guess)
- These are all send to the MIR. Some of them use the feature of the different outputs (so in total it's 61 Tracks which are go into the MIR Pro finally).
- After the MIR there is usually a send to MIRacle to be able to add additional reverb where needed and the output is send to groups (Roomtone, MIRacle, Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, Extra (Piano, Harp) and Strings) which are then going back into Cubase as Audio Tracks (so that I can change the Balancing of the tracks later on and be able to use the stems later on when mixing with the Soundeffects of the Movies etc.).

Another thing to add here is: The Instrument tracks can be in Cubase real instrument tracks or (when sending to VE Pro) they are of course MIDI Tracks. But in both cases they are pre-processed with the VST Expression Maps (surely they need some CPU as well). Besides that just the typical automation is used usually (Velocity X-Fade and other CC Changes or in case of Kontakt and Play Channel changes).
About EQ or so: At the moment I use audio effects usually on the groups. For the instruments I use sometimes the Character Preset for double instruments like the Clarinet, but besides that I like the pure sound. Maybe I will experiment with the new sets which come with the update, but I cannot say that now.

Ok, that would be it from my side. Long text for a very short question, but I think it is good to explain now exactely the way I set it up, because so you can see better what might work better / more efficient or if it will be more or less equal. Otherwise we might talk for days about one or the other theory although half of it might be completely irrelevant 😉

Kind Regards,
Christian

[alexfree]

How is it working for you performance wise? I have a MacPro with 48 Gb Ram and dual 6 core processors but no SSD disks yet! Do you have any sampler inside Cubase or do you route everything through VE Pro? //Alex

[Silentforcestudios]

@alexfree said:

How is it working for you performance wise? I have a MacPro with 48 Gb Ram and dual 6 core processors but no SSD disks yet! Do you have any sampler inside Cubase or do you route everything through VE Pro? //Alex

I cannot complain about the performance. Sometimes I have to increase the Latency a bit (especially on bigger projects) but it's working quite well actually.

I route everything through VE Pro and in just one instance of VE Pro (as everything is 64-Bit, that's no problem). This way I have everything in one window. I would also say that it needs a little less RAM and a little less CPU performance compared to loading everything in Cubase, but my system does not show it too me so detailed (so it can also be just my personal feeling) .

About the HDD's: I actually have now 2 SSD's, but just one has some VSL instruments. That's usually not a problem to load from HDD's, just try to split the bandwidth a bit so that you don't load your whole orchestra from just one HDD. Depending on the size, this might be a problem. I have splitted my orchestra on 2 different HDD's and one SSD. 
And I just have one Intel i7 2700K with 24GB of RAM, so your system should perform even better ;)