!0 Gb Ethernet

[Loco]

Would VE Pro 5 benefit from 10 GB Ethernet?

[Cyril Blanc]

I would guess yes if you have a configuration "master slave"

[Mac jones]

More is always better right? :) Anyways, I'm using Thunderbolt IP now between two Macs which is 10GB and I can screen share a the same time, which is nice. I would be nervous about that with a slow connection, but with 10GB/s you have a lot of headroom, so to speak, BTW, the new Macs have Thunderbolt 2 which is 20GB/s, which is REALLY, REALLY, fast. Maybe all this will make up for the dog slow Apple stuff (according to our esteemed VSL staff ; )

[Loco]

Thank you Cyril.

I was wandering if the 1Gb Ethernet limitation was built in VE Pro 5, or it is just a limitation of the ethernet protocol and  VE PRo 5 may operate on a 10 Gb Ethernet network at full speed.    

I have been running Logic 9 in a Master Mac Pro and 6 VE Pro in a Slave PC but I having some Logic System Overloads.    

I am considering a faster Mac (new Mac PRo), or going back to Audio cards with ADAT connections to bring audio back to the Mac.    

I would prefer to keep all my tracks in VE PRo, and I am starting to consider the possibility of 10 Gb Ethernet, since there are in the market some 10 Gb Ethernet cards and switches.

However, I am not sure if the Logic Sytem Overload is due to the ethernet connection or to the processing capacity of the Mac.

Any ideas ?

Thank you

Ricardo,

Mac Pro 12 cores 2.4 Ghz with 48 Gb of RAM,  OSX 10.8,  CAT 6 Ethenet cable, PC 6 cores Win 7.   Logic 9.7 and VE Pro 5.2 

[Cyril Blanc]

Hello Ricardo,

How many instruments are playing on the slave ?

Are you using MIR PRO ?

What HD do you have ? SSD ?

The idea with VSL and MIR PRO is to use the slower Mac as a Master that just to send Midi to the slave MAC and to have a very powerfull slave with ssd

In this case the audio traffic is on 2 or 6 or 8 track (stereo, Dolby 5.1, Dolby 7.1) so it is ok to run on 1 GB Eternet

Did somebony have experiment if Logic X still uses one core to send Midi to VE pro server ?

[Loco]

 Hi Cyril:

I am running 6 VE Pro with 16 midi tracks each on the slave as well as the master.    I am sending back a total of 12 audio tracks (6 stereo) from the slave to the master.    I run Vienna, Kontakt and Play 3 on the slave inside VE Pro with Orchestral smaples.   I am not using MIR. 

On the slave and the master I have 3 SSDs in each one with different samples to split the load.

It looks to me, after different combination of samples and tracks, that the Logic System Overload happen when the audio comes back from the slave to Logic.   I probably have to reduce the number of VE Pros on the master to allow more CPU power to process the audio tracks coming back from the slave. 

Thank you for your interest.

Ricardo

[Loco]

Hi  Mac jones:

I have been looking about Thunderbolt IP implementation in OS Mavericks (Ethernet over the Thunderbolt connection) and it looks very interesting.  It may be the perfect solution and complement for Ve Pro.   However, I read that it is a new implementation that works very good for transfering files but not ready for audio.   They experimented clicks, pops, and CPU jumps with audio. 

Can you comment on your experience ?   How many audio tracks are you sending and what buffer size are you using ?

Thank you,

Ricardo

[Mac jones]

Thanks for the heads up I haven't really tested it with audio yet. I was actually afraid of something like that. You would 'think' they would have considered the streaming aspect of it, and not just brute file transfer, considering it's Apple, who makes Logic, etc. But then again, as you say it's new and bugs are expected. I don't have the time now to test it to where I can give any definitive results. As a matter of fact, I just hooked it up on a whim, not really expecting it to work, as I hadn't really read anything about it, just heard it mentioned. The connection aspect is really great, very easy, and clean. Note: I will now resort to Mr Google to try to dredge up info myself. Lets hope this gets straightened out.

[MWE]

Some require a VSL backbone of course but a 1 Gb/s connection provides quite some headroom which (depending of hardware) is difficult to saturate.

At the same time I did experience remote desktop to interfere with vepro streaming audio at this speed. (and osx as slave did perform a bit worse than a windows). Perhaps dropouts are caused by use of udp protocol? It would be good to see VSL certify certain router brands/configurations that are able to prioritize traffic well. I would also like to see a switch in the vepro interface to minimize rdp traffic. Or even better avoid rdp altogether and control a slave instance from the client (at least for VI). Besides the network traffic rdp is also consuming cpu on both ends.

For the logic pro (9) single core overload. You can throw all the hardware at it you like, there are a few workarounds to manually balance work over cores but in the end (even with offloading to vepro) I switched DAW to get the latencies I need to record during playback of what I'd call modest orchestration. I would love to hear Apple did rewrite its engine in logic x though? 

[Cyril Blanc]

@Another User said:

On the slave and the master I have 3 x SSDs in each one with different samples to split the load.

From what I know of VSL, it is loading sequantially (VSL please confrim) so you are not splitting the load !

Do you have SATA II or SATA III SSD ?

If you have SATA III SSD you need to add a SATA III PCIe card i each to double the I/O. Also you can put your SSD in a Raid 0 (be sure to have a backup on a HD)

After this you will be able to reduce the pre-load buffer of all the players using less memory or loading more samples in memory 

With VSL and sample players you need to optimize the I/O 1st !

When you have the core audio overload in Logic does it hapends when you hit "Play" ?

Can you monitor in Logic the load on the CPU ?

Can you also monitor the load of the CPU in "activity monitor"