How much do you think you could get for your laptop?

I think I would try to sell my laptop and use that money, with the money I've saved, towards a newer machine.  Unless this older machine has been completely gutted and refurbished with new drives and everything I would try to stay as new as possible

The life expectancy for a sata drive is what, like 5 years?  You may have issues with the older drives if you buy this machine.  Especially if you're streaming samples from them.

But then again, let's wait and see what the forum's resident Mac man, AKA Cyril, has to say about your situation.  It may take him a while to respond as he hales from the depths of his "Mac Macnifico" retreat nestled somewhere in the French countryside, which I hear is quite lovely this time of year[H]

I don't know how serious an issue this is, but according to the MIR system requirements, the program requires at least Intel Nehalem processors, and the 2008 Mac Pro is the last version without them. And since that's the computer I had until a few months ago, it's the reason I didn't get MIR until just this month.

If it turned out the MIR ran well on the 2008 Mac Pro, I suppose I'd be a bit pissed off at waiting all this time, but I AM deliriously happy with the new computer ...

I am not a Mac person, so I cannot answer specifics...

But, FWIW, as far as getting 100 stereo tracks on one machine, Dietz had reported great success with a system using a 3930k processor (I don't recall if he had 32 or 64 gigs of Ram).

If nothing else, that can serve as something of a generic basic benchmark.  Obviously, each person's workflow is different, so the track counts one person is able to achieve may be very different from what another person may achieve.  Also, this is on PC, not Mac, so something may factor in there as well.  As has already been mentioned, Cyril really is the resident Mac person.

Thanks for the replies!

At this point, I don't plan to part with my laptop as I still need a portable machine for other purposes. :)

So, I was already sceptical about the 2008 Mac Pro and I don't think I will go that much back in the Mac Pro line-up. Plus, the memory is more expensive than I thought. I am still considering the 2009 one though; the hardware can be upgraded up to the latest version of the 1st generation Mac Pro, so I'm guessing it _should_ be enough for my purposes (with a PCI-e SSD of course). So, any comments from 2009-2012 Mac Pro owners are welcome! :)

@noldar12 said:

But, FWIW, as far as getting 100 stereo tracks on one machine, Dietz had reported great success with a system using a 3930k processor (I don't recall if he had 32 or 64 gigs of Ram).

I know that Geekbench scores do not exactly represent the power necessary for our kind of work but,

3930k has a score of 20684 (64-bit multicore)

a base 8-core 2009 Mac Pro has a score of 13869

a fully upgraded 12-core Mac Pro has a score of 27532

(although I've heard that one can put an even higher cpu into the 2009 Mac Pro)

So, if these 100 tracks are MIR tracks, I might maybe expect to reach around 70 mirx tracks with high buffer settings even with the base 8-core 2009?

Unfortunately, I can't answer your question, as I have no Mac experience with VSL and would therefore not even want to hazzard a guess.  Sorry.

@noldar12 said:

Unfortunately, I can't answer your question, as I have no Mac experience with VSL and would therefore not even want to hazzard a guess.  Sorry.

Hey, thanks anyway! 😊

Dear collective wisdom, I'm currently looking at a 2010 machine with 1 x 6-core 3,33 Ghz cpu, 32 gb RAM and 512 6g ssd disk. Would you think this machine could suffice? If I get this, there wouldn't be any way to upgrade it since there is only one cpu slot and that cpu seems to be the highest I can put, but would I be able to get a good performance and do what I wrote above? Some people say anyway that for music, single core performance might also be important and 3,33 ghz clock rate is quite high I guess. Thanks for responses! 

How can I help you ?

Thanks Noldar12 for your words.

I'm using the early 2009 MacPro 4.1 you see in my sig.

It depends on what you mean by 'tracks' when you cite 100 tracks. Do you have a gigantic preset loaded in a track and heavy APP sequencer usage?
Does a track more represent one instrument well-articulated. In the latter scenario you're not being overly ambitious, though you can be.

I'm approaching about what this thing will bear in the current project with around 100 channels in VE Pro {bussed down to 14 stereo outs}, but I have a lot of FX and a whole lot of automation going on.
It's ~50 MIDI tracks I think. Some of what I'm doing is very resources-hoggy. I don't take MIRx as very hard on the machine from my demoing of it.
If you were talking about 70 MIR Pro, no, this machine is not going to support that unless it's all audio and there is just one or two stereo outputs in addition.

I've had it since early 2009 and it's still kicking. One of four internal SATA drives is 'failing' according to Disk Utility.

I'm not typically doing any bouncing and no freezing. There are some exotic things I make in Absynth that are long evolvers and with long 'tails' etc I always commit to audio early, but in terms of normal instruments I'm not faced with any of that. The Dimension things seem like your heavier loads, I don't know but it doesn't sound like I'd have that bad a time as all that with this machine.

@Another User said:

I'm using the early 2009 MacPro 4.1 you see in my sig.

It depends on what you mean by 'tracks' when you cite 100 tracks. Do you have a gigantic preset loaded in a track and heavy APP sequencer usage?
Does a track more represent one instrument well-articulated. In the latter scenario you're not being overly ambitious, though you can be.

I'm approaching about what this thing will bear in the current project with around 100 channels in VE Pro {bussed down to 14 stereo outs}, but I have a lot of FX and a whole lot of automation going on.
It's ~50 MIDI tracks I think. Some of what I'm doing is very resources-hoggy. I don't take MIRx as very hard on the machine from my demoing of it.
If you were talking about 70 MIR Pro, no, this machine is not going to support that unless it's all audio and there is just one or two stereo outputs in addition.

Thanks for this real life example. It seems very close to what I plan to do, which I'm writing below:

[Apologies for the novella-length post]

Here is a summary of where I'm at right now:

I use Logic Pro X.

I have a standard template of 70 tracks. In these 70 tracks, some of the VI instances have two slots filled (like two dimension violins). Since I use Dimension Strings and Brass as my main libraries, most of the samples are actually mono. But all of these 70 tracks have MirX on them. I don't have MIR pro. I don't usually use things like the APP sequencer in VI, and I don't really use anything fancy in VI except that I have humanization in all instances. I do some automation, usually breath and expression. And I automate the tracks in Logic from time to time. I also put one algo reverb, and a couple of eqs and compressors. I use effects on stereo busses that I route the instruments through, so, I probably won't have more than 24 such tracks.

Like I wrote above, I have a 2010 Macbook Pro with dual-core i5 2.4 Ghz, 8 GB ram, and a 7200 rpm drive. I run into bottlenecks into all these three areas (CPU, RAM, and HDD) so I'll try to write as detailed as possible about what I need.

The first problem I encounter is that, I can't really use Dimension Strings. I use them like this: I double each section with the transposition trick, so I have 16 First Violins, ....., 8 Double Basses. I really like the sound, but sometimes I can't even solo and play just the first violins. Even with high buffer rates. I think the most urgent solution to this would be to switch to using SSDs, at least for the Dimension Strings. But my computer has only sata II, and no thunderbolt, so I didn't do that kind of an investment yet. Even if I do, I will probably see an increase in the performance, but that probably won't be great since I will: (a) have the sata II speed as bottleneck, and (b) I will still have 1 (or at most, 2, if I replace my superdrive) disk to do all the work; another possible bottleneck.

So far, I have been working in a way where I freeze the dimension strings tracks. When I do that, I can actually work hassle-free with the rest of the orchestra. But of course, DS takes half of the template in this scenario. In any case, I think the most vital upgrade would be to a machine that can have possibly multiple disk drives, and sata III speeds. In a way, I guess I can actually do that with any mac machine with thunderbolt since that seems to be fast enough to use multiple drives though it, but a Mac Pro seems to be also a natural choice for such a task.

So, memory. 8 GB fills very fast of course. Recently, I tried this: when I load up my template, but don't load any samples, the 70 empty VI instances add up to 3 GBs (with the preallocated voices in the smallest setting, so 49 mb per instance). I tried loading samples until I come to the limit of the machine (when the OS starts compressing the memory). I could load 2,5 GBs, which corresponded to all stacc and legVib samples for all the instruments. I work around this limitation by using the optimize function in VI but sometimes that doesn't cut it, especially if I use a lot of articulations with the dimension strings, which I would like to. But sometimes, even with everything else loaded off, the samples I require for just the violins might end up forcing the OS to start compressing. And that compression and de-compression eats up the CPU cycles of course, resulting in a sluggish performance. Of course, if I start using SSDs, I can use a smaller buffer size and load more samples, but I'll still be limited to 2,5 GBs which doesn't seem to be enough in anycase (note that this is without Logic running), so I think I need a machine that can have a higher amount of memory, which can only be relatively recent MacBook Pros, Minis, iMacs, or Pros. Nonetheless, my gut feeling tells me that I should aim for a machine that can have the potential to go above 16 GBs of memory, since I feel like I'll hit that ceiling quite fast, and RAM is not so expensive anyway. Besides the Mac Pros, only the recent 27" iMac can go above 16, and that can only go to 32, and it starts from 1900 euros. It's not easy to find a second hand one anyway, since it's new itself. 

Of course, my CPU struggles too. But sometimes, it's not the CPU itself that has a problem but it's a combination of above: trying to constantly stream from a 7200 drive (thus waiting for the drive to react), and constantly compressing and de-compressing the memory. Other than that, here is a benchmark: I loaded the demo project for MirX. It had 41 tracks, and I could play it back with a buffer of 1024 samples in Logic, and 4096 in MirX. Obviously, the latency is quite high, but it did work smoothly. The project was not very dense, and it only had SE samples, so the memory print was low, and there was not a lot of disk streming going on simultaneosly, so it allowed me to see what my cpu does when the machine is not suffocated by other factors. My machine has a geekbench score of 4093. Any machine that satisfies the requirements above has more score than mine.

So here is the bottom line after the long explanation: I think that an old Mac Pro is would satisfy these and it would be the cheapest way to address all my problems. But am I missing something here? If I go with an 8-core 2009 machine, it still has a lot of possibilities to upgrade later on, up to, I've heard, 12-core 3-something GHz and 128 Gb Ram. That looks like a more future proof solution than any mini or iMac I can buy now, not to mention the price is much lower. But on the other hand, essentially I'd be buying a 5 year old machine. And it's not going to have thunderbolt, which, honestly, I don't know what to do with right now.

So, the question is, should I go ahead and get an 8-core (or even 4-core, maybe) 2009 machine and upgrade as I can afford and as I need, or should I get a mini/imac with 16 gigs of ram and call it a day, and get a contemporary mac pro whenever I can afford? Are the 2009-2012 mac pros adequate for our kind of work, or if I go that route would such a machine be obsolete within a year or two?

Thanks for reading this long post, and thanks for all the help! 😊

Oguz.

If you can get a Macpro 12 core 2010 with a raid of SSD like mine you can do a lot

My template has 100 instruments all instrument are loaded with levell II preset.  I manly use VSL VE and I have put all the other player (K5, Omnisphère, PLAY QLSC, EXS...) in Logic, sending the audio to MIR PRO

I do not use Dimension xx 

A couple of points. I think your use of VE Pro is lighter than mine, perhaps significantly.

I'm using 7200RPM spinners. To what extent that is a bottleneck vis vis SSD, I can't know. In terms of being five years old, I think the drives are your first concern.

I don't think 12 cores is very meaningful per VE Pro per se. I think 6 is good.

@civilization 3 said:

A couple of points. I think your use of VE Pro is lighter than mine, perhaps significantly.

I'm using 7200RPM spinners. To what extent that is a bottleneck vis vis SSD, I can't know. In terms of being five years old, I think the drives are your first concern.

I don't think 12 cores is very meaningful per VE Pro per se. I think 6 is good.

I see. May I ask why would you recommend 6 cores? Is it because of the possible higher clock rates, or is logic and/or VE pro not at utilizing cores? I still find it hard to understand whether I should pay attention to single or multi-core performance while I'm deciding on a computer.

By the way, I don't have VE pro actually. I use VE within Logic. So I guess it's Logic that decides the core utilization, or am I wrong?

@Oguz Sehiralti said:

By the way, I don't have VE pro actually. I use VE within Logic. So I guess it's Logic that decides the core utilization, or am I wrong?

I understand now, VI's in Logic is the worse choice ; it is the solution that uses the max RAM and the MAX CPU

you must use VE PRO

Today the best solution, CPU wise, is to use  IAC and VE PRO.

Logic send Midi via IAC to VE PRO and VE Pro send audio back to Logic. (you lose "bounce in background", you must bounce in real time)

VE is using all the cores, so the 12 cores are used. Just monitor the CPU load !

@civilization 3 said:

A couple of points. I think your use of VE Pro is lighter than mine, perhaps significantly.

I'm using 7200RPM spinners. To what extent that is a bottleneck vis vis SSD, I can't know. In terms of being five years old, I think the drives are your first concern.

I don't think 12 cores is very meaningful per VE Pro per se. I think 6 is good.

I see. May I ask why would you recommend 6 cores? Is it because of the possible higher clock rates, or is logic and/or VE pro not at utilizing cores? I still find it hard to understand whether I should pay attention to single or multi-core performance while I'm deciding on a computer.

By the way, I don't have VE pro actually. I use VE within Logic. So I guess it's Logic that decides the core utilization, or am I wrong?

I'm unclear on 'VE within Logic'. AFAIK Vienna Ensemble non-pro is a server that connects to the DAW host and provides hosting in a separate process, same as VE Pro. In which case I don't think there's anything really different. 

But unless there is something I'm missing, Logic is not the instrument host really so you would benefit from multicore. I just don't think 12 core is called for; I would rather have two machines each with 6 as that forces distribution that I don't believe VE delivers on a single machine.

As per 'using the cores', I really don't know, I would love if someone that knows, VSL engineer, what actually happens.
I'm working on assumption; I see over 300% per one of the VE Pro servers, I take it to mean a fourth core is being tapped.
So I have the two, 32 and 64 bit servers up and I'm assuming six cores are really being tapped from the percentages of CPU.

So if someone says to me 'it's using all 12 cores', how do you know? What does IAC sending MIDI do to make it so? What does porting audio externally do to change cores distribution? For instance, I frequently render in real time, it does not change one thing. I do not see it.

But I just don't know, I read somewhere that's how you know. I could be clueless.

quote user="civilization 3"

It's easy to monitor the load on all the cores

> What does IAC sending MIDI do to make it so?

IAC is inside MAC OS, so it is quite normal it used less CPU than an external appication

> What does porting audio externally do to change cores distribution?

Do you mean sending audio to VE ?

@civilization 3 said:

I'm unclear on 'VE within Logic'. AFAIK Vienna Ensemble non-pro is a server that connects to the DAW host and provides hosting in a separate process, same as VE Pro. In which case I don't think there's anything really different. 

But unless there is something I'm missing, Logic is not the instrument host really so you would benefit from multicore. I just don't think 12 core is called for; I would rather have two machines each with 6 as that forces distribution that I don't believe VE delivers on a single machine.

Sorry! I actually meant VI within Logic, as in I load VI pro instances directly to my midi tracks. An exception is Dimension strings where I load a VE per section. 

I have this observation:

When I started with VSL, I only had the SE vol.1 and plus. I was loading everything to VE, and I had something like 3 VE instances with around 48 tracks in total. Then when I started using Dimension Strings and Brass, the track count multiplied and I had to have quite a lot of instances of VE.

Then, when I was trying out MIRx, I downloaded the demo song for it. I've realised that every instrument (41 in total) was directly loaded to a midi track as a VI pro instrument, bypassing the VE completely. The performance was quite good, so I did the same for my template. I still don't exactly know what would I be missing out by not using VE, other than the fact that in VE, all the instruments are at the same place, easy to find. But I don't mind that in Logic.

Then, I did the following test: I put 16 Dimension Violins to a VE instance. When I record all of them simultaneously, Logic was using just one core. When I played them back, Logic was using just one core (even when I select a stale audio track, for example). The performance was obviously not so good. Then, I loaded the same instruments directly as VI pro instances within logic, so one VI pro per midi track. When recording, Logic again processed them in one core, but when I played back, Logic used all the cores (or I should say threads actually) equally, which resulted in a better performance.

I searched through the forums to find out about any performance increase in using VE pro in a single computer, but I couldn't find any. I would be glad if some one can point me to a thread where I can read about it, or write their own experiences about it because from what I could gather, if I compare using individual VI pro instances to using VE pro to host everything, the difference only seems to be the fact that VE pro is more organized, and one does not need to reload samples when one changes projects etc. with VE pro. 

But I think, when one uses VE in a track in Logic, and uses 16 channels (=instruments) within that, Logic seems to treat that whole VE instance as a single instruments and processes them in a single core. But I only monitored this in Logic; it is possible that the VE server is redistributing that load in the background. 

Did anyone else try using VI pro directly as an instrument in Logic? Or what else may I be missing?