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  4. VEPRO performance issues (Mac and PC)

  • VEPRO performance issues (Mac and PC)

    M
    M

    OK, here goes. Since VEP has gone native to silicon (yay!) I've decided to stick with it (I was considering moving my template into Cubase entirely and splurging on a 128GB RAM Mac studio). However, that means I've decided to confront the poor performance issues that I've sort of tolerated for a while.

    I'm running a Mac Mini as 'main' computer (Ventura, 8GB RAM) with my single instance of VEP hosted on a PC (Intel Xeon, 128 GB RAM). I have to run my Cubase buffer at around 1024 simply in order to avoid pops and clicks. I'm aware this can be a multitude of things, and I'm wondering about the best process for bug-hunting.

    I've tried enabling/disabling ASIO guard for VEP (doesn't make much of a difference tbh).

    My SSD read speed of drives on the PC is around 557MB/s (according to Crystal Disk Mark)

    Network speeds seem to be ok (I'm running a switch).

    I have around 12 instances of VEP, which host Brass, Strings etc. Each instrument has its own output (so I do have a lot of output tracks, up to 100 in some instances).

    I'd love to be able to play some more stuff in live, rather than programming, and while everything runs just fine at 1024 buffer size, it does make that rather difficult.

    Does anyone have any useful suggestions? I've tried to list everything here that could be an issue. I'm relatively tech-savvy but I'm far from an expert, so it's entirely possible I've done something daft...

    Grateful for any support/help/tips

    Mike
  • Cyril BlancC
    Cyril BlancC

    @MikeC said:


    My SSD read speed of drives on the PC is around 557MB/s (according to Crystal Disk Mark)

    I dont know if it will help, my SSD is almost 10 times faster : 5395 MB/s
  • M
    M



    @MikeC said:



    My SSD read speed of drives on the PC is around 557MB/s (according to Crystal Disk Mark)

    I dont know if it will help, my SSD is almost 10 times faster : 5395 MB/s

    It does help, thank you! I reckon that's my issue, or at least it's something I can fix with the next upgrade anyway.
  • J
    J
    last edited
    last edited

    EDIT: Post moved by admin

    Signature updated with client and server specs.

    As for the latency, I have to set the audio device (RME Digiface AVB) buffer size to 2048 and the VE Pro buffers to 4 in order to get smooth playback without dropouts or choppiness.

    This latency is extremely frustrating to work with. It's impossible to record or overdub parts by playing and it seems to have a negative effect on Cubase automation.

    Since client and server are connected by a dedicated 1000baseT connection, the only way I can think to improve this is by adding 10G Ethernet adapters to both machines. But I don't want to spend $500 to find out it barely makes a difference.

    I know that performance of a VE Pro setup is complicated by many factors. I have tried to remove disk i/o as a variable on the server side by using a machine with 64G of RAM. I have tried to remove network issues by making a dedicated connection between client and server. I suspect Cubase is the main issue as its performance seems to have been degrading from release to realease over the last few years.

    Is there any way for me to evaluate the performance of this client/server setup taking Cubase out of the equation? Is there some kind of Mac test app that will load VE Pro instances, connect to a VE PRo server and play back N-channels of test signals or something? I really want to figure out how to make things workable and figure out what has to change. It's too difficult and frustrating to use this system to make music. It's exhausting, it affects my mental health and the quality of the music suffers.

    It may sound like I'm being dramatic, but dealing with this stuff for many hours a day is extremely frustrating.

    -- Jason

    client: Mac Mini M1 8G OS 14.1.1 VE Pro 7.2.3388 server: MacBook Pro 2019 2.4Ghz 8-core i9 64G OS 14.0 VE Pro 7.3.3502 client <-> server dual NICs, dedicated 1000baseT connection, no switch, manual IP client + server on LAN via primary NIC using DHCP
  • J
    J

    Hey MikeC,

    I just posted a similar issue with Cubase and VE Pro performance. I have to go all the way to 2048 buffer size in order to get rid of clicks, pops and dropouts and make the setup barely usable. Unplayable, for sure.

    Like you, I want to know how to troubleshoot this and figure out where the performance bottlenecks are. I have no idea whether I'm just pushing the system(s) too hard or whether there's a correctable issue. It would be really helpful to have some sort of DAW-independent way to measure VEPro performance. That would give you a starting point for performance expectations before bringing Cubase (or any DAW) into the equation.

    I'm sorry I don't have guidance for you, but I'm doubling down on your question and asking VSL for help here.

    -- Jason

    client: Mac Mini M1 8G OS 14.1.1 VE Pro 7.2.3388 server: MacBook Pro 2019 2.4Ghz 8-core i9 64G OS 14.0 VE Pro 7.3.3502 client <-> server dual NICs, dedicated 1000baseT connection, no switch, manual IP client + server on LAN via primary NIC using DHCP