I've seen a lot fo conflicting opinions regarding using VEPro7 as a host for all VSL samples/players vs. direclty loading in Dorico.
What are the trade offs?
Is there one way that is clearly better? I am only using VSL products as of now...
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Hi,
The main advantage of direct load of samples is that instrument auto-loading works.
In most other ways, I would say VE Pro 7 has clear advantages - you can pre-balance all of your instruments, preconfigure certain inserts/sends on all channels, and by using a single VE Pro 7 instance for all instruments you can use the VE Pro mixer instead of the Dorico mixer, and the VE Pro mixer is much more powerful than the Dorico mixer. By using this technique, you also retain the option of bringing the project into a DAW as MIDI and, if you plug in the same VE Pro project, it should sound identical.
The main disadvantage of using VE Pro to host the VSL players in Dorico is that it breaks the ability to auto-load instruments, so if you have something loaded in VE Pro and it isn't used in your score, you have to create the player and manually assign the expression/percussion maps to it.
If you're mostly working with very large ensembles like orchestra, I think the advantage is clear for using VE Pro.
If you're mostly working with smaller ensembles, like quartets, quintets, sextets, or smaller, it's nicer to have the auto-loading that you get with the direct load functionality.
Apart from the mentioned time saving preload aspects there is definitely also a RAM usage advantage with VE Pro. Even using it on the same Mac or PC as you are running Dorico on. Even with 64 GB on M1Max MBP I get clicks or even complete stops in payback in full orchestral pieces in the “busiest” sections (all instruments WW, Brass, Percussion, Strings playing, tempo q=125 or higher, a lot triplets in succession).
A nice benchmark is the Main Title of Star Wars (the first movie now episode IV). No way to play this through using only VSL Synchron instruments without using VE Pro to host them.