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  4. Mac Mini Slaves & Other Notes

  • Mac Mini Slaves & Other Notes

    T
    T
    Just thought I would update everyone on my current experiments with mac mini's.

    Before that though, I would like to report that on my main DAW having the entire Cube installed gives me a start up time of 6mins48 - not good. However subsequent starts are of course much quicker.

    Anyway, the MacMini slave idea seems to be working well. I am using MidiOverLan as the transport. Each MacMini is running Bootcamp Windows XP (because that's my sphere of knowledege) and VSTACK, I am using a Core Duo Mini with 2GB Ram and an external 250GB Lacie Mini HD. I also have an Edirol UA1EX attached which pumps audio back to the main DAW's RME Fireface.

    I can happily load 12 VIs fully populated mostly with performance legato or trill instruments and play them live without clicking or popping. 16 VIs is possible but I run out of memory if I use all performance instruments - using non-perf smaller patches this works fine too.

    The next step is to upgrade my 2nd mini to 2GB which will hopefully be done this week and buy another UA1EX. I will probably add a 3rd later on which will be the last - primarily because my Dr Bott KVM only supports 4 devices.

    Stability is great, and I use the Windows Hibernate feature so that I can boot up the Mini quickly and fully populated with VI patches.

    My overall plan is to use the main DAW for final mixing, reverb and other plugins (I use Cubase SX and a Powercore) plus it will host one section of the orchestra - probably percussion (as this is the smallest). Each MacMini will support the other sections, e.g. strings, woods, brass.

    I hope others find this useful and anyone considering a MacMini as a slave device should seriously consider doing so, they don't take up much space and are sufficiently powerful to host the VIs. Longer term if the Intel Merom processor turns out to be as good as anticipated it may well be possible to replace my large PC DAW with a Mac Mini too as the master DAW.

    Regards

    Tim
  • H
    H
    Tim, thanks for the report, I've been considering using Minis for this purpose, and it's nice to see that it can work. I may wait for the OSX Intel to go beyond beta, but it's very, very promising.

    How many simultanious voices can you get out of a single Mini?

    -Helen
  • N
    N
    last edited
    last edited

    @Another User said:

    I will probably add a 3rd later on which will be the last - primarily because my Dr Bott KVM only supports 4 devices.


    I've been using Windows Remote Access; my KVM has been sitting unused on the floor. There's now a Mac client at www.Mactopia.com, and it works spectacularly well. Of course it's not as fast as a direct connection, but it's fine for slave machines, and I like having the Windows machines in windows on the Mac.
  • H
    H
    i've been using an upgraded cube (1.2 ghz) as a slave for about 1.5 years. the mini or minis will be the next move. i use the Firebox as my midi and audio interface on the cube.
  • T
    T
    Helen - not quite sure how to count number of voices. I can get all 12 VIs playing simultaneously though.... but I guess some patches will have more than one voice at once.

    Nick - I'd forgotten about Remote Desktop, I normally turn it off to get optimal performance. Do you have any experience or knowledge round the impact of having it running?

    Cheers

    Tim
  • N
    N
    As far as I can tell the impact is not a factor, Tim. Maybe someone else will disagree and depress me, but it just seems to work and that's that.
  • J
    J
    Nick,

    I tried this once before but found that it would automatically assign the audio driver to the virtual one, so I couldn't get my audio apps on Windows to use my RME card. How is your audio configured on the PC slave?

    J.
  • N
    N
    Windows Remote Access screws up your audio driver?! That's bizarre.

    I have a Frontier Designs Wavecenter PCI card on the PCs and MOTU PCI-424-based hardware on my G5s.
  • T
    T
    I'll do some investigations when I get back to the studio and let you know if I get issues with the audio...
  • cmC
    VSL Team
    cmC
    the settings for RD should show 5 tabs - the middle one is named *local ressources* - select for sound *on remote computer*.
    christian
    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
  • J
    J
    Thanks, Christian

    I'll give that a go later.

    One other question, though. I've got 4 GB of RAM installed, and I've opened a hefty Solo Violin, taking 511 MB. But the remaining RAM is listed at only 1685 MB. I suppose this is the RAM limit per app, imposed by the system?

    Wouldn't it be possible for VSL to instantiate multiple vsl-server and vsldaemon processes to handle this? Maybe there could be a setup app, like the Logic Setup Assistant, in which you could specify your total installed RAM and the software could decide, based on available RAM, how many instances of the server to run? Sound possible, or just delusional?

    J
  • J
    J
    So, looking again at the VI Info thread, it looks as though I should get around 2.8 GB of RAM max, with 4 GB installed. So why does my machine only show 2164 free with nothing loaded?

    J.