Well, no, not really. There's a 2.5 GB cap on any single process (32bit). So the idea is to run your VIs on as many independent processes as you can! As it turns out, in real life, that means two: the standalone, and x-number of plugins (all running from the process "vsl-server"). Even this is not necessarily a proven solution, as other performance issues, like the routing of audio and midi through virtual ports into Logic, can drag performance down, making the extra RAM access a moot point.

btw, I also checked whether a copy of the VI standalone would run alongside the original _and_ the plugins... Yup. It works: VI standalone, VI standalone copy, and Bidule running plugins. I started to get some noise at this point, though, so who knows whether this is even a vaguely practical way of accessing more RAM... But if you've got a faster machine than mine (G5 dual 1.8 -) and lots of RAM (> 4 GB), then you might give it a try.

J.

Jbm:

If you have gotten this to work how a all what is the setup that you use to
1. address the standalone through MIDI from a sequencer
2. send the standalone's audio output back to the sequencer

I'd be most appreciative of your thoughts. I have 7GB of RAM so there's quite a bit that I'm not using at the moment. Comment from the folks at VSL might be very helpful with this.

Stephen

Well, I know for a fact that on a PowerMac Dual 2.5Ghz, if I load about 2.5 GB of samples, my DSP start to go crazy. In Plogue Bidule, you can see how much DSP is being used, and with 2.5GB, I'm at 70%. If I try to play anything, it's clicking and popping like crazy.

So, for this to work, I guess you'd need a pretty fast computer. Or a faster DSP, but I'm using an RME PCI card, and they're supposed to be pretty fast!

Jerome

Hey Stephen,

Well, as I say, I haven't actually got it working with Logic. It just works taking direct hardware midi input, and sending audio directly to my RME card. So I don't know how it will work with Logic -- it just works in principle.

However, if I were going to seriously try, I'd probably try using the IAC bus or MIDI Patchbay for MIDI and Jack OS X or Soundflower for audio. Give it a go and let me know what happens!

cheers,

J.

Hey guys, the Vienna Instruments player uses memory outside Logic (in OS X, of course), so there's no reason to do any of that. This is from my review in VI last June:

http://homepage.mac.com/virtualinstruments/.Pictures/VSL%20in%20Logic.png">

I still haven't bothered pulling 2GB to see how much less you can load.

OH, OH, OH - you're saying you want to run it stand-alone as well. Sorry, never mind.

Yeah, Stephen was wondering about adding the standalone, which seems like it should be fine.

But I was wondering a bit about this myself; why is it that the vsl-server can load more than 2.5 GB? I've noticed before that I don't actually crash the server until I get somewhere over 3 GB. Thoughts, Mr. Nick?

And what hardware are you running all those samples on. My old G5 dual 1.8 hasn't been the happiest camper with loads of memory running... just wondering (mind you, getting up around 3.5 addressed on my 4 GB machine leaves only .5 for system, Logic, vsl, everything... not so smart!)

Also, have you heard the recent rumors about Clovertown-based (8-core) Mac Pros in November? Makes my geeky bones shiver.

J.

Okay, here we go. It works! Coolio.

Here's that same test session with one stand-alone instance:

http://homepage.mac.com/virtualinstruments/.Pictures/1X%20VSL%20stand-alone%20+%20Logic.png">

And here it is with two, which is too much for 8GB (the system slows down - it's using the hard disk). But if I had less K2 stuff loaded in Logic, it might work fine. (I renamed the second stand-alone instance, by the way.)

Yeah, Nick. I just discovered this today as well. Pretty cool trick! But please, let me know what hardware you're running.

J.

It's a 2 x 2.5 G5 with 8GB of RAM, jbm.

My guess about why it stops at 3GB per instance is the usual OS X rule: 4GB theoretical maximum minus system libraries and frameworks. But I don't know why Logic wants to stop at 2.14GB.

Regardless, it's slowing down at 7.91GB used total. My hunch is that unloading half a gig of K2 inside Logic is going to make it work.

The other issue is routing audio. As far as I know the Vienna Instruments player can only use the default outputs for the hardware, but there are simple ways around that problem.

Yes, and the standalone doesn't have any midi channel settings, so that must be worked out in Logic... but that's not a big deal. I'm actually thinking it might make sense to blow some fairly major dough on a Mac Pro this holiday season!
I don't suppose there's any good reason why this wouldn't work on an Intel Mac...(??)

My current G5 should still make a good host... but do you know whether the old G5-as-a-host popping and crackling issue was ever resolved? (Or whether it was ever actually an issue, in the sense of being consistent across different users, machines, and so on).

J.

With the 1X stand-alone set-up, I triggered the Vienna Instruments player with the mouse while the sequence was playing. The CPU doesn't go crazy, so I'm confident it will work.

I have no idea whether it'll work in a Mac Pro, but my bet would be that it would. As a matter of fact, you could probably stick 16GB in there and keep going.

If I had an extra $10k lying around that I didn't need, I'd even be inclined to try it. [:)]

Nick:

Thanks very much for your comments and documentation However can you tell me precisely how you get MIDI input from Logic to the Standalone and how you route the standalone's audio back into Logic (via an aux track I'd guess) so that it can make use of plugins within Logic? Does one need to use SoundFlower or Jack OSX for the audio? How does one get Logic to see the standalone as a MIDI device? No doubt I'm just missing something due to brain cell depletion - - but if you could describe this precisely it would be extremely helpful to me and, I suspect, to many other users.

Thanks,
Stephen

MIDI is a little tricky, and I haven't quite thought it through entirely since I'm rusty on how the Click and Ports layer in the Environment works. It's going to take some poking around that I haven't done yet, although it's not a big deal.

But I can tell you how to get it working. The first part is easy: go into Audio MIDI Setup and double-click the IAC Driver to make sure you have a bus set up. I believe you do by default, but if not you'll need to create one. You can give it a name if you want.

Then go into the Logic environment and (on an appropriate layer) create a new Instrument (it doesn't have to be a multi-instrument since the Vienna Instruments player only uses one MIDI channel). Set its Port to IAC bus 1 (or whatever). Go to the Vienna Instruments player's prefs and tell it to receive on IAC bus 1.

Assign the active Logic track to that instrument. If you play the keyboard now, you'll hear a god-awful racket that sounds suspiciously like a MIDI loop. In fact that's exactly what it is.

So go into the Click and Ports layer of the Logic Environment and disconnect the Physical Input Sum [of all your MIDI inputs] cable from the Recording & Thru object (usually it's connected to a MIDI monitor object first). That disconnects the IAC bus and stops it causing a loop. Then I think you have to connect every physical MIDI input you want to use back to the Recording & Thru object (or the MIDI monitor object).

You can do the same thing for additional Vienna Instruments players if you can get them running on the same machine.

What I'm unclear about is whether there's an easier way to disconnect the IAC bus from the sum. Not a big deal.

Audio is another long story. I'll come later and explain that, but first, what audio hardware are you using? Soundflower is the easiest way I can think of, but if you have an RME interface you can use its Totalmix software to do that.

Hey Stephen,

You should be able to route midi to the standalone over Apple's own "IAC bus". If it's not available double-check that it's "online" in Audio MIDI Setup (double-click on the IAC Bus icon). Then you can choose IAC Bus as the midi instrument in your Logic track (yes, you'll be using a midi track in logic, not an instrument). In the VI standalone, go to preferences and choose the IAC Bus as your midi device.

As far as audio goes, it's a bit tickier. One approach: Soundflower.
I've used it before and it seems pretty good. However, afaik Soundflower has no capacity to connect its output with your hardware -- it's strictly a "virtual" audio device. To get around this, you make an Aggregate Device in Audio MIDI Setup. Create an aggregate device combining your hardware with Soundflower. You'll see in the Aggregate Device Editor that each device will be assigned to a range of channels. You'll use the hardware channels for Logic's output, and the Soundflower channels for the input from your VI Standalone.
Once you've got an aggregate device, select the aggregate device as your audio device in Logic's "driver" section. Then, you'll just make a Stereo Input track in Logic, and select the channels that were assigned to Soundflower in the Aggregate Device editor. The output of Logic will use the channels that were assigned to your hardware in the aggregate device editor. That should do it!

The advantage of Jack OS X (and why it's used in Linux-land all the time) is that you can patch virtual ports directly to hardware, saving you the trouble of making an Aggregate Device. The idea is the same though, you're going to select Jack as the device in the VI standalone, and in the Jack router you'll patch the VI standalone's output to Logic. It sounds confusing, but it will make sense when you get Jack going.

Hope this helps.

J.

hehe... you've got more than you bargained for...!

J.

Confirmed with Orren Merton (who wrote the book): you need to reconnect every MIDI port individually.

Edit: you need to disconnect the Sum and then reconnect everything except the IAC ports manually. End of story - you can ignore what I said about needing to poke around.

Man, I love technology. As soon as you think you pretty much know everything there is to know about something, boom, you find out that you were wrong. Very humbling, I must say [:)]

Anyway, I had to try this thing, so I did a couple of tests here, on a Dual 2Ghz G5 with 8GB of Ram.

Here are my findings...

First, I tried maxing out a single stand alone instance of VI. I went up to 3.25GB of used memory (VI indicated "3004 MB" of used memory). I couldn't load more samples than that - after that, the app simply crashes (I tried it twice!).

With two Vienna Instrument instances loaded, I was able to load 2.71GB on one, and 1.10 on the other. At 1.11 GB, the second instance crashed. Total = 3.81GB.

http://vsl.co.at/upload/users/22294/VI_Duo.png">

Conclusion: it seems more stable to have two, smaller instances of VI loaded, than a single, fat one.

So... I decided to try something even crazier.

I launched Plogue Bidule, and loaded a huge preset in VI, with about 3GB of samples.

Then I launched one stand alone instance of VI, with 1.5GB of samples.
Then I launched *another* stand alone instance of VI, with 1.5GB of samples.
And then, I launched *a third* stand alone instance of VI, with 1.5GB of samples.

Everything worked quite ok for a few minutes, but the third instance then crashed.

So, I launched another third instance, and, this time loaded only 1 GB of samples. Everything worked fine, and is still working fine right now.



Total : 3 + 1.5 + 1.5 + 1 = 7 GB of samples.

That's quite nice. And a *huge* find.

I gotta say thanks to you all for challenging us with that idea. That's a huge discovery for me. In theory, and if the CPU is powerful enough, you could have one Mac Pro instead of four or five Mac Minis!

WOW!!!

Jerome

jerome, thanks for posting this numbers - although i had to take the liberty and crop your images to ~600 px because for users reading the forum within the website they had exceeded the max.available width
christian

Hey Christian,

no problem. I'll make sure they're not more than 600px next time.

Jerome