One MacBook 2.33ghz not enough?

[cfblakeman]

I'm putting together a digial studio for the first time and do not want to string together multiple computers. I have a MacBook Pro Core Duo 2, 2.33ghz and 3gig SDRAM. But what I'm reading in some of the threads is that I will need a half dozen computers or more to get decent use out of VSL. If so, I'll limp over to East/West as this doesn't appear to be a limitation with them.

2nd Q - I'm looking for ease of composition with a better than average product that would fool the average ear (my sister and her cohorts in the SFO and other major symphonies are not my audience). Is "Instruments" significantly easier to use than Pro Edition and/or Horizon?

3rd Q - Does 24 bit vs. 16 bit added noticeable audio quality to the final product?

Thanks for your help.

[cm]

welcome cfblakeman,
ad 1) i'd say it depends on your workflow when you hit any limits - there are several users with a single computer performing full arrangements with VSL. on the other hand you can max out a machine with almost every library ourdays ... and, hey, 500 GB have to go somewhere if you want to load them all simultaneously ...
ad 2) if *ease of use* is required vienna instruments would be the first choice, but you can get rather far with opus 1+2 in logic pro too
christian

[Kai]

hi cfblakeman,
with a single macbook i would definitely go for opus 1 & 2. these libraries are really great for the money and are very economical with respect to ram - which represents the main limitation. i use them on a 2gb macbook and can run an entire orchestra including all essential articulations without freezing. this should be impossible with the pro edition or the symphonic cube since they require roughly twice as much ram for the same articulations.
needless to say that even the opus libraries contain far too much to load everything simultaneously, but with 3gb you should be able to load several of the very nice - but memory-hungry - performance instruments in addition.

[dpcon]

@cfblakeman said:

If so, I'll limp over to East/West as this doesn't appear to be a limitation with them.

The guys I know who use EW complain regularly about computer resources being chewed up so you won't get a break there either. Anyone running big sample collections is running at least three cpu's and more like four or five (and well beyond that.)

Opus 1+2 is the best collection available for a solid orchestral setup that doesn't tax the computer or wallet like it's bigger brothers. Like the rest of us however you will probably be eyeing another computer soon enough. [[;)]]

[cfblakeman]

Great help - thanks for the quick replies. I go with the Opus Bundle.

[Lee Blaske]

Also, if you're new to this, be sure to keep in mind that while it's a nice luxury to have every instrument you're going to use in a composition live, loaded in RAM and ready to play, it's not at all necessary to work that way. With a little bit of planning, you can make a mock-up (with, for instance, piano), and then come back and fill in all the various parts (loading the appropriate instruments, and then freezing, bouncing or printing them). In this sort of fashion, you could definitely utilize a huge, detailed library on a single MacBook Pro Core Duo 2.

Everything doesn't have to be loaded at the same time. If that were the case, we wouldn't have been able to do anything back in the days of EMU EII's/EIII's or Akai 1000's when 8 megs of memory was really living.

[cfblakeman]

Thanks - great help!

[Nick Batzdorf]

@Another User said:

Everything doesn't have to be loaded at the same time.

True, but it gets pretty annoying if most of it isn't. Otherwise it's like a violinist who has to put down the bow and pick up another one every time he or she wants to change directions.

Yes that's an exaggeration - you're going to do the violins, bounce them, then the violas, etc. - but we're now working in a different musical medium from when we used hardware samplers. Modern sample libraries really are a whole new instrument, and the detailed work we do to get them to sound right changes everything.

That aside, I used to set up whole orchestras on my K2000 Orchestral ROM no problem without even having to load them (they were in ROM), in fact I even loaded up pretty decent orchestras on the 12-voice K250!

[Nick Batzdorf]

The answer to your other question about 16- vs. 24-bit audio is yes, it does make a noticeable but somewhat subtle difference. If you compare the Vienna Instruments VSL to the 16-bit version, you do hear a little more air.

Whether that's an important consideration when you're choosing a library is another matter. I'd tend to say it's not at the top of the list, but it's not to be ignored.

[dpcon]

@Nick Batzdorf said:

True, but it gets pretty annoying if most of it isn't.

That's right. Unless you're doing something without time constraints you have to have everythng at your fingertips. Even without time constraints polishing parts is what I spend most time on so I wouldn't want to freeze and unload/reload because than I would be spending all my time doing that.