# To VEP or not to VEP, that is the question?



## Spid (Apr 14, 2022)

Hi,

I've used VEP in the past at the studio, it was fine and it was at the time to counter the 32bits limitation. Now, I got a new MacBook Pro M1 Max with 64GB & 8TB, and I would like to build my first Composer Template.

I'm not a real composer, I don't even pretend to be one, I just want to have fun with large libraries. Until now, I never had a computer powerful enough to run such Template. I'm using Logic Pro. 

So my main question is, should I use VEP in local, so I could reduce the loading/saving time of each session in Logic Pro? I've heard a lot of people are moving away from VEP to use everything in-DAW with samplers purged and track unactivated/unloaded. The loading time in the M1 Max with 8TB SSD is pretty fast and for now I have all my main libraries on the internal drive, so I don't mind to wait 2 or 3 seconds to load a specific track. 

I need more feedback from people like you that have been using VEP and built multiple Template to figure out what works best for you? I know everyone is different and we can only learn by trying, but I try the reduce to minimum the number of time I'm gonna rebuild the Template... I just don't know where to start for now... 

Thanks for any comment that could contribute to make my mind on that matter.

Cheers


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## gsilbers (Apr 14, 2022)

Spid said:


> Hi,
> 
> I've used VEP in the past at the studio, it was fine and it was at the time to counter the 32bits limitation. Now, I got a new MacBook Pro M1 Max with 64GB & 8TB, and I would like to build my first Composer Template.
> 
> ...


yes, its a lot more easier and cleaner. People doing large template in cubase and non AU DAWs normally have one connection with plenty of instances who then all run into stems to record audio. This is the current and most used way but its also very old school. "Send midi on midi channel >> instruments >>return audio in stems. "

In logic its a little cumbersome since you have to create 16 multis channels and tons of intances in vep. So having everything in logic you can jusr load one instrument per track. offload its ram and route however you want. Even later when you want to mix itll be easier and exporting/bouncing auido is easier. 

its a dream come true with these new macs. You are not tied to the old school method and just have one instrument per track. Where you can make folder tracks or add individual mixing plugins. 

tbh, waiting a few second to load an instrument gets a little on my nerves. And if i select a whole folder then the whole folder tries to load and takes forever. I also have a very old mac pro. so i dont know how fast or different would be with new macs.


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## Spid (Apr 14, 2022)

I haven't tried yet with large folder, so I don't know how long the loading time will be... I'm also a very impatient person, I could throw my computer by the window as soon as the internet becomes slow (I got a 2Gbps fiber optics internet for this reason). 

Same thing if I see the spinning beachball. That's why I'm very divided between the "old school VEP method" and the "all-in-DAW method". Also, if I go with the VEP method, it might be easier later on to expand and just add a Mac mini or Mac Studio as VEP slave server (but I'm not there yet).

That's why I don't know which path to go...


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## Jeremy Spencer (Apr 14, 2022)

If you're to woking professionally, I'm not sure you would really benefit from building a large VEPro template. And like Guillermo mentioned, Logic is quite limited when comes to routing in Logic. I used to have big orchestral templates that I used with my previous Mac and Windows slave, but since upgrading to my new iMac (Intel), I do it all on one machine....and no more VEPro. The dynamic track feature in Logic is a Godsend. If you are scoring a project that has several cues with tons of tracks, having a template loaded in VEPro might be a good idea, as it all remains loaded between projects. But otherwise, there's probably no real advantage in your situation.


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## Spid (Apr 14, 2022)

Yeah, I'm not working professionally, and don't intend to... but I've always dreamed to have all libraries accessible in a click. But as you say, it doesn't have to be thought VEP anymore, and could be done inside Logic Pro with the track feature.

Thanks for your feedback


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## Eulenauge66 (Apr 16, 2022)

I am on Cubase and PC. My PC is about the same speed as a MacStudio Ultra. I just moved back from everything-in-DAW to local VEP.

First, it is annoying to switch on tracks. It interrupts my workflow, even if it is very fast. Second, even if I leave on my bread & butter articulations only, the project needs too long to load and to close. Third, if you return to a project with lots of enabled tracks, you need patience and wait, wait, wait. I hate that.

With VEP I start it in the morning, and I can load, close, switch whole projects in seconds. And don’t forget that VEP automatically switches to the GUI of your virtual instrument, so you always have all the articulations with keyswitches perfectly presented in front of you.


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## Spid (Apr 17, 2022)

Eulenauge66 said:


> I am on Cubase and PC. My PC is about the same speed as a MacStudio Ultra. I just moved back from everything-in-DAW to local VEP.
> 
> First, it is annoying to switch on tracks. It interrupts my workflow, even if it is very fast. Second, even if I leave on my bread & butter articulations only, the project needs too long to load and to close. Third, if you return to a project with lots of enabled tracks, you need patience and wait, wait, wait. I hate that.
> 
> With VEP I start it in the morning, and I can load, close, switch whole projects in seconds. And don’t forget that VEP automatically switches to the GUI of your virtual instrument, so you always have all the articulations with keyswitches perfectly presented in front of you.


Damn, you made a very valid point… and that’s exactly why I don’t know which path to take… I’m divided and I would love to do the “right choice” now and not have to do like you by doing and redoing again to have the right template. I know, I know, that’s how we learn, by doing and doing mistakes and learning from there, but still… it takes so much time to build a nice template, I’m already out of breath and motivation just to think about it. I’ve been dancing around this issue for a week now, at some point I will need to jump and do something :/

I need to rebuy a VEP license anyway, so I guess I might start by that, build a local VEP server, and then move later to an additional VEP server with a Mac Mini/Studio (one dedicated for the VSL stuff, and one for all Kontakt/OT stuff?).

I have plenty of ideas, but they’re all expensive to accomplish and I don’t have an unlimited expandable budget. That’s why I try to make the right choice and save every penny I can. I guess a lot of people here have a very good income and can afford to buy so much libraries and gear, but personally, I’m handicap that can’t work, so I’m a pretty tight budget and the MBP choice was already pretty deliberated. I went with Apple because I have all my ecosystem with Apple, all Apps, using Logic Pro, etc… I thought about switching to PC and Cubase to save some money on servers, etc… but I’m not sure it would have been really cheaper in the end with all new purchases of apps, plugs, etc… I know both platform can run perfectly and I’m not a PC hater. I just know Mac is working better for me (even if I’m not happy with Apple and some of their stupid decisions).

Tough choice… thanks all for your inputs and feedbacks. I really appreciate


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## KEM (Apr 17, 2022)

I have a VEP PC and my main machine is a Mac Studio, I like the setup but now that I have the Mac Studio I’ve considered ditching the PC entirely and just having everything on the Mac Studio, it can certainly run all of it especially if I have everything purged/disabled like I do now (I do this to be able to load projects faster and the Mac Studio is so fast it only takes a second to enable a track and load it into ram)

VEP is great but the new Mac’s are so powerful that I don’t think it’s really necessary anymore


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## Jeremy Spencer (Apr 17, 2022)

KEM said:


> VEP is great but the new Mac’s are so powerful that I don’t think it’s really necessary anymore


I concur


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## blaggins (Apr 17, 2022)

I am in a very similar boat @Spid. I'm not a professional either just a hobbyist but still enjoy having a full orchestral template plus choir ready to play in an instant. I find that when it comes to orchestration I do a lot of experimenting since I don't know up front what instruments combined and how would results in the musical character I am looking for in my head. So I just try a lot of stuff and try to learn as I go. If I had to wait for an instrument to load just to try a single part on it, knowing very well that I'm likely to throw it away because it probably won't sound good, I would get pretty frustrated pretty quickly. VEP allows me to have everything thing loaded and purged and use less than 48 GB of RAM. I can, as an example, try a clarinet line on an English horn in less than 1 second, just the time it takes for me to select the part cut and paste. This of course makes it really easy to try various combinations of doubling too, with various intervals between, because a cut and paste with a transpose is almost as fast.

I think if I was much more experienced and knew up front what I needed to do, then the value of having everything loaded would diminish because I wouldn't be doing lots of experimenting and making tons of orchestration mistakes.


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## Spid (Apr 17, 2022)

KEM said:


> I have a VEP PC and my main machine is a Mac Studio, I like the setup but now that I have the Mac Studio I’ve considered ditching the PC entirely and just having everything on the Mac Studio, it can certainly run all of it especially if I have everything purged/disabled like I do now (I do this to be able to load projects faster and the Mac Studio is so fast it only takes a second to enable a track and load it into ram)
> 
> VEP is great but the new Mac’s are so powerful that I don’t think it’s really necessary anymore


Just out of curiosity, what DAW are you using on your Mac Studio?


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## KEM (Apr 17, 2022)

Spid said:


> Just out of curiosity, what DAW are you using on your Mac Studio?



Cubase, but I’m not running it natively as there’s still some plugins I use that aren’t vst3 (which Cubase 12 will block) but it’s still under 50% on the cpu with like a hundred active tracks going, once I’ll be able to run it native I expect the cpu to be around 30%


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## samphony (Apr 17, 2022)

It really depends on DAW and most importantly workflow and what kind of music you write.

Since the m1max i haven’t touched VEP and don’t see a need. Activating/ deactivating tracks is mind boggling fast. But I also bounce and commit a lot of stuff to audio quiet fast so there is the workflow part again.

Regarding Logic and Summing Track Stacks: until the Logic team implements a feature to suppress dynamic plug-in loading of all tracks inside the selected stack I highly suggest to either use Folder Stacks or turn off dynamic plugin loading (project setting) and manually deactivating the tracks (option+click the Track on/off button)


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## szczaw (Apr 17, 2022)

I'd use VEP if: 1) my daw and / or computer had no ability to quickly load instruments from disk 2) my daw was running plugin inefficiently or running out of CPU with biger projects.


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## EricBarndollar (Apr 18, 2022)

I think there are 3 main benefits, and this thread has talked about the first two:
(1) Orchestra stays loaded when you switch DAW projects
(2) Offload RAM/CPU to another machine
(3) Keep sub-mix complexity out of your DAW

For the third point, let's say you host your woodwind section in a VEP module. You could handle mixing multiple mic signals to stereo or surround, volume balancing across instruments, and a first stage of convolution reverb if it's a dry library. Then you could output a single audio track for all the woodwinds to further process in your DAW, or one track each for Flutes, Oboes, Clarinets, Low Winds, etc.

Then less of the virtual cabling happens in the DAW project and when you get to audio mixing, you have fewer tracks and sends to deal with.

It's admittedly a double edged sword, because if you need to tweak those aspects of your mix a lot, you have to jump back and forth or set up automation through an extra layer.

So synths, choirs with word building, and anything that has to be mixed quite differently every time I prefer directly in the DAW (or at least in a VEP instance on the same machine). But for standard orchestral sections where you can get a default mix in a virtual room you're happy with, I love the modularity of each sub-mix staying out of the DAW.


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## matthieuL (Apr 19, 2022)

Don't forget that your project file size could be very big (specially if you have lots of Kontakt instruments), resulting in long save times (few seconds, even possibly 30s).

It seems Studio One has the feature to not save the instruments part of the file at each saving, which solves this problem. I don't know about Logic.
It's one of the 2 reasons I personnaly still can't ditch VEPro (the second being that I'm a Cubase user and Cubase instrument tracks don't have midi sends so I couldn't use anymore my current OSC interface to choose on my tablet the articulations of the selected track).


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## Nicholas (Apr 21, 2022)

depends on the way you think. with synths, I usually know which one to pick for any given job and how to get to the end result pretty quickly- with orchestral samples, this doesn’t come to me as easily. when I‘m layering samples, I need to be able to audition multiple libraries very quickly, so I want the whole thing to just be loaded and ready to go. having to enable and disable tracks the whole time gives me anxiousness just thinking about it. 

also, and I don’t know if that just happens to me, but on every system I‘ve ever had and with every cubase version I‘ve ever had, chances are cubase is going to crash when trying to disable/close a project with a lot of samples loaded. it seems to have problems with unloading a lot of samples from memory.

if going with VEP, the real challenge is to set it up in a smart way. you are going to want to be able to change some things, eg the mic mixes. and ideally, write them into a midi part or use automation, so the settings are correct when you open a project. that’s what I‘m trying to figure out right now.


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## Spid (Apr 21, 2022)

@Nicholas you're spot on! This is the same thing for me. as I worked into Urban/EDM music, I'm pretty familiar with synth and I generally what I want and I can keep them in the DAW. However, when it comes to Orchestral Libraries, I'm a noob, and therefore I don't know much what I want, what I need, what instruments or articulation would I need to use... so I would prefer to have everything already mapped up and ready to be tried....


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## Jeremy Gillam (Apr 21, 2022)

I’d keep everything in your DAW for now. Once you’ve learned your libraries you can set up a VEP template that works for you if the shortcomings of DAW-only are slowing you down. But building the VEP setup takes some forethought and knowing how you like to work will make that process smoother.


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## StefanoM (Apr 21, 2022)

I go for VEP, in particular for the Orchestral Template. For The Hybrid Stuff / Vocals, I use my Master Machine.

The benefits are those exposed before.


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## jcrosby (Apr 21, 2022)

I agree with G-mo (1st reply).... VEP makes the most sense in the context of film/TV score work and multiple machines.

People who have to get through multiple cues in a day, and rely on dedicated machines for specific instruments.... This is where VEP makes sense... But given that you don't do this for a career VEP would be overkill, and add a layer of friction.

VEP requires that you devise a specific workflow that involves VEP. Even if you leave your original VEP _coupled_ (Recommended as a method for having an additional _'backup' _to maintaining VEP templates), it's still wise to keep a discrete backup of VEP templates... This requires you to keep track of both... For example the moment you add something new to VEP in your DAW you can find your self with a VEP backup template that's out of sync unless you get in the habit of re-saving the VEP template separately...

VEP also has something called instances. These are the discrete plugin instances that house your 16 channel (or more) instruments. If you want to have flexibility you also want to keep track of these as well by saving them. Saving Logic _stacks_ to Logic's library essentially accomplishes the same thing, but with more simplicity. Not to mention that logic's library is searchable... I used VEP for years, but now that I don't use more than one machine I vastly prefer using _stacks_ combined with Logic's Library.

Basically VEP adds an additional layer of file management, a layer that makes sense for people who have to use a solution like VEP in order to work... But given that you're in Logic and either composing as a hobby or aspiring, VEP really isn't necessary.... And you're likely to find that it gets in the way. For casual use it's a bit like adding unnecessary housekeeping that just slows down something that you're currently doing for fun.


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