# For those with 3 or more computers in your setup...



## José Herring (Sep 20, 2010)

..... What are you using as a mixer to bring in the digital signals to the daw? 

Ideally I'd like to get the ssl madi ax, but the price tag once you add in multiple audio cards to the picture becomes a little more than I'm comfortable spending. So, before I take that plunge, wondering if there are more cost effective ways to bring in say at least 32 channels of digital audio into your daw from a sample farm.

best,

Jose


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## cc64 (Sep 20, 2010)

Hi Jose,

have you considered Vienna Ensemble PRO?

http://vsl.co.at/en/211/497/1685/1693/1342.htm

Works really well, and saves you lots of money since you don't need to buy soundcards and midi interfaces.

Best,

Claude


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## synthetic (Sep 20, 2010)

I've been using VE Pro for the last year and I'm thinking about switching back to soundcards. Saving takes almost a minute as all of the connected instances save themelves, and deleting a track in Logic 9 can take 30 seconds or more (while it gets permission from VE pro or something). The whole time the beachball is spinning which makes me very nervous. I get bizarre hangs and crashes all the time. VE Pro works fine on the same computer I'm running Logic on, but going to my Windows 7 machine has been a huge asspain. I've tried many settings in VE pro, preserve on and preserve off. 

Of course I have the SSL to plug into.  But RME cards have been going cheap on eBay as people have been switching to this system. If you go the SSL route, there's a package with the Alphalink MADI AX and Madixtreme 64 together where you save a few bucks. And did I mention it sounds AWESOME? 

Go for it. Make a friend at AM/PM, maybe they'll give you the old hot dogs for 1/2 price before they throw them away.


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## José Herring (Sep 20, 2010)

cc64 @ Mon Sep 20 said:


> Hi Jose,
> 
> have you considered Vienna Ensemble PRO?
> 
> ...



Thank you very much. Yes I have tried VEPro. I can't say that it's worked out all that well for me.

Yes synthetic big fan of the madiax/ Mixtreme (mixspaner) combo. It does sound awesome. Just trying to find something just a little less hard on the pocket book. But then again I ask myself why.


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## synthetic (Sep 20, 2010)

> I ask myself why.



Well, I look at it as another step in getting great-sounding tracks. Upgrading the converter by itself might not be immediately noticable, but update the converter + monitors + mic preamps + cables ++ etc and it starts sounding like a record. 

Also, shiny!


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## gsilbers (Sep 20, 2010)

The lightbridge has been very stable and good on my pc on both windows xp and 7


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## chimuelo (Sep 20, 2010)

How about a realtime 1msec./96k 64 channel solution packed with DSP synths, effects and mixers in 32bit or 64bit w/ AES/EBU, ADAT, Balanced Analog and SP/DIF with wordclock for under 500 bucks....?
It also has hundreds of free plugs and the best sounding MiniMoog and B3 + Leslie on the market...?

I'd be happy to Skype you some demos and screenshots of projects where I integrate a streaming DAW, hardware effects, DSP synths and Analog hardware synths into a project window. I then use these awesome Modular Mixing devices below to master in the Manley rack or warm up in the SSL Deck, but that's just for the samples instruments, the DSP and Analog synths are already FAT as is.

The mixing package is what I BETA tested for a few months earlier this year, and there are dozens of routers, groupers, sidechainers, Bus masters, stem mixers and Modulators all in 4, 8, 12, 16 and 24 channels, naturally the channels double when stereo mode is used. I still refer to a channel as mono unless otherwise noted.

Here's the mixing package. The card comes with an obscene amount of DSP plugs.
Synths. Mixers, Mastering tools, MIDI CC devices that can turn a crappy controller into a 0-16000 MIDI 2 spec'd beast, etc.,etc.

But then you might not need all of this realtime hardware and software.
Some folks prefer latency compensation. I prefer realtime, and have zero patience for presets to load and then minutes to save.............????
That's hardly what I consider a good workflow..

Here's the Modular Mixing/Mastering package. It's actually great for live work where I need to send Bussed groups to an FOH and then seperate mixes to a Montior man.
http://www.spacef-devices.com/index.php ... &Itemid=18

Here's the companys meger outdated product page.
You'll notice some well established folks like Hans Zimmer.
Got his first grammy using Scope and Giga Farms.

http://www.sonic-core.net/en/innovation/solaris.html


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## John DeBorde (Sep 20, 2010)

I'm not really using my 3 PC farm these days, but it's setup to stream into my DAW thru MOTU 2408's via lightpipe. RME 9652's coming out of the PCs. 

It may not be as sexy as the MADI stuff, but it works!


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## Stephen Baysted (Sep 21, 2010)

John DeBorde @ Tue Sep 21 said:


> I'm not really using my 3 PC farm these days, but it's setup to stream into my DAW thru MOTU 2408's via lightpipe. RME 9652's coming out of the PCs.
> 
> It may not be as sexy as the MADI stuff, but it works!



Exactly the same here John. I also need a fair few analogue inputs for synths, so the 2408s were an ideal solution.


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## chadseiter (Sep 21, 2010)

synthetic @ Mon Sep 20 said:


> I've been using VE Pro for the last year and I'm thinking about switching back to soundcards. Saving takes almost a minute as all of the connected instances save themelves, and deleting a track in Logic 9 can take 30 seconds or more (while it gets permission from VE pro or something). The whole time the beachball is spinning which makes me very nervous. I get bizarre hangs and crashes all the time. VE Pro works fine on the same computer I'm running Logic on, but going to my Windows 7 machine has been a huge asspain. I've tried many settings in VE pro, preserve on and preserve off.
> 
> Of course I have the SSL to plug into.  But RME cards have been going cheap on eBay as people have been switching to this system. If you go the SSL route, there's a package with the Alphalink MADI AX and Madixtreme 64 together where you save a few bucks. And did I mention it sounds AWESOME?
> 
> Go for it. Make a friend at AM/PM, maybe they'll give you the old hot dogs for 1/2 price before they throw them away.



I had the same problem and it was pretty unusable. However, if you DECOUPLE the VE Pro instances, it will save immediately in Logic (or DP which is what I use)... then all you have to do is save your VE Pro metaframes manually which isn't so bad - in fact, I prefer it. Works like a charm!


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## Tanuj Tiku (Sep 21, 2010)

I want to set up slaves as well......


I was thinking of getting Lynx AES-50 card with 32 channels. Initially I will only have one slave and then it will grow from there.

Still exploring....not sure how MADI works and how it will connect with my Aurora 16 if I were to get that.



Tanuj.


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## stevenson-again (Sep 22, 2010)

guys, have you explored the idea of using VEpro but either in standalone mode, or using the server version in plogue?

the reason i suggest this is that i currently advise colleagues (you wouldn't believe how often i get asked about these technical issues - talk about the blind leading the blind....) i have deep reservations about using the server version within logic (and presumably which ever DAW). i have bee advising them to use the 64bit standalone version. i have a friend who has set himself up with BOTH plogue for hollywood strings AND VEpro for kontakt on the same computer he is using the loopback method and finding it is all working just fine. in fact i think he is using 2 applications of plogue (just copied and renamed) to handle HS. that's 4 audio engines going at the same time and his performance is fine. on modern 8-cores CPU is not the bottleneck.

what i am thinking as a possibility is to use plogue (or possibily even VEpro standalone) a receiver for the digital audio and keep that separate from your DAW. then it is all dependent on your audio card routing to bring the audio into the DAW. in this case you are just using aux's to pull in the audio streams - generally as stems - into logic.

it would be worth trying before plumping for the sound card for every computer method. what do you think?


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## JohnG (Sep 22, 2010)

> stream into my DAW thru MOTU 2408's via lightpipe. RME 9652's coming out of the PCs. I also need a fair few analogue inputs for synths, so the 2408s were an ideal solution.



I'm doing the same as Rousseau and John. 

Every time I've looked in the past at trying to shrink to just two or three computers, the cost of doing so exceeds the cost of more, cheaper setups. Haven't looked lately, because I already have the hardware. Plus, latency, while annoying, is constant and predictable. Finally, I dread the potential disruption from some OS update or VI update getting in the weeds.


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## kdm (Sep 22, 2010)

Motu 2408s here as well with RMEs on slaves, but I'm moving to VEPro for new slaves simply to avoid a bug with Bidule (and MidiOverLan?) - VEPro works very well - quite a bit cheaper than hardware, though VEPro adds a layer of connect/disconnect when moving between projects. There is some comfort in having slaves on hardware rather than server/remote dependent.

And to ditto previous suggestions - disconnecting the VEPro server in the host before closing a project, and saving metaframes manually on the slaves works best for "always active" slaves that are feeding a commonly used template.


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## José Herring (Sep 22, 2010)

stevenson-again @ Tue Sep 21 said:


> guys, have you explored the idea of using VEpro but either in standalone mode, or using the server version in plogue?
> 
> the reason i suggest this is that i currently advise colleagues (you wouldn't believe how often i get asked about these technical issues - talk about the blind leading the blind....) i have deep reservations about using the server version within logic (and presumably which ever DAW). i have bee advising them to use the 64bit standalone version. i have a friend who has set himself up with BOTH plogue for hollywood strings AND VEpro for kontakt on the same computer he is using the loopback method and finding it is all working just fine. in fact i think he is using 2 applications of plogue (just copied and renamed) to handle HS. that's 4 audio engines going at the same time and his performance is fine. on modern 8-cores CPU is not the bottleneck.
> 
> ...



I of two minds on that. While I love the flexibility of VEPro in standalone and I'm seriously looking into Plogue Bidule, I must admit that simplicity is kind of taking me over at the moment. 

I recently had a computer go down. I replaced it with another computer I had laying around. I decided not to use VEPro and just used Kontakt in Standalone. It's soooooo much faster simpler just works better with my work flow.

While VEPro and other vst host are very handy and I do miss the power pan feature of VE Pro I must admit that having to deal with too much software routing is starting to drive me crazy.

Jose


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## stevenson-again (Sep 22, 2010)

yes, i use plogue. it's fantastic. the other advantage of plogue over VEpro is that you can host your rhythmic based sounds there and sync everything via MTC transmitted over one of the bidules from your DAW. it's extremely flexible - utilitarian but you know - who cares.

plus you can see what you have going on more easily than in VEpro.

however, the down side is that it is not 64 bit. that's ok with the kontakt server (still not ideal) but the worry is HS. it IS possible to run more than one application of plogue - you just make a copy of it and rename it, and that might be the solution. but it doesn't feel very efficient...still, no different than having a seperate instance open on another computer i suppose.


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## cc64 (Sep 22, 2010)

I Rohan,

VEPRO gives you perfect synch with plugs like Kontakt while playing Evolve or Sample Logic loops for example. Everything follows the tempo changes instantly even if you hold the notes. (No need to retrigger to have your loops at the right tempo. Same with Stylus etc...)

This both from slaves or on 1 mac. Don't know about PCs but it should be the same.

Maybe you're speaking of something else?

HTH

Claude


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## synthetic (Sep 22, 2010)

chadseiter @ Tue Sep 21 said:


> if you DECOUPLE the VE Pro instances, it will save immediately... then all you have to do is save your VE Pro metaframes manually which isn't so bad - in fact, I prefer it. Works like a charm!



Hmm, I've tried this and got lags as well. I'll try again. This is how I'd prefer it to work (basically a slave machine independent of my sequencer).


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## whinecellar (Sep 22, 2010)

synthetic @ Wed Sep 22 said:


> Hmm, I've tried this and got lags as well. I'll try again. This is how I'd prefer it to work (basically a slave machine independent of my sequencer).



Make sure ALL your VE Pro instances are decoupled - otherwise you might see some lag. I have 14 instances of the VE Pro plugin in my Logic template (that's 224 instruments/MIDI channels) - most of which are Kontakt instruments - and Logic is totally snappy for me. ZERO lag when saving, editing, moving/deleting tracks, etc.


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## gsilbers (Sep 22, 2010)

whinecellar @ Wed Sep 22 said:


> synthetic @ Wed Sep 22 said:
> 
> 
> > Hmm, I've tried this and got lags as well. I'll try again. This is how I'd prefer it to work (basically a slave machine independent of my sequencer).
> ...




your setup is very impressive and w VEP. 

you cant do offline bouncing right using export track in place? 

how do you bounce down all those tracks using VEP?


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## Animus (Sep 22, 2010)

It doesn't get much easier and hassle-free than than VE Pro imo. Works perfect here.


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## stevenson-again (Sep 23, 2010)

> VEPRO gives you perfect synch with plugs like Kontakt while playing Evolve or Sample Logic loops for example. Everything follows the tempo changes instantly even if you hold the notes. (No need to retrigger to have your loops at the right tempo. Same with Stylus etc...)
> 
> This both from slaves or on 1 mac. Don't know about PCs but it should be the same.
> 
> Maybe you're speaking of something else?



yes i am speaking VEpro in STANDALONE mode. i am aware that the server version should allow tempo synching.

i do not have a huge experience with VEpro, and have really only advised some colleagues on how to get their setups to work with large templates. i initially advised the server version, but they rand into problems. if either logic or VEpro crashed it would take down the other - it became a huge headache. since going to the standalone version they have been much happier albeit there have been some midi bugs with kontakt.

the other thing is, you can use 64bit VEpro and 32bit logic - i am not sure you can use 64bit VEpro server in logic 32bit on the same machine. i mean i don't know - can you?

since 64-bit logic has some quirks that need to be ironed out - chief amongst them is video - 32bit logic is the solution provided you don't run any or many 3rd party plugs. i only have 1 Vienna instrument and ivory in logic - that's it. my template is about 10 Gb, and since going back to 10.5 (i was finding 10.6 to be a bit of a nightmare) everything has been very solid.


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## Ian Livingstone (Sep 23, 2010)

stevenson-again @ Wed Sep 22 said:


> yes, i use plogue. it's fantastic. the other advantage of plogue over VEpro is that you can host your rhythmic based sounds there and sync everything via MTC transmitted over one of the bidules from your DAW. it's extremely flexible - utilitarian but you know - who cares.
> 
> plus you can see what you have going on more easily than in VEpro.
> 
> however, the down side is that it is not 64 bit. that's ok with the kontakt server (still not ideal) but the worry is HS. it IS possible to run more than one application of plogue - you just make a copy of it and rename it, and that might be the solution. but it doesn't feel very efficient...still, no different than having a seperate instance open on another computer i suppose.



Bidule here too on all my 64bit PC slaves, apart from 1 PLAY machine where I found 1 standalone PLAY is far more efficient than multi-VSTi PLAY instances in Bidule (could be down to Bidule's multiprocessor support I don't know).

I've got 7 slaves all with RME HDSP cards all running into an RME MADI convertor straight into my DAW mixer.
Haven't really looked at VEpro but I really can't imagine the latency over lan could compare to hardware when playing in parts (I mean recording midi, I know playback latency is compensated for in VE). I'm currently getting 3ms (slave) + 3ms (daw). Also I imagine it'd have trouble streaming 56 audio channels over a gigabit lan.

Ian


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## stevenson-again (Sep 23, 2010)

7 slaves! jesus man...why so many?


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## Ian Livingstone (Sep 23, 2010)

cause I've had them since 32bit days 1.3gb max ram in giga
All upgraded now mixture of 8gb to 24gb, and yeah I could probably downsize to 3 or 4, but got the hardware now and PC upgrades relatively cheap if you DIY...

I use 2 for strings (LASS, HS PLAY)
2 for brass - could combine but may aswell keep the machines now for when EW HB is done...
1 for Wind/Choir
1 for Perc (spitfire, tonehammer, SAM)
1 for Pianos, guitars, misc

So my DAW is mainly just a big mixer - projects load up instantly containing mainly midi and occasional VSTi's that don't work well in tempalte mode (Omnisphere, RMX etc).

Ian


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## stevenson-again (Sep 23, 2010)

sure its the right approach IMO but 7 slaves..!!! where you a roman noble in a past life or something..? gotta have slaves - gotta have slave... 

your power bill must be impressive. i guess what would concern me is that that's a lot of equipment to manage.


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## Ian Livingstone (Sep 23, 2010)

the consumption on the PSUs is probably low it's more the air-con to cool them

I think the way things are going though with new libraries is that we're going to ultimately need at least 1 machine per section - so can't imagine downsizing any less than 5 machines anytime soon.
HS ideally needs to be spread over 2 machines IMO - legatos on 1 with bigger latency for the scripts to cope (12-24ms), and short arts on another with low latency.

Ian


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## stevenson-again (Sep 23, 2010)

i would have to profusely disagree. i think its going to 1 machine or at the most 2, but the issue is streaming or RAM.

why do you need several machines? what's the bottle neck? it certainly isn't CPU here. the bottleneck is streaming, or memory. if you have a 64bit host then you are just limited to what you can stick into your machine. you could probably load a pretty impressive template at 64 Gb. i think the issue is to spec up on fast drives or RAID arrays, and/or RAM. i might maybe consider one slave for HS so that it can be a PC for the 64bit host.

but i know a guy who is running HS on one machine in 2 instances of plogue and all his kontakt stuff loaded into VEpro on the same machine, and mixing it all on logic...on the same machine. 1 modern mac can easily pull all of that. the key thing was that he spread the libraries across different drives.


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## Ian Livingstone (Sep 23, 2010)

I'm basing the 1 machine per section on my experience with HS - but yeah you're probably right when EW do their PLAY hollywood brass & wind it'll probably take up less resources in terms of streaming than HS by nature of the instrument, and hopefully PLAY will be more efficient by the time the brass comes out too.

re: CPU not being a bottleneck - it depends on what latency you like to work at. The big HS legatos ("Powerful System" folder) with all the fancy scripts and bow change etc don't work at all at anything lower than 12ms, and depending on how many simultaneous you want to run it's better at 23ms. So if you have those on the same machine as the short articulations you're stuck to 23ms latency for all. My HS PLAY is an i7-950 with 24gb Ram and sata3 6gps SSD drives.

So that's why I'm currently spreading HS over 2 machines - I may look again at the LT12 patches though as I'm not sure how much benefit the Powerful System ones are giving me. re: running HS on 1 machine simultaneously with Kontakt - it really depends on your choice of patches - LT6, LT12 or the big ones.

re: 64gb ram machines - the cost for the memory alone is about £4k at the moment, so depends on how much you want to spend. My 24gb was £440 

Ian


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## Gerd Kaeding (Sep 23, 2010)

stevenson-again @ Thu Sep 23 said:


> the other thing is, you can use 64bit VEpro and 32bit logic - i am not sure you can use 64bit VEpro server in logic 32bit on the same machine. i mean i don't know - can you?



Hi ,

yes , you can use both 64bit VEPro and 32bit VEPro as PlugIns inside 32bit Logic on the same computer .


I'm running Logic9 32bit ( OS 10.6.4 ) rather as a big Mixer , no samples loaded , and on the same machine I have both VEPro 64bit ( with Kontakt 4.1 only) and VEPro 32bit ( with PLAY HS only ) connected as "decoupled" instances .
Another slave is also connected via VEPro 32bit (PLAY HS , decoupled) .


Best

Gerd


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## whinecellar (Sep 23, 2010)

gsilbers @ Wed Sep 22 said:


> you cant do offline bouncing right using export track in place?
> 
> how do you bounce down all those tracks using VEP?



Yes, you CAN do offline bouncing & bounce in place - it's just that there's a bug in the current version w/ regard to latency compensation. There are 2 easy workarounds in the time being: either disable Logic's LC (via key command is easiest) or set the VE Pro plugin buffer to 'none.'

Easy as that! Offline bounce was actually the main reason I looked into VE Pro - with a 300-track template, realtime bouncing was getting REALLY old


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## cc64 (Sep 23, 2010)

stevenson-again @ Thu Sep 23 said:


> yes i am speaking VEpro in STANDALONE mode. i am aware that the server version should allow tempo synching.



Hi Rohan,

i'm very new to VEPro myself. Didn't even know you could use it without the server thanks for the tip ; )

Claude


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## whinecellar (Sep 23, 2010)

stevenson-again @ Thu Sep 23 said:


> i am not sure you can use 64bit VEpro server in logic 32bit on the same machine. i mean i don't know - can you?



Absolutely. That's another killer feature of VE Pro - you can run any combination of 32 & 64-bit stuff, and as a result you can continue using Logic in 32 bit mode and not have to deal with the bit bridge...


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## Stephen Baysted (Sep 24, 2010)

Ian Livingstone @ Thu Sep 23 said:


> the consumption on the PSUs is probably low it's more the air-con to cool them
> 
> I think the way things are going though with new libraries is that we're going to ultimately need at least 1 machine per section - so can't imagine downsizing any less than 5 machines anytime soon.
> HS ideally needs to be spread over 2 machines IMO - legatos on 1 with bigger latency for the scripts to cope (12-24ms), and short arts on another with low latency.
> ...




+1. That is what I've concluded too - I'm using 5 slaves here (all 64bit PCs).


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## synthetic (Sep 24, 2010)

whinecellar @ Thu Sep 23 said:


> stevenson-again @ Thu Sep 23 said:
> 
> 
> > i am not sure you can use 64bit VEpro server in logic 32bit on the same machine. i mean i don't know - can you?
> ...



Yup, that's the main reason I'm using it.


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## esteso (Sep 26, 2010)

whinecellar @ Thu Sep 23 said:


> Easy as that! Offline bounce was actually the main reason I looked into VE Pro - with a 300-track template, realtime bouncing was getting REALLY old



Yes but don't you have to listen to the final stems in real time anyway to make sure there's no glitches?


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## whinecellar (Sep 26, 2010)

esteso @ Sun Sep 26 said:


> Yes but don't you have to listen to the final stems in real time anyway to make sure there's no glitches?



Yes indeed - and I'd much rather listen ONCE in realtime than twice


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