# Slave: why you should have one? :)



## reset85 (Aug 2, 2016)

Hi everyone,

totally frustrated in trying to decide how to upgrade my current DAW. Totally newbie also, wanting to understand more, so any link is much appreciated!

What is a slave computer and why an ITB soundtrack composer should have one? I'm now (happily) running an Hackintosh but it's time for me to move to PT 12 and a thunderbolt audio interface.

Let's say you ave 2k € as budget: Mac Pro (trashcan or old)? New Hackintosh? Mac mini + Slave (how does it work?!)?

Thanks a lot for you help.


----------



## mc_deli (Aug 2, 2016)

If you are a total newbie then you should read up about VE Pro. I'll wager 99% of composers using slaves are using VE Pro on the slave machine(s).

My understanding is it's all about voice count. When you need more voices, you need more CPU power and more RAM, and when you can't fit more power/RAM into your main machine, you need a slave.

The overwhelming answer about "what slave" you are are going to get here is: get an i7 PC.
VE Pro works on Mac/PC and 32/64 bit. VE Pro on your slave. Connects via ethernet to your main machine. Elegant. Brilliant cross platform solution. Takes some setting up of course but works great. The preserve feature is king.

Buying a slave means buying as much power as possible for the money. Trashcan is not a slave and a 6 core is what 4k plus at least? Cheese grater Mac Pro 2010 onwards is a great machine (no TB). Mac Mini 4 core 16GB from 2012 is also good value. 
The 2010 MP is a great buy as a main machine (check createpro - will still set you back 3k+ for a serious set up with 48GB+). The Mac Mini if portability is a real issue. The only real justification for a Mac slave is if you already have the machine or if you have a windows phobia.

But on price/performance you get so much more from a PC. Search the DAW forum here for lots of builds/parts.


----------



## Saxer (Aug 2, 2016)

Seriously: if you don't know what you need a slave for you don't need one. It's only useful if you have a fast computer with lot of RAM and still have CPU overload and RAM problems.


----------



## rgames (Aug 2, 2016)

As said above, whether you need a slave (almost always) depends on your voice count requirements.

The good news is that now is a great time to build a slave. You can get a top-performing slave for under $1000, so you can get two for your budget. Using your current machine as the master you will get performance far in excess of anything possible on a single machine.

Again, though, you might not need such performance. If you can get by with a single machine then there are good reasons to do so.

One thing is for certain - don't fall into the trap of thinking that spending more money yields better performance. It does not always - make sure you compare what you need against the capabilities of what your options are. I think an overclocked i7 6700k is as good as anything out there these days and you can build one for under $1000. I just built two for slaves and spent under $1500 (reused case, powersupply and drives).


----------



## CACKLAND (Aug 2, 2016)

rgames said:


> As said above, whether you need a slave (almost always) depends on your voice count requirements.
> 
> The good news is that now is a great time to build a slave. You can get a top-performing slave for under $1000, so you can get two for your budget. Using your current machine as the master you will get performance far in excess of anything possible on a single machine.
> 
> ...



rgames, could you provide the specs / components for your recent builds?


----------



## Ashermusic (Aug 2, 2016)

rgames said:


> You can get a top-performing slave for under $1000,



I assume that is without SSDs, right? So realistically if you want it to do what you build a slave to do, I think that figure goes up a bit, correct?


----------



## rgames (Aug 2, 2016)

CACKLAND said:


> rgames, could you provide the specs / components for your recent builds?


Sure:
Motherboard: ASUS Z-170E $106
CPU: i7 6700k $350
RAM: G-Skill Ripjaws V Series 4x16 GB (64 GB total) $206

I re-used a case, power supply and drives but figure $75 for case and power supply then however many SSDs you need to hold your libraries. Figure about $250 for SSDs and you're under $1000.

I have another one that uses an Asrock motherboard that was about $120 more but gave the same performance.

I have a mix of different SSDs in them - Samsung, Crucial, OCZ, etc. I also have a Samsung NVMe drive that reduces load times about 15% but gives the same voice counts.

Performance for this setup is here:

http://vi-control.net/community/threads/i7-6700k-slave-machine-sample-streaming-benchmarks.54126/

rgames


----------



## CACKLAND (Aug 2, 2016)

rgames said:


> Sure:
> Motherboard: ASUS Z-170E $106
> CPU: i7 6700k $350
> RAM: G-Skill Ripjaws V Series 4x16 GB (64 GB total) $206
> ...



What is your standpoint on both 1151 vs X99 sockets? With x99 / DDR4, would you consider this a huge advantage / upgrade over 1151 socket?


----------



## rgames (Aug 2, 2016)

CACKLAND said:


> What is your standpoint on both 1151 vs X99 sockets? With x99 / DDR4, would you consider this a huge advantage / upgrade over 1151 socket?


I haven't seen any evidence that X99 provides a benefit for DAW use. That doesn't mean there's no benefit, it simply means I haven't seen it. I've looked, though...

You can get higher-core count CPUs on X99 so if you're CPU limited then it might help. But I've never been CPU limited, even as far back as my i7 920. You might hit CPU bottlenecks if you try to run everything on one machine so X99 might help in that regard but it's still much better to just add a cheap slave than buy a single X99 system.

rgames


----------



## CACKLAND (Aug 2, 2016)

rgames said:


> I haven't seen any evidence that X99 provides a benefit for DAW use. That doesn't mean there's no benefit, it simply means I haven't seen it. I've looked, though...
> 
> You can get higher-core count CPUs on X99 so if you're CPU limited then it might help. But I've never been CPU limited, even as far back as my i7 920. You might hit CPU bottlenecks if you try to run everything on one machine so X99 might help in that regard but it's still much better to just add a cheap slave than buy a single X99 system.
> 
> rgames


Currently I have a 6 Core X99 setup.. When implementing a slave, and from your experience would you recommend the slave having more cores over the Main DAW PC?


----------



## rgames (Aug 2, 2016)

CACKLAND said:


> Currently I have a 6 Core X99 setup.. When implementing a slave, and from your experience would you recommend the slave having more cores over the Main DAW PC?


For master or slave I've found that clock speed matters more than number of cores. Actually, I (and many others) have seen that very high core counts (e.g. dual Xeon systems) actually degrade performance for anything but very specific kinds of software.

4-6 cores seems to be the current sweet spot for nearly all applications, including DAW use. Video rendering tends to favor more cores and DAW use tends to favor faster cores.

rgames


----------



## CACKLAND (Aug 2, 2016)

That is exactly what I have found through my research also. Thanks Richard


----------



## tack (Aug 2, 2016)

rgames said:


> I haven't seen any evidence that X99 provides a benefit for DAW use.


The main benefit is memory capacity. This is what I wrote on a related thread:



tack said:


> I think the 6700k makes a fine DAW CPU. (It's what I run.) The main disadvantage is indeed the 64GB limit. Xeon doesn't necessarily need to be the next stop though: the i7 6800k might be a very reasonable compromise if you can clock it up to about 4.2 or 4.3GHz (which looks doable from reports), since it can address up to 128GB.


----------



## rgames (Aug 2, 2016)

tack said:


> The main benefit is memory capacity


That's true. But I still have a hard time thinking of a scenario where you can make practical use of 128 GB. But maybe that's just my lack of imagination...

For example: my two slaves use 25 - 30 GB each. That's with pre-load buffers much higher than necessary for running from SSD. I'm sure I could get it down to 20 GB or so if I had to, so I could easily drop to 32 GB per machine with no change in performance.

So that's well under 64 GB for WAY more samples than you could ever possibly stream from a single machine. Sure, you can load them. But you can't actually *play* them in anything but the simplest compositions.

For example, I use two mic positions for pretty much all libraries. So I could load up more and get the RAM requirement up, but then the streaming requirements also go way up because you now need more voices per note. So I'd be forced to write simpler music or bounce tracks, in which case it makes more sense to halve the RAM across two machines. Even then, I can't think of a scenario that would push beyond a 64 GB requirement on any one machine.

So, as I said, I can't think of a situation where 128 GB in a single machine makes sense for DAW use. Two 64 GB machines make sense, but not one 128 GB machine.

rgames


----------



## jononotbono (Aug 2, 2016)

rgames said:


> That's true. But I still have a hard time thinking of a scenario where you can make practical use of 128 GB. But maybe that's just my lack of imagination...
> 
> For example: my two slaves use 25 - 30 GB each. That's with pre-load buffers much higher than necessary for running from SSD. I'm sure I could get it down to 20 GB or so if I had to, so I could easily drop to 32 GB per machine with no change in performance.
> 
> ...



I was only going to put 64gb in my Mac Pro 5,1. I did think about 96gb just to have some head room but the price goes up dramatically. Love your You Tube videos by the way!


----------



## reset85 (Aug 2, 2016)

Wow rgames! That's a lot of information, thank you so much!

but... way too advanced for me. I'm trying to understand the basics of the slave/master approach.

As I said in the opening post, I need to upgrade my OS to get PT12 to work therefore I need a new Hackintosh. Now, I don't understand if it's better to invest 2k in one single machine or "split" my system up in one cheaper machine (only for Operative System and ProTools) and a super-powerful slave (only for Samples stored in SSD drives).

Many many "thanks" in RoundRobin.


----------



## rgames (Aug 2, 2016)

reset85 said:


> Now, I don't understand if it's better to invest 2k in one single machine or "split" my system up in one cheaper machine (only for Operative System and ProTools) and a super-powerful slave (only for Samples stored in SSD drives).


Yeah - these discussions always get technical.

But as I said in the first reply, you will get better performance with multiple machines but one might be good enough. Basically it depends on what kind of music you write.

The good news is that pretty much any i7 will be just fine for whatever you want to do. Some are a bit better and some a bit worse but you're still the bottleneck in writing and producing music, not the computer


----------



## tack (Aug 2, 2016)

rgames said:


> So, as I said, I can't think of a situation where 128 GB in a single machine makes sense for DAW use. Two 64 GB machines make sense, but not one 128 GB machine.


I buy your argument that there's going to be a core to memory ratio sweet spot, which is ultimately driven by voice count. And 1:16 may well be that ideal ratio. But let's unpack this a bit ...

Setting aside RT performance, which is basically going to come down to single threaded performance one way or another, that means 4-6 cores with 64GB or 8-12 cores with 128GB is about the ideal configuration, given that ratio. But the motivation to have two 4-6 core / 64GB systems instead of one 8-12 core / 128GB system is ostensibly that DAWs basically bottleneck at around 4 cores? (I'm not sure if Reaper would, but let's ignore that for now. )

If it was just a function of cost, I suspect a 6-8 core / 96GB box (with the same clock speed as the 4-6 core option, crucially) would be the most cost effective. But if the reason not to do that is poor DAW scalability, then wouldn't the obvious solution be to run an instance of VEPro on the same box and just have the DAW talk to it via loopback?


----------



## mc_deli (Aug 2, 2016)

reset85 said:


> As I said in the opening post, I need to upgrade my OS to get PT12 to work therefore I need a new Hackintosh. Now, I don't understand if it's better to invest 2k in one single machine or "split" my system up in one cheaper machine (only for Operative System and ProTools) and a super-powerful slave (only for Samples stored in SSD drives).


This is one of those where it would help if you stated your system specs, what you actually do, and what you want to do.

Why oh lord do you want PT12? No core audio drivers! Subscription pricing!
"New" Hackintosh implies you have built a Hackintosh. I know nothing about PCs but I can follow the posts above.

What is it you are really trying to do here?


----------



## CACKLAND (Aug 2, 2016)

Reset85, bare in mind, a 'NEW' Hackintosh is 'generally' restricted by component selection.


----------



## reset85 (Aug 4, 2016)

These are the system specs of the new Hack I was planning to buy:

-Intel Core i7 4790 3.6GHz, 4 Cores / 8 Threads
-RAM: 32 GB DDR3 1600 MHz
-MotherB: Chipset Z97, Socket Intel LGA 1150 Dual UEFI BIOS ATX, USB 3.0 
-Storage: 3x 1 TB SATA 3 7200 rpm + SSD SATA 3 500 GB
-Thunderbolt 2.0
-Video: GTX 610 2 GB GDDR5
-WiFi
-Case: Fractal Define R5 + power supply 550W
-OS: Yosemite/El Capitan

I work especially in advert/commercial field, totally ITB.
*
Mc_Deli:* PT 12: I'm a Protoolers and, if I'm not wrong, you can purchase the so-called "perpetual license". What about the core audio drivers?


----------



## CACKLAND (Aug 4, 2016)

reset85 said:


> These are the system specs of the new Hack I was planning to buy:
> 
> -Intel Core i7 4790 3.6GHz, 4 Cores / 8 Threads
> -RAM: 32 GB DDR3 1600 MHz
> ...



Have you checked Tonymacx86 / Forums to see if those anyone in the community has successfully hacked those components for OS X to work?


----------



## nas (Aug 4, 2016)

reset85 said:


> Wow rgames! That's a lot of information, thank you so much!
> 
> but... way too advanced for me. I'm trying to understand the basics of the slave/master approach.
> 
> ...



If 2K Euro is your budget, I would probably forget about a Mac Pro trashcan. If you're looking for that kind of power (beyond what an iMac can do on a single machine) then you're probably looking at a 6 core CPU on the Mac Pro. Then a minimum of 32 GB of RAM... from a third party vendor if you so choose as what Apple charges for RAM is way expensive, and then you need external SSD's to stream your samples (the trash can Mac Pro doe not allow for extra internal SSD's like the older Mac Pros)... So you're looking at something like the Black Magic dock and extra SSD's - this will probably bring your budget up to about 5k USD total (and that's without the thunderbolt interface you want to purchase or a display and "only" 32 GB of RAM).

This is why a PC slave starts to make more sense if you need the power and voice count but don't want to drop that kind of dough on a new Mac Pro. 

So ask yourself... are you doing the kind of work and using the kind of sample libraries that really require a slave? If so then go with a PC slave. If not, and you want to stay with only one computer and an Apple, then maybe consider a new iMac with an i7 processor and 32-64 GB of RAM and an external SSD ... or two


----------



## passsacaglia (Aug 4, 2016)

reset85 said:


> These are the system specs of the new Hack I was planning to buy:
> 
> -Intel Core i7 4790 3.6GHz, 4 Cores / 8 Threads
> -RAM: 32 GB DDR3 1600 MHz
> ...


If you wanna build hacks You should check these one out:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/i...-extreme-32gb-ram-gtx-770-4gb-success.130386/

or this one with the 4790k you mentioned:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/s...-bk-i7-4790k-16gb-ram-gtx-970-10-11-1.180737/

http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/s...gt-i7-4790k-nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-sc.149666/

There are more, but I have a folder for some of the best success! / golden builds out there  There are some stickys with Golden builds or you can just search on the forum. I'm sure you will find inspiring ones there and be sure to pick a good solid build from the "success!" posts there. Also be sure to pick the best motherboard for OC later.


----------



## Selfinflicted (Aug 4, 2016)

Is PT12 the only thing holding you to mac OS? I'd switch to windows. Much better bang for the buck. But, you mentioned a thunderbolt audio interface, so if you're going UAD Apollo or something, OK. also, PC and RME make a very nice pairing!...

I've built a lot of hacks and did two with the components you mention. I used this Mobo for thunderbolt - GA-Z97X-UD7 TH, but it's not available anymore. The key is to find a working build that you want on Tonymacx86 that works more or less out of the box being used for the purpose(s) you have in mind. Make sure your audio hardware works on that build, as well - any hardware. Processor, OS, mobo features (like thunderbolt, etc) are key - then find a video card known to work that will do what you need. Video card is the single biggest PIA when building hacks. Go for 10.10 or 10.11 so you don't have to update your OS for a while. Sometimes you are not able to update later - really depends on other people hacking later OS's for the components you have. But, I've been fine scrapping an old build, salvaging parts and building a new one. But, it's even easier with PCs.


----------



## passsacaglia (Aug 4, 2016)

Selfinflicted said:


> Is PT12 the only thing holding you to mac OS? I'd switch to windows. Much better bang for the buck. But, you mentioned a thunderbolt audio interface, so if you're going UAD Apollo or something, OK. also, PC and RME make a very nice pairing!...
> 
> I've built a lot of hacks and did two with the components you mention. I used this Mobo for thunderbolt - GA-Z97X-UD7 TH, but it's not available anymore. The key is to find a working build that you want on Tonymacx86 that works more or less out of the box being used for the purpose(s) you have in mind. Make sure your audio hardware works on that build, as well - any hardware. Processor, OS, mobo features (like thunderbolt, etc) are key - then find a video card known to work that will do what you need. Video card is the single biggest PIA when building hacks. Go for 10.10 or 10.11 so you don't have to update your OS for a while. Sometimes you are not able to update later - really depends on other people hacking later OS's for the components you have. But, I've been fine scrapping an old build, salvaging parts and building a new one. But, it's even easier with PCs.


Word. Exactly, read that. Someone had trouble with the Radeon card for example 
Gigabyte seems fav for Hacks right? But ASUS and ASrock seems solid ones too esp the Extreme ones and top Asus ones.


----------



## Selfinflicted (Aug 4, 2016)

Gigabyte and Asus are by far the more common. But, MSI and ASrock have a good amount of builds as well. If you're the gambling type and have parts lying around, you can just put some stuff together and hope for the best. I did it once and got luck with with a Jetway board on an untested OS. I just wouldn't spend a lot of time on it if it doesn't go quickly. It can quickly turn into a quagmire.

Thunderbolt will likely be our biggest sticking point on a hack build. Last summer I built a TB hack and was looking at the GA and Asus boards. It was slim pickin's z97 and x99 boards.


----------



## reset85 (Aug 5, 2016)

CACKLAND said:


> Have you checked Tonymacx86 / Forums to see if those anyone in the community has successfully hacked those components for OS X to work?



I'm having my hack built by a team of people (found via facebook) who specifically make hackintosh for professional music purposes. So, I trust them blindly as far as compatibility is concerned.



passsacaglia said:


> If you wanna build hacks You should check these one out:
> http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/i...-extreme-32gb-ram-gtx-770-4gb-success.130386/
> 
> or this one with the 4790k you mentioned:
> ...



Thank you passacaglia! I will surely check them out 


Anyway, right now I never felt the urge of having a PC slave. Is this something I may add later without too many headaches by linking it to my new baby hack?

ps- it's quite funny how we, as musicians, are spending less and less time thinking about music to do our job!


----------

