# Mac vs PC as VEP Slave



## Prockamanisc (Jul 7, 2017)

Would there be any difference, really? Is there a difference in speed? Stability? Configurability? I'd be getting a 12-core cheesegrater so I'd be able to slide in SSDs as I need.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jul 7, 2017)

Just make sure you get the PCI adaptors, otherwise your SSD's will be running SATA II. Personally, I'd spend the money on a new PC build as your slave. You could have a powerful machine for under $1500, and you'll have plenty of space for SSD's.


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## dog1978 (Jul 7, 2017)

PC is cheaper  I've done a few videos.


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## bjderganc (Jul 7, 2017)

The first two replies are great. I'd just add that if you don't have experience with Windows, don't require the fastest/best server machine, and the old Mac Pro is relatively cheap, it might make sense to go that route for simplicity's sake.


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## Johann F. (Jul 7, 2017)

Unless you are getting the cheesegrater for peanuts, I agree with Wolfie, a new PC build can be very cheap and easily overpower the mac.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jul 7, 2017)

wolfie wrote:



> Just make sure you get the PCI adaptors, otherwise your SSD's will be running SATA II



I can tell you from personal experience with the same SSD on the Mac's internal half-speed bus and on a SATA 3 card... it makes no practical difference. At first I thought it made a QL Piano load in :08 instead of :10, but that turned out to be an anomaly.

You have to saturate the SATA 2 bus before it makes any difference, and that's a LOT of voices.


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## jononotbono (Jul 8, 2017)

I plan on turning my 5,1 into a slave at some point but only because I already own it. I would say PCs for Sample computers is the way to go now! More horsepower, less money and you only need windows so you can start VEPro etc. 

I'm wondering what a good choice of CPU would be at this point. Something powerful enough to run 128gb of ram...


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## IFM (Jul 8, 2017)

I agree with Nick on this one. VEP mac to mac I've found more reliable and honestly building a PC as good as that older Mac is still expensive...it's server class after all and I think too many people are trying to compare i7's to XEON's here. Sure the SATA tech is older okay I'll give you that but like Nick said it has never been an bottleneck and you can add SATA3 if you desire with a card. 

That being said I actually have an 8 core AMD as a slave but it's not getting used much anymore. Right now everything runs off the Mac (12 core upgraded cheese grater with 65 gig ram). This includes HS Diamond, HB, HWW, and a ton of other VI's and sample libraries. I like keeping it on one machine just because it's quiet, requires less power overall and convenient.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Jul 9, 2017)

My 2010 mac tower 8x2.4Ghz, 64gb ram is a great slave. I load it up with 60gb of samples and get 1800+ voices out of it. Rock solid. So is my windows 7 slave. All good. VEP rocks.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jul 10, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> wolfie wrote:
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That's actually really good to know. I've never actually tried it, only heard from other users that was noticeable slower with bigger libraries.


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## Michael Antrum (Jul 10, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> wolfie wrote:
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When I put Hollywood Orchestra Diamond on a SSD mounted SATA 3 card it seemed to me to be much snappier loading than when it was on the standard internal bus. However, I never actually timed it so it might be the placebo effect - but I was pretty sure that using it on the internal bus was a fair bit lumpier. 

Having said that - when it's on a VE Pro slave you are not as focussed on it as it would be on your main DAW.....


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jul 10, 2017)

mikey, as I posted, when I timed loading a QL Bosendorfer on the internal bus it took 10 seconds, then I moved the drive to the SATA 3 bus it took 8, then back to the internal one and it was 8 again.

I'm sure this isn't scientific, because I didn't pay attention to what else was going on in the computer - for example maybe the memory was fragmented differently due to other things loaded... who knows. And if there is a difference in loading times, it would be amplified when you time an entire template rather than a single instrument.

But my takeaway is that it isn't anything I want to worry about.


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## TintoL (Jul 11, 2017)

The PC price vs power and memory ratio compared to mac is just too big to justify a mac slave. Specially now that amd is just there in power. You can have an amd slave no problem except that it doesn't provide 4 lanes so you can use 8 slots of ram. 8 slots of ram in mac requires you getting into mac pro market which is ludicrous expensive.

You can use win10 for slaves. But for main daw, i would use win7. The self driver update is a nightmare in win 10 plus my rme raydat has issues with my mobo and win 10. And is a potential issue in win 10, it needs a lot of customization. 

Mac pros use dual xeon setups in general. And is well known that dual xeon don't help in real time performance. They are actually slower than a single cpu. For the price of an old mac you can get a brand new pc with 8 slots of ram so you can get into the 124 gb of ram for about 1200 bucks. Unless you find a supper mega cheap old mac, i wouldn't go for it. Even if I find one, I would rather get a front line 8 lane cpu based computer.

I don't care so much about loading time counted in speeds of milliseconds. I rather have all the orchestra loaded. That to me is the idea of a slave. Now a days, a single computer can play enough voices needed at one time to dismiss the idea of having a slave thinking about cpu power usage. SSds help, but to me, memory is the boss. Why would you get a slave with a ton of ssds that has just 48 gb of ram? just to keep unloading and loading instruments in vep? That looses the idea of a slave. You can do that in your main computer. If you are not loading to max memory a slave with a lot of ram, then it doesn't make sense to have a slave any more. (Because loading and unloading an instrument in cubase and vep 6 changed the whole way of working)




Good luck...


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jul 11, 2017)

Myself, I do not load all of my slave VI's into RAM. The SSD's provide not only fast initial loading, but fast streaming. My slave only has 32GB, but I pack a lot in there since I don't exclusively load into RAM. Your price vs power and memory ratio is bang on.


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## agarner32 (Jul 11, 2017)

TintoL said:


> Why would you get a slave with a ton of ssds that has just 48 gb of ram? just to keep unloading and loading instruments in vep? That looses the idea of a slave. You can do that in your main computer. If you are not loading to max memory a slave with a lot of ram, then it doesn't make sense to have a slave any more. (Because loading and unloading an instrument in cubase and vep 6 changed the whole way of working)


I completely agree which is why I got a PC slave with 128 GB of RAM plus my iMac maxed out with 32. I have everything I need ready to go, but everyone works differently.


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## TintoL (Jul 11, 2017)

agarner32 said:


> but everyone works differently.


Yeah, That is also true. I was surprised that Daniel James loads instruments as he composes. Then you have Alex Pfeffer (as per the last template video he had in his channel) used cubase loading and unloading instruments to support a mega template. And then you have Junkiexl that has a MEGA SUPER MEGA MASSIVE TEMPLATE ALL LOADED across multiple computers. I think it was 5 slaves with 128GB of ram each.


I rather have all loaded and not having to waste time anymore loading instruments and programming channels after the template is done.


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## JaikumarS (Jul 11, 2017)

@TintoL , @agarner32 and @IFM - would you guys recommend having a PC - AMD 6 core Processor with 128GB RAM is a good option for a Slave exclusively for VEP only? 

Thank you.


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## agarner32 (Jul 11, 2017)

JaikumarS said:


> would you guys recommend having a PC - AMD 6 core Processor with 128GB RAM is a good option for a Slave exclusively for VEP only?


I'm not an expert at this, but definitely yes to the 128 GB of RAM. I have a 14-core Xeon processor with a 128 GB of RAM and it works great. I was told after I had it built that processor speed was more important than number of cores. If that's true I should have gotten a faster processor with fewer cores. At any rate, it is still a great machine.


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## heisenberg (Jul 11, 2017)

Thanks for the VEPro tutorial videos dog. Most helpful.


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## jononotbono (Jul 11, 2017)

agarner32 said:


> I was told after I had it built that processor speed was more important than number of cores. If that's true I should have gotten a faster processor with fewer cores. At any rate, it is still a great machine.



This is only true for a DAW machine. Not a Slave Machine. The more RAM you use means more cores are needed and for a sample streaming computer a faster clock speed isn't necessary at all. A DAW machine is best with a Higher clock speed and less cores (6 or 8 is the current sweet spot). If you have the money then both is obviously best but the fact is, more cores in a DAW doesn't really benefit.


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## heisenberg (Jul 12, 2017)

The vast majority of people are using 6 core CPUs. 10 core has been bleeding edge for the most expensive machines until very recently.


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## dog1978 (Jul 12, 2017)

heisenberg said:


> Thanks for the VEPro tutorial videos dog. Most helpful.


Thanks for the feedback.


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## TintoL (Jul 12, 2017)

JaikumarS said:


> @TintoL , @agarner32 and @IFM - would you guys recommend having a PC - AMD 6 core Processor with 128GB RAM is a good option for a Slave exclusively for VEP only?
> 
> Thank you.


Well, i am almost sure that amd currently only supports up to 64bg of ram. Thats why i said that i rather have a 4 lane cpu than a amd 2 lane cpu. The 4 lanes is what allows you to have 8 slots of ram and push memory to 128gb.

I would go for a pc intel based with 4 lanes cpu. Also, make sure the cpu has multythreading enabeled or supports it. (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. You will not be able to use all threads with vep if the cpu doesn't have this. Intel starts offering cheaper cpus by taking stuff out. And this one is a big one)

Any x99 mobo will do. Preferably an asrock. They are very stable and predictable.

Avoid any mobo marketed for gaming, they are over priced and have stuff added that might conflict with real time performance like the one i have.

In terms of the cores. It depends. If is a slave, then the software used is vep. Which is astonishingly efficient at dealing with multicores and threads. Cubase not so much.

Vep shares the cores and threads based on instances. If you are planning to have multiple instances for organizing instruments, then you need as many cores as possible. For example, a 4 core should have around 8 threads; devided into 2 instances it would be 4 threads each instance. If you have 8 instances, then each instance will end up with 1 thread. Affecting the performance of moments where you are streaming or triggering audio from multiple instruments in that single instance. Also, when using kontakt in vep, is best to turn off multithreading off in kontakt so it doesn't conflict with vep usage of threads. Or keep it really low.

Speed and cores are equally important but depends in your workflow. Vep works better with less instances because it uses threads extremelly well.

It's really best to use fewer instances practically. Because, lets say your slave crashes, or you are decopeled in vep and your daw dies, then, when you reload your vep slave, you will have to reconnect all 10 or 15 or 30 instances you have again. Plus, connecting midi channels is a nightmare because you have to go through a massive list of channels on different instances and you make mistakes often and connect stuff to what doesn't supposed to. etc... etc...

Vep limits each instance at 48 ( i think) channels. Each with an instance of kontakt. So, with a big template you can easelly hit about 4 instances.

Avoid xeons period. Is not necessary animore. Too expensive both mobos and cpu. Price performance ratio is mega stupid. Same with video cards, never get a quadro. Who needs error corection this days.

You would use a xeon if you are doing a climate or astronomic simulation over months. THAT HAS TO BE STABLE. For us, is like a game.

Hope that helps...


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## JaikumarS (Jul 12, 2017)

TintoL said:


> Well, i am almost sure that amd currently only supports up to 64bg of ram. Thats why i said that i rather have a 4 lane cpu than a amd 2 lane cpu. The 4 lanes is what allows you to have 8 slots of ram and push memory to 128gb.
> 
> I would go for a pc intel based with 4 lanes cpu. Also, make sure the cpu has multythreading enabeled or supports it. (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. You will not be able to use all threads with vep if the cpu doesn't have this. Intel starts offering cheaper cpus by taking stuff out. And this one is a big one)
> 
> ...



Thank you @TintoL


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## edhamilton (Sep 25, 2019)

What's the latest on this?
Assuming same cpu - is windows still outperforming mac os for VEP purposes?
Stability?
Voice Count?
ease of use for windows novices like myself?


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