Build for a VE Pro Slave

[David Kudell]

I took a decision to send all of the articulations for each section out of VE Pro to a single stereo output with a view to level mixing with CCs and if any corrective EQ is needed doing it within VE Pro. Are there advantages/disadvantages to this approach vs doing something else?

As an example, here's my VEPro returns for strings:

STR VLN
STR VLA
STR CELLI
STR BASS
STR ENSEMBLE
STR SOLOS

Most of my strings go through those returns because they all have a good amount of room sound and I don't need to add much reverb. Then I have another set of returns dedicated to Cinematic Studio Series because I add more reverb to those.

CSS VLN
CSS VLA
CSS CELLI
CSS BASS
CSS ENSEMBLE
CSS SOLOS

Woodwinds are:
Flutes
Oboes/EH
Clarinet
Bass Clar
Bassoon
Solo WW
WW Ensembles FX

Once you have these in Cubase, you can send them to whatever groups you want. So if you just need to deliver a single Woodwinds stem, all those VEPs can route to that. Keep in mind you can route groups to groups, so it's kind of like a pyramid where you have more groups at the top and you can route however you need to make as few stems as you want.

 

[David Kudell]

Is 1Gbps ethernet fast enough to support a large number of tracks hosted in VE Pro?

Yep, plenty.

 

[cleverr1]

As an example, here's my VEPro returns for strings:

STR VLN
STR VLA
STR CELLI
STR BASS
STR ENSEMBLE
STR SOLOS

Most of my strings go through those returns because they all have a good amount of room sound and I don't need to add much reverb. Then I have another set of returns dedicated to Cinematic Studio Series because I add more reverb to those.

CSS VLN
CSS VLA
CSS CELLI
CSS BASS
CSS ENSEMBLE
CSS SOLOS

Woodwinds are:
Flutes
Oboes/EH
Clarinet
Bass Clar
Bassoon
Solo WW
WW Ensembles FX

Once you have these in Cubase, you can send them to whatever groups you want. So if you just need to deliver a single Woodwinds stem, all those VEPs can route to that. Keep in mind you can route groups to groups, so it's kind of like a pyramid where you have more groups at the top and you can route however you need to make as few stems as you want.

Thanks! - that makes a lot of sense. So are you sharing the same VE Pro outputs for e.g. STR VLN between violins from different libraries and mixing inside VE Pro (except CSS as you mentioned), or do you have different versions of such outputs for each library which have nested groups within Cubase?

 

[cleverr1]

Having spent most of my weekend working on a template I've concluded that it's a tedious task
Something strange sometimes happened with running multi output versions of Kontakt where the output setting within Kontakt was different to the real VE Pro channel being used. I worked around the issue by selecting whatever Kontact output routed to where it was needed. I hope this is a consistent thing and the outputs won't move around in the future.

I found the Artifical Harmonics website who built me a custom VE Pro / Cubase template which includes several of the libraries I have which was a great starting point. Kudos!

Does anyone know of other sources of VE Pro templates or even just VE Pro instances that could be merged?

My wish list is something for the following:
Hollywood Orchestra Opus Diamond
Metropolis Ark 1
Century Brass
Century Strings
Sonokinetic orchestral and sordino strings

In particular I'm hoping for a HOOpus VE Pro instance as that's a daunting challenge.

 

[David Kudell]

Something strange sometimes happened with running multi output versions of Kontakt where the output setting within Kontakt was different to the real VE Pro channel being used. I worked around the issue by selecting whatever Kontact output routed to where it was needed. I hope this is a consistent thing and the outputs won't move around in the future.

I noticed this recently, you mean where the names become different, like “Low+Groups” or something? it seems like a new bug that’s cropped up. Not sure if it’s an update from Kontakt or VEP.

I’m not sure about templates to download. For me, I feel like building it is essential to know how the thing works because once I get on a deadline composing, I don’t want to be trying to figure out how someone else set up the routing or grouped things.

The answer to the question from your last post is, I always group libraries together and the only time I do a different group for a specific library is if it’s more dry and needs more reverb to match the other ones, since I have my reverb send in Cubase. That way I can add more reverb to just those returns.

 

[cleverr1]

I noticed this recently, you mean where the names become different, like “Low+Groups” or something? it seems like a new bug that’s cropped up. Not sure if it’s an update from Kontakt or VEP.

My issue was that for example Kontakt showed output st2 as connected to 3/4 but the signal still came out of 1/2. When I set it as st3 showing as 5/6 in Kontakt it then routed to 3/4. Whilst doing this made it work, something's definitely not right.

I’m not sure about templates to download. For me, I feel like building it is essential to know how the thing works because once I get on a deadline composing, I don’t want to be trying to figure out how someone else set up the routing or grouped things.

I totally get that!

I'm still learning so I'm unclear about which type of layout I'll end up preferring.

Elements of the off the shelf templates I've used so far are great as placeholders. They're something to work with whilst getting to understand more about the libraries and how to best configure them. I'm reviewing and tweaking as I go. However, the instances I've created myself are most familiar and "logical" to me. I suspect that further down the road I'll have a clearer idea about how to structure my ideal template.

After 2 weekends worth of installation and template building I'd really like to write some music!

OT - The HP Z640 has been rock solid so far. I need to go through my current template and purge as its using total RAM of around 120GB but I'm able to load and release the current ~450 track Cubase template in seconds. This is definitely "The way".

 

[cleverr1]

I've hit a bit of a glitch. At just over 700 tracks the z640 CPU is steady at over 30% when connected to Cubase but not playing anything. The trouble is that's 30% of the total CPU, but it's all on one processor. The processor VE Pro picks when initiated varies, but in the current configuration it's not using both processors. Also the max thread setting in the options is 36, (should be 72). This also means it can't use 128GB of the 256GB RAM.
I've contacted VSL support hoping that there's a setting somewhere to enable multi CPU use. It may be possible to work around this by running a separate virtualised O/S and setting processor affinities, but that feels potentially messy.

 

[David Kudell]

Interesting, will be curious to hear what the fix is. For reference, my 8 core trash can Mac Pro has 3 instances, each getting 5 threads (15 of 16 threads used by VEP) and the CPU of each instance is around 25-35% on idle. It works fine. Buffer is at 512 / 1 buffer. I can go to 1024 / 2 buffers if needed but havent needed to. But that’s single processor, I think dual is only a windows option.

 

[cleverr1]

Thanks for that info - it's a good reference. I haven't had a chance to test my system with a proper arrangement yet (far too busy building a template to actually make some music ) but it seems comfortable at 512 buffers with 2 buffers in the plugins.

I got half an answer from VSL who confirmed that each instance can only access a single CPU, which would explain why the highest setting in the default threads section is 36 here. I've gone back to them asking if VE Pro Server x64 itself supports multiple CPUs.

 

[cleverr1]

From the response from VSL support it seems their devs don't understand this citing that Windows will distribute the threads to the best of it's abilities.

If I run Prime95 all 36 cores show as active so this proves it's not about Windows so looks like a limitation of VE Pro Server x64.

I'm hoping that they'll put this on the backlog as a feature request, but at this time it's looks like a dual socket machine isn't the way to go.

 

[cleverr1]

On a positive note I was initially unsure if a single CPU could make use of more than half the RAM - It can:

This huge number reduces to around 35GB over time. I think it's the Spitfire players as I purged all the Kontakt instances.

 

[cleverr1]

I now understand the issue with VE Pro 7 x64 Server not supporting dual CPUs:

Processor Groups - Win32 apps

The 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and later versions of Windows support more than 64 logical processors on a single computer. This functionality is not available on 32-bit versions of Windows.

docs.microsoft.com

Seems it wasn't written to support multiple processor groups and my HP z640 presents 2 processor groups.

Windows 11 takes care of this automatically for apps that aren't multi processor group aware but the Xeons in my HP z640 aren't on the Win 11 compatibility list

The good news is there's a workaround:

Bitsum. Real-time CPU Optimization and Automation

Real-Time CPU Optimization and Automation. Keep your PC responsive during high CPU loads and automate process settings with rules. Apps run YOUR WAY!

bitsum.com

I've got this running and the CPU load is now distributed across the 2 processors. The timing of playback seems unaffected.

However, VSL should fix this.