How easy VEPro is in your workflow?

[storyteller]

What personal experience are you talking about if I am the person who's asking the experienced people about something that I still don't have? ... It's so natural to quote others because they're the ones who provided the answers I need. I just recapped the whole thing !

I am the wrong person to debate. Debate who I quoted !

Digital data is bit-for-bit identical when streaming across a network using VEPro. For there to have been any difference there would have to be some type of a user configuration difference in sample rates/bitrates or something else likely overlooked. @dgburns is absolutely right on this.

And - please take this next comment constructively as I am sure you are making a good faith effort to have a constructive conversation…. But the summary you gave appears strongly biased to an outcome you seem to have already desired. Meaning, a person who saw the value in VEPro could have assembled a totally opposite list of quotes from this thread to support their desired outcome. The reality is that first hand experience is the only way to truly know what works best for you when testing all of the scenarios and weighing each amount of feedback equally. A good example is if you are working on a film with countless cues, a properly designed preserved-decoupled vepro config with proper hardware load distribution is going to tremendously improve workflows, save times, and efficiencies compared to local… but a poorly thought-out vepro approach is not going to yield those favorable results.

One more thought… if someone has a vepro setup that is being streamed to another render rig rather than back to the DAW over IP, they could have inserted extra layers of DA/AD conversion or analog noise due to cabling that could affect quality. But back to @dgburns point… if streamed over IP using vepro, then it should be bit-for-bit identical.

 

[bcslaam]

What I found as an optimal setup is decoupled-preserved for the save state. All instruments are always enabled in VEPro. In each DAW project, I will still enable/disable tracks, but that only affects the project plugin - not the VEPro instance. The reason for this is that disabled tracks in a large template free up CPU for your project. So you want to make your project as efficient as possible too. If I really needed to, I have it setup to be able to enable/disable the instruments inside of VEPro with a shortcut, but that sort of negates why I would use VEPro. That would only be used if I was hardware-limited.

To answer your question about load times, the first project load of each VEPro server does take a long time, but that happens once and the projects remain forever-loaded until you want to shut down the servers.

And yes, a normal pre-load cache is the equivalent of not using purge. My understanding is that whether an instrument is purged or not should never affect save times. It only affects load times...

Thanks. I guess I'm paying the price of having a larger selection of mics loaded. It sounds so much better to write with and bypasses time in the mix to make it surround.

I havent had much cpu problems since I properly set it up across 3 servers. But load times from a VEPro disabled and purged instrument are long with some. My save time in the Nuendo machine is 5 or 6 seconds for a 3500 track pure midi template though, so thats a big time saving.

I'll try keeping some un-purged and perhaps my favourites even fully loaded.

 

[storyteller]

Thanks. I guess I'm paying the price of having a larger selection of mics loaded. It sounds so much better to write with and bypasses time in the mix to make it surround.

I havent had much cpu problems since I properly set it up across 3 servers. But load times from a VEPro disabled and purged instrument are long with some. My save time in the Nuendo machine is 5 or 6 seconds for a 3500 track pure midi template though, so thats a big time saving.

I'll try keeping some un-purged and perhaps my favourites even fully loaded.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a variety of ways to use VEPro… obviously a lot of successful composers use it in different ways. But I think the biggest takeaway is having instruments in VEPro always online and not purged as being the most beneficial way of using VEPro… if you have the hardware capacity. Pads and synths are always loaded inside my DAW project… as well as oddball libraries I’d never use consistently across projects.

Another way to approach it if you are hardware limited - at least from a large film score project perspective - is to create a new vepro server project with the pallet of sounds you plan on using for the film. That way you are forced to stay in that zone, but you will have them always available during the project itself and across cues. This approach is a bit cumbersome with one-off projects… but for large projects, it can be a good approach.

 

[Epic Inspector]

@storyteller cheers mate

 

[ZeroZero]

I have no words... And I'm laughing so hard.


If you use Cubase, that's more or less what Track Archives are for (a bit different than Track Presets in the sense that you don't get them through the media library, and that they retain the routing, expression maps, and all the events you place on them.) I have a Track Archive per section (strings, ww, etc) containing the libraries I use the most. At its peak, my template was over 5k tracks. Then, I kept it to a healthy 500+ and now, with Track Archives, it only has a dozen tracks for sketching (ensemble patches, a piano, that sort of things.) Makes opening/saving projects quite quick.

On the whole i have never taken to Track Archives, sure you can use them. i think there is a lot of benefit in developing a Master project with all the sounds in "Score order" (and things like synths, acoustic gtrs, electric gts, bass guitars etc) in a logical order. Conceivably you could also do this with track archives but I think it is a bit esoteric. I have said elsewhere this project has over 4000 sounds. It's a reference library.

 

[Nico Schuele]

On the whole i have never taken to Track Archives, sure you can use them. i think there is a lot of benefit in developing a Master project with all the sounds in "Score order" (and things like synths, acoustic gtrs, electric gts, bass guitars etc) in a logical order. Conceivably you could also do this with track archives but I think it is a bit esoteric. I have said elsewhere this project has over 4000 sounds. It's a reference library.

I have over 5000, I win

The thing is, I ordered each library in track archive groups that make sense together, like for example SSS with SCS and Appassionata. I also have common library layers saved as Track Archives (SSS with CSS, which I call Symphonic Studio Strings, for example.) On my disk, these groups of archives look like this:



They all have a standard naming with a prefix at the beginning because it's all automated from my Stream Deck through custom scripts.

The import window then is the same as the Import From Project:



I can choose what I want from each archive. But for the most common ones, I have a 1-button import on my Stream Deck. Like "All of CSS" for example. The tracks each have an expression map, a pre-EQ, a negative delay value, and a routing. All that is saved in the archive as well.

For auditionning, I do the same as you: I have a project with the 5000+ tracks that I use as a master template. That's where I balance each new library that I get, create the expression maps, etc. I rarely need to audition from it though because I know the libraries that I work with quite well, and usually know that if I want a flute, it will come from CSW and an English Horn from BWW. That kind of things.

Of course, it works for me mostly because everything is automated and pre-configured.

 

[civilizashum]

How easy is VEP to deal with?

extremely so. I have to say I experienced a temporary incompatibility with a version of MacOS but this was early in the switch to iLok authorization and evidently many things had to change, and keep up with Apple and their at times weird ideas and change seemingly for change's sake. I had to do one project without it which was so much more hassle.

I've been VE Pro-centric for a dozen or more yrs now.

 

[civilizashum]

One chief thing about it is you can have your whole orchestra loaded in one instantiation (Instance, aka Project) and if you need to see/hear another orch you load that up while not touching the DAW. This is known as Preserved/Decoupled, DAW has naught to do with saving, loading any of it. And it loads orders of magnitude faster here. Caveat, I'm using hardware and OS that supports a thing called Vienna Power House (that's how they write the name) which offloads CPU to GPU. Which applies to MIR Pro 3D and Synchron Player so far. I think this suggests the instruments themselves, that I use anyway tend to be built to load and perform super-fast and the problems such as they may be stem from sharing the process with the DAW. The difference was immediately astonishing, which is surprising to me because afaict it does not directly apply to VE Pro. But I have the majority of things going through MIR 3D.

So, a kind of heavy Server Project (all of yer Instances/Projects) loads in the time that eg. Cubase even loads itself, every save is instantaneous, everything is like we hoped the future would be! (slight hyperbole).

Additional note re: loading and efficiency, VSL is in any case I know from considerably better performing and more efficient, so the one project I had to mount loading everything individually in Cubase was mostly Synchron Player so it performed on a par had I been using VE Pro. But long saves and slowness I wouldn't be having were real. I just opened that thing, I was wondering where my VE Pro Server Projects were and coincidentally wanted to rob some things from the project and there it is, dozens of things in the VST Rack where I normally have two, or if I want to control Kontakt directly and not faff about, three.

 

[SimpleQuestionsAskedElegantly]

How easy is VEP to deal with? Is it a good workflow or not?

Late to party here, but I'd say that really depends on your luck. First, let me just say that I am highly enthusiastic about VEPro's value proposition - distributed music production (and more). It's really awesome and opens up new way of saving time and money, as has been explained by others in this thread.

In my experience, however, it also comes with a set of issues that could be categorized as quirks at best and complete showstoppers at worst.

At the milder end of the spectrum, the documentation is minimal. You can do things in the user interface that are "not allowed" (result is crash, but at least you'll eventually learn not to do them). The server projects concept seems like it's an afterthought, and the use of the terminology in general, server project, project, instance etc., is not consistent.

The longest I've had my VEPro without a crash running is 3.5 weeks. During this time, I was constantly worried that it would crash, based on previous experience. Had a great run. But today, I'm back dealing the good old issues:

A complete crash-fest

I wanted to add another instance to my project. Worked well. Add Kontakt and add content. OK. Add another channel and add Kontakt. Crash.

Ok, I open same project again. VEPro is seeming trying to show me two modal dialogs (loading and "seems like VEPro crashed, load last project?"). Can't dismiss the latter because the former is loading This time, I add the first Kontakt instance. Ok. Then I try to duplicate the channel to see if that works. No, crash. Mind you that I'm not anywhere near the ram limits like others have mentioned earlier in this thread.

I don't feel like contacting support anymore or post in the forums. The team seems high-strung because their responses give the impression they either read my carefully neutrally worded content poorly (lack of of time?) or with a sliver of contempt because I'm the bearer of the bad news that fundamental operations result in crashes. In both cases I didn't get very useful responses.

 

[civilizashum]

The last crashes I experienced with VE Pro seem like a long time ago but it may have been 2023.
VSL Support identified that NI Replika XT was creating some kind of RAM havoc, and so deleting it from the project ended the crashes. I don't remember crashes previous to that because of the rarity factor. This has been fixed, it seems like for a while. IDK who fixed it.

I experience unresponsiveness at times that seem to require a force quit, this tends to happen when I deal with a new project and the server project. So that's avoidable.

So an individual may have issues that are not universal issues. VE Pro will not tend to work happily (stably) with Cubase (I know from no other DAW) in coupled mode.

As pertains to Kontakt in it, I am having strange things occur in Kontakt I have never seen before, such as corruption of the default output configuration. Once it did cause a hang, dealing with its shit. It is right now the worst performing vi I use, not noticably better direct in Cubase. Both K6 and K7 showed that corruption, no idea the cause.

 

[cyrilblanc]

I am one that do not use VEP anymore. I have everything in my Logic Template

 

[Epic Inspector]

Thank you all really for your outstanding contributions to this thread

 

[GoofyTroop]

I am planning to buy VEP in order to offload samples loading onto a more powerful PC that I am going to buy as well. How easy is VEP to deal with? Is it a good workflow or not? I noticed people already quit using it and shifted to the traditional enable/disable template. But it's not a discussion thread about templates. It's more about discussing the VEP itself and its workflow and why certain people staying away from it.

Please share your pros and cons. Thanks

I have used it for years. I have two Mac Pro’s loaded.
I made a great template in DP and just load template. The slave playback you just boot and i scripted it to auto launch my Vienna template.

So on my daw machine it just connects. I love it.
But with todays newer macs i hear you dont need it. You can run it all on one machine. Kontakt i dont like any more. It runs better in VEPro then in daw itself. Vienna handles memory better and when it crashes it is simple to reload the Templates in one click.

I cant afford a new fancy mac today. And because of Apple Silicone none of my older hardware, software will run on new macs. Some of the best VST’s and software i use will not run on new macs either making the new mac a major disappointment. So i am sticking with older mac and Vienna server to run all my stuff. A brilliant ladd here on this forum said to run my older mac as a slave with vienna to access my daw interfaces no longer supported in new silicone macs.

So i am a longtime fan of Vienna. Never ran into any issues of old seq not loading. You save your sessions and in Digital Performer you save any project and it loads no matter what. Never heard of loosing or projects not loading.

Go tor it! Its so easy and fun and with synchron player its amazing for film tv mockups. Best software out for it.

 

[civilizashum]

Only thing old I'm using is Absynth 5. NI happily announced it should work through OS12 on Intel Macs after killing it dead two years ago. It works on OS14.7 on ARM M1. Has to be under Rosetta 2 whether in VE Pro or Cubase, of course. So it's among the Undead so far.

My older VEP projects are dead, except for the Absynth-only instances. I don't know why this is. After the iLok transition all of the server projects run into a series of errors.

 

[GoofyTroop]

Only thing old I'm using is Absynth 5. NI happily announced it should work through OS12 on Intel Macs after killing it dead two years ago. It works on OS14.7 on ARM M1. Has to be under Rosetta 2 whether in VE Pro or Cubase, of course. So it's among the Undead so far.

My older VEP projects are dead, except for the Absynth-only instances. I don't know why this is. All of the server projects run into a series of errors after the iLok transition.

Contact Vienna support. They will get to the bottom of it.