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NEW VIDEO Vienna Ensemble 6 and Digital Performer 9.1 set up to finish

Steve Steele

Senior Member
It's nice that DP9.1 and VEP6 came out at the same time. Both are really good and stable. I ran them hard together for 24 hours straight and not a single crash. So I made a video about starting from scratch with an empty DP document. I set everything up, wrote about 20 bars of orchestral music, did some editing and finished. I explain everything as I go.

I tried a new method to condense an hour down to 20 minutes. Let me know if you still find the video helpful or if it's too fast. All I was trying to show was the process. That's really what the video is about. So the pace seemed ok. And you get to see enough of VEP6 to get an idea of what it feels like. I'll probably continue to use this style in future videos where it fits. The fast pace starts around 2:15.

Enjoy!

 
Hey Steve, thanks pioneering and testing these apps and for making this director style narrative. There is a lot to digest in there. The fast video (and bkgnd music) is kinda cool as we can stop and check out what we need.

A few question -
what buffer settings are you using? Magic Dave suggested possible better performance with lower buffer settings but others have disagreed. What's your experience?
Is this all playing from your 2009 Mac or are you using the 2008 as a slave? Your processor meter is barely moving compared with mine which is always slammed (DP8, Mac 8-core 3,2)
Several people with large setups say they're having trouble with DP 9.1 (on FB MOTU group). What's you're experience when you drive even more instruments? Still no problems?
With the flashed 2009 Mac, will you still be able to upgrade to the new Sierra OS? I'm trying to decide whether to buy one of these or downgrade to an iMac or small trash can and use PC slaves. Tough choices these days!
 
A few question -
what buffer settings are you using? Magic Dave suggested possible better performance with lower buffer settings but others have disagreed. What's your experience?

I almost always set my buffer at 1024 or 512. I've never found it necessary to use low buffer settings. Latency compensation has always worked perfectly for me. Sure, there are times when recorded MIDI needs to be adjusted for buffer settings but since I'm going to edit MIDI a lot anyway it's no hassle at all. I use Input Quantize a lot and it takes care of it for me. It's really a question of getting the preferences for VEP and Kontakt right then optimizing them as the voice count starts rising.

When I track live instruments I use "Direct hardware playthrough" which is real time. But sometimes when I'm tracking my own vocals, even at 512 or higher if I use "Monitor Record Enabled Tracks Through Effects", with headphones on one ear only I end up hearing a chorusing that's actually enjoyable to sing too.


Is this all playing from your 2009 Mac or are you using the 2008 as a slave?

This videos was done on just the host MP. My setup has changed recently. I now have two identical upgraded 2009 MacPros (5,1 firmware, 3.46GHz 12-core Westmere CPUs. 48 and 96GBs of RAM) And, IMO one of the most important upgrades was to use a Samsung SM951 as a OS/apps SSD in PCIe Slot 3, and a Squid card in Slot 2 with four SM951s in RAID 0. IMO, this completely evened out my system. No bottlenecks. The SM951s feeds the RAM very quickly which feeds the those sweet x5690 CPUs. With that I can load up a ton of samples and not lose voices. The MAS version of VEP helped a lot too. As does optimizing Kontakt and the Vienna Instruments Pro for the SM951s.


Your processor meter is barely moving compared with mine which is always slammed (DP8, Mac 8-core 3,2)
Several people with large setups say they're having trouble with DP 9.1 (on FB MOTU group). What's you're experience when you drive even more instruments? Still no problems?

I've noticed a couple of issues with 9.1 but it's not causing my system to choke at all. I have confidence that MOTU will take of any issues fairly quickly. They seem to be rather aggressive about DP lately. So, no real problems. VEP6 has some problems too but it is faster.

With the flashed 2009 Mac, will you still be able to upgrade to the new Sierra OS? I'm trying to decide whether to buy one of these or downgrade to an iMac or small trash can and use PC slaves. Tough choices these days!

I heard from a fairly reliable source that the upgraded 2009s will be seen as 5,1 MPs, so supposedly macOS Sierra will run. I only upgrade to El Cap from Mavericks because I wanted smoother access to iCloud and because of the iPad Pro digital transfer feature. But I'm now using StudioMux so I didn't really need El Cap for that. Also, the Apple RAID support TRIM claim is a lie. If you're going to RAID SSDs use SoftRaid. Honestly, I'd rather go back to 10.9.5 and use a 3rd party TRIM enabler.

I can't recommend enough buying a used 2009 MP and upgrading it. I get a Geekbench score of 32000. That's the same as the nMP 12-core. And the read times from the Squid are outrageously fast at 5700MB/s. My boot drive 1600MB/s. I have a USB3 card, and although I thought I'd really miss not having Thunderbolt, I don't. There are plenty of great interfaces that still have USB connections (not optimal I know, doesn't help with latency), but again, not a problem yet. And the best part? One maxed out 2009 MP cost less than $3k! If Apple comes out with a killer new MP with TB3, nextgen Xeons, then I might start to consider one. But two upgraded 2009s can handle any template you'll likely work with and still cost 1/2 the price of a 12-core nMP. Look in to it. My MPs can run for days with no problems. In fact, with all the problems being reported with new some new Macs and the more current versions of OS X, I'm wondering if these older Mac Pros were just designed better. I even have a flashed AMD R9 280x and no problems.

If you have questions about these systems or need help putting one together, just let me know. Hope that helps.

Btw, I'll have a new video out in a day or two that focuses completely on the new features of VEP6.

Steve
 
I can't recommend enough buying a used 2009 MP and upgrading it. I get a Geekbench score of 32000. That's the same as the nMP 12-core. And the read times from the Squid are outrageously fast at 5700MB/s. My boot drive 1600MB/s. I have a USB3 card, and although I thought I'd really miss not having Thunderbolt, I don't. There are plenty of great interfaces that still have USB connections (not optimal I know, doesn't help with latency), but again, not a problem yet. And the best part? One maxed out 2009 MP cost less than $3k! If Apple comes out with a killer new MP with TB3, nextgen Xeons, then I might start to consider one...
It's amazing reading all you go through with your os and cpu's. DP runs also on W10...! :cool:
 
It's amazing reading all you go through with your os and cpu's. DP runs also on W10...! :cool:

I hope it's running smooth for you. Pretty cool that MOTU ported DP to Windows. I would try it out as I hear it runs really well, but I'm a long time Mac fanatic. I go way back to System 7. What can I say? :)
 
I still have my Mac Classic. I wish I had my Quadra 650. That was one of the best computers of it's day. Fast and reliable. I had a Mac 512k or maybe it was a 128. I don't remember. I donated it.
 
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