Using VSL VI with a Standalone VST player such as Muse Receptor or SM Pro V-Rack.

[temasterson_1870]

Hi all. I have a new 8-core Mac Pro 2.8ghz/10gb/4x500gb yet I am still encountering serious CPU distribution problems not just with Vienna Instruments but all virtual instruments. The problem is that Logic can't distribute the load evenly across the 8 processors, so while 7 of them are maybe working at 10% the 8th processor peaks really easily causing overloads. Auditioning, composing and performing is affected a lot worse than playback and I find that if I am to have any chance of making a large arrangement I have to raise the buffer to 256 or even 512. This of course causes unbearable latency when playing the instruments. So I have been looking into buying a dedicated standalone VST/plugin player such the Muse Receptor. Does anyone know whether the Vienna Instruments plugins are compatible with such a system and if so would I benefit from using one? Any other tips on increased performance / CPU distribution in Logic are most welcome. Cheers,

[DG]

You can't use VI or VE with Receptor. You'd be better off buying a dedicated PC slave with XP64 or Vista 64 (pause for spitting) and run VE either over the Network, or (less latency) via MOL and soundcard on the slave.

Alternatively you could look into using multiple standalones on your DAW. However, I have no experience of how this works in practice.

DG

[morphlite]

Just a thought, might be worth reading this thread....

http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/t/18920.aspx and speaking to composer22. With Vmware (and VE3) you could assign different cores to VM's on your Mac Pro.

Just a thought....

P 

[Sampleconstruct]

I also use L8 on an 8-core - some general tips:
When playing back projects without recording Midi select an empty Audio track in the Arrange. The standby function of some software instruments (the red "R") can be extremly CPU hungry sometimes and cause single cores to overload - especially with 3rd party Plug Ins.
Another tip is to set all Audio tracks to "no Input" until you're actually recording to them - this will save CPU as well - no vodoo here - promised.
Have you tried varying your Buffer settings? During mixdown you might as well choose a 512/1024 buffer as long as you're not recording anything in realtime.

[Cyril Blanc]

Hello

I use VIenna Ensemble in standalone this is great because it does not take any processing of Logic as Logic sends only Midi to the VE

Today I have only the Appassionata string from VSL and the rest of the orchestra is QLSO Platinum with Kontakt 2

To play a very complex piece (From the new for world of Anton Dorak) loading a LOT of articulations, it uses a very small cpu and all the core are used on my Macpro 8 core 3ghz 13gb )

If you need help to set your system you can send me your EM and we can do that with Ichat)

Best

Cyril

[temasterson_1870]

@Sampleconstruct said:

When playing back projects without recording Midi select an empty Audio track in the Arrange. The standby function of some software instruments (the red "R") can be extremly CPU hungry sometimes and cause single cores to overload - especially with 3rd party Plug Ins..

This is exactly the problem. If I select an empty audio track, playback is fine. But as soon as I want to record a new piece of MIDI on a software instrument track, I click on that track and I go straight into the red. The only thing I can do is select a buffer setting of 256 or larger, but this creates so much latency that I can't play in time to the music.

[temasterson_1870]

@DG said:

You'd be better off buying a dedicated PC slave with XP64 or Vista 64 (pause for spitting) and run VE either over the Network, or (less latency) via MOL and soundcard on the slave.

Thanks for your suggestion. What is MOL?

[temasterson_1870]

@Cyril said:

I use VIenna Ensemble in standalone this is great because it does not take any processing of Logic as Logic sends only Midi to the VE

To play a very complex piece (From the new for world of Anton Dorak) loading a LOT of articulations, it uses a very small cpu and all the core are used on my Macpro 8 core 3ghz 13gb )

Best

Cyril

You see, this is what I don't understand about Macs and Logic. Why would the Mac use less cpu to play the instruments in standalone mode while recording MIDI to a MIDI track in logic than when recording MIDI directly to a software instrument track?

[Dietz]

@temasterson_1870 said:

Thanks for your suggestion. What is MOL?

"MIDI over LAN" -> [URL]http://www.musiclab.com/products/rpl_info.htm[/URL]

HTH,

[Cyril Blanc]

@Cyril said:

I use VIenna Ensemble in standalone this is great because it does not take any processing of Logic as Logic sends only Midi to the VE

To play a very complex piece (From the new for world of Anton Dorak) loading a LOT of articulations, it uses a very small cpu and all the core are used on my Macpro 8 core 3ghz 13gb )

Best

Cyril

You see, this is what I don't understand about Macs and Logic. Why would the Mac use less cpu to play the instruments in standalone mode while recording MIDI to a MIDI track in logic than when recording MIDI directly to a software instrument track?
I did not say that standalone inst will use less CPU than software instruments in Logic
Software instruments are out of the hands of Emagic/Apple developers
I did a benchmark between EXS and Kontakt2 using the SAME samples, I coud play 60 simultaneous notes with K2 and 600 with the EXS on my Quad G5
Software inst are in the song, so that mean that you have to load the samples each time because external software inst like K2 do not use the possibility that is in Logic to load only the samples that are not in memory
I dont know about VSL, but some software instrument do not know what is loaded in the next software inst, i.e. so if you have 2 violins you will load the samples twice !
VE standalone loads the samples once 😉
I am very pleased with VE engin, it's night and day compared to "QLSO Platinum/Kontakt" it's looks like I have made the good decision not going to QLSO "Play"

Best
Cyril