Hi guys,

Having gone from a 3 box setup to a 2 box setup, I am now running my 'powerful' computer as a slave (all VSL and some other samples, all on Samsung EVOs) and a master/slave box (sequencer and some of the smaller EW products).

I will be putting the samples on the master/slave box onto an EVO Samsung via a USB3 cable (currently they are on an external USB3>7200rpm drive and they work fine as long as I don't load a lot of samples), but the main harddrive on this box (it's a 16GB 4th gen i4 'all in one' Dell 2720) is a big old 7200 rpm drive.

2 questions I guess:

1) I've heard that SSDs don't like writing lots of data, and it fatigues them quickly. Is it OK to make my OS/APPS an SSD then? This would house Cubase, VEP5, VIP2, and Suite, as well as Play 3 (I only have Cubase 6.5)?

2) Assuming it is OK to make my main drive an SSD, should I expect any performance gains i.e. I have (maxed) 16gb of ram and what is not really a great processor...will the SSD 'lighten the load' the way it does with sample streaming?

Would an SSD for my OS/APPS be a better purchase, or would sticking with the HDD and upgrading to the current Cubase be more beneficial, do you think? I guess that's actually 3 questions:)

Shawn

Thanks as always, DG. Program loading times aren't a concern to me...just samples, and I've got that covered.

The things that "interest" me in Cubase 7.5 are full-screen, the ability to use Play 4 (if that's a good thing?) and that new chord thing looks interesting. There's a lot of neat new stuff that would be fun to play around with, but I'm still learning the basics here, so...it's just stuff I don't really need to learn/have available yet...

So that leaves me on the fence, or better yet, opens up funds for more samples:)

Speaking of the basics, I have a really dumb question that any real MIDI person would probably have learned on day one. I'll just ask it here so as not to polute the airwaves.

I'm trying to figure out how to add 2 effects (chorus and distortion) to a violin, for a brief "Vanessa Mae" type passage, going from VEP5 (Solo Violin) into one track in Cubase. The only thing I get when I click on the little "e" on the track in Cubase, is MIDI Channel effects...but what I want is audio effects. I assume I have to do a whole bunch of plumbing, but I've never done that before.

I can get the VST Instrument instance of VEP5 to open audio effects, but that effects all of my instruments, not just one. Any idea how I can do this?

I would say have a reason to and work from there rather than start to think too abstractly or overcomplicate.