So... if money were no object, what would be the highest-performing master-slave computer combination that could be bought for VI-intensive/MIR Pro work? Can be Mac or PC. Would love to know whatever is known about this. For the purpose of this thread, I'm talking about a two-computer set-up—one master, one slave. Ideally I'd stay with Mac as the master computer, but even that's up for discussion. My holy grail here would be a huge set of VI libraries plus MIR Pro on my slave computer with lots of individual audio busses travelling back and forth to and from my master computer, along with the ability to run DP on my master computer at a buffer of 128 (or if that's truly not attainable, then totally hiccup-free at 256).

Does anyone have any hard data on this? Or, failing that, useful hands-on experience?

Thanks,

Peter

Thanks—looks like a good place to start. Yes, more than I need—but I thought it would be interesting to see what the optimal system would be and work down from there.

PL

Yes, I have a friend who's very happy with his Vision DAW machine. However I've heard that the new "trash can" Macs also do great with VEP—a lot of people are apparently successfully running on one machine. Any comments?

Peter

Originally Posted by: DG

There is nothing wrong with the new Mac Pros. They are very fast machines. However, I would raise two points:

1. Due to the lack of internal storage (and other things) you will be hanging a lot of stuff off it, and external drives are more expensive than internal ones.
2. You are paying a lot of money for a graphics card that is pretty much useless for music applications.

If you want to stay with OSX there are better options, IMO, but realistically you need to decide on your sequencer and once that is decided various doors could be closed anyway.

DG

Thanks. Good point about the graphics card. My sequencer is DP, and has been for over 20 years. Curious for your thoughts about better Mac options, if you don't mind. Thanks.

Peter

Thanks. To be clear, I didn't just win the lottery, and I'm not looking to spend as much money as possible!  It just occurred to me that I had never seen the question asked in the form, "What's the best possible system in theory, regardless of money?," and that that might be an instructive starting place for discussing the implications of various hardware choices. Understandably, the question is virtually always framed as "What system gives you the best value for your money?," which is a great but slightly different question. Here's an example of what I mean, again from the top of the market, but it could apply equally to the high middle of the market. The "trash can" Mac Pro is configurable three ways in terms of processors:

1. 3.5GHz 6-Core (with Turbo Boost up to 3.9 GHz
2. 3.0GHz 8-Core
3. 2.7GHz 12-core

My priority, as I said, is to work with as low a buffer setting as possible while actually sequencing. So, which is the best choice for working with DP and VEP? With each increase in the number of cores, processor speed drops, so it's not clear which choice would better help me reach my holy grail of working at 128. This is a question that would need to be answered with custom PC's as well.

PL

I've heard the same re cores. Impressive that you've been able to work at 128! I fear that could be a Nuendo vs. DP thing. Sigh...

Yeah, yeah, rub it in! 

Originally Posted by: DG

However, as a rule of thumb, plugins like more cores, sample streaming likes higher clock speed. However, if you are factoring MIR into the equation I can't really help you there, beuase I don't use it.

Note that VEP is an extremely efficient host, so using plugins in VEP where possible certainly offloads CPU demand of most other hosts.

At least on Windows, low latencies are pretty easy to reach with current systems. We test our VSL systems with a 64 samples buffer at 44.1kHz. Especially the faster systems (hexacore 3.5GHz and dual Xeon systems) handle large/complex mockups.