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  4. Building a slave. # of cores vs processor speed?

  • Building a slave. # of cores vs processor speed?

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    I've been running a network of several Mac Minis with vep5, but am planning on building a pc slave. I'm wondering if it's more advantageous to emphasize number of cores, or speed of processor? Right now I'm planning on running 2 Xeon e5-2630 v4s which will total 20 cores (2x10 actual or 2x20 virtual cores) and each processor will be 2.2ghz. That said, I've read about a lot of people recommending going the i7 route instead because DAWs (apparently) can't make efficient use of multiple cores, so having something that runs at 3+ghz is better even if it's less cores. I'm assuming most of these people are running their instruments and daw on the same computer, but what is the general wisdom when building a dedicated slave? I use logic X and only plan to use the slave for instruments. All my effects and processing is done on the master.
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    I am no expert (hopefully some of them will chime in), but my understanding is that you are correct. You want your master DAW to have lots of CPU power...higher clock rate...for realtime audio processing. VEP slaves benefit more with lots of CPU cores and fast RAM and SSD for sample loading. 

    Much of it seems to depend on your individual workflow. 

    I was running basically a single box with a powerful i7 with Cubase Pro 9, and was generally happy with how VEP performed. Cubase is buggy, and frustrates me more than VEP.

    I decided I wanted more mobility, so I have moved to LOGIC as my DAW on a MacBook Pro and using my 2 PC's as VEP Slaves for instruments. I just did this over the last few days, so I am still getting my head wrapped around the differences. So far...I am liking it. I really like LOGIC on my 4k monitor. :)

    There appear to be all kinds of tricks for opimizing how you use a particular DAW with VEP. I think some of those aspects are as important as the hardware you run on. Doing more mixing and leveling in VEP and not having giant track count seems to be the best way to go. My plan is to bounce more to analog as I finish an instrument, and then I can mix offline from anywhere.

    But, again, it kinda depends on how you want to work. I wanted to be able to go sit in my recliner, or outside on the deck, and mix with my HD800 Headphones. So that is sort of driving decisions for me...more so than absolute best performing Master'Slaves combo.

    Hopefully others with comment and share some of their wisdom.
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    Thanks for the reply! I'm hoping to build a setup that allows me to work with potentially large ensembles quickly. My workflow tends to get bogged down when I realize I need a specific articulation from an instrument and have to flip my screen over to the slave, load the instrument, etc. This gets even more problematic when I want to blend instruments from various libraries (eg, mixing legato trumpets from both East West as well as Cinesamples). 

    At the moment, I'd rather not have to bounce to audio unless I needed to do some glitchy chops or something. A lot of my work involves multiple rounds of edit requests and it's much faster when I can simply open up a midi lane and start moving notes around. Mixing outside DOES sound fantastic, though. 
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    Well...best laid plans didnt pan out. I think I have been using Cubase for so long, I just cant adapt to Logic. Cubase seems to have performance issues with Logic, so I am back on my mostly single box main machine with Windows 10 Pro and Cubase/VEP. I can still export and mix on my MacBook from anywhere.

    To accomplish what you want, it may require a larger setup. I find it easy to use multiple computers when I just use Windows remote desktop, or multiple monitors each connected to their slave and then share mouse and keyboard with the Synergy app. Sorta feels like I am using one machine then. It's not really practical if you have more than two slaves. Any more than 3 monitors and I am getting motion sickness from moving my head around too much. But...I am using mostly large 4k monitors