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  3. What in VSL and Synchron Taxes a Computer the Most?

  • What in VSL and Synchron Taxes a Computer the Most?

    P
    P

    I am incorporating a new Mac Mini 2018 into my VSL-heavy workstation with two other much older Macs. 

    Could some tech-savvy folks (Dietz, Ben, etc.) quickly run down what components of VSL are most taxing to drives and CPU? I think it's MIR Pro, and perhaps some of the Vienna Suite plug-ins. I have numerous licenses, and doubles (but not triples) of some authorizations. So an idea of what to prioritize in the fastest, newest Mac vs. what can be off-loaded into the slower, older Macs would be instructive. The DAW is Logic, on Catalina.

    All samples will be streamed off SSD's, no matter the computer, running on an Ethernet network or resident in the host. The Mac Mini is upgraded to the 10GB Ethernet, but of course, the older computers are standard 1 GB.

    The Mac Mini 2018 has Thunderbolt 3, the older Mac Mini has original Thunderbolt, and the eldest computer, an early 2008 cheese grater has no Thunderbolt -- only USB 2, Firewire 400 and 800.

    These two older computers have been great, but the needs of Synchron pushed them beyond their CPU capabilities -- especially vel x-fading several mixer channels as found in Synchron Strings. The Room Mix setting squeaked past, but not multiple, simultaneous stereo channels.

    Perhaps your advice can spare me some trial and error.
  • bbeliusB
    bbeliusB

    Hi,

    - MIR Pro is not that taxing anymore on modern mid- to high-end CPUs with more than 2 cores and 3.5+ GHz. After the impulse for the position is calculated it's similar taxing like an IR reverb (they add up for many instruments).
    - The SYNCHRON-ized instruments are also close to that regarding CPU load (IR reverb)
    - The Synchron and BBO libraries stream many data because they are multi-mic libraries. So a fast and low-latency SSD or even NVMe SSD will give you best results.
    - The Dimension libraries can behave like multi-mic libraries if you use the same MIDI-data for each player, resulting in streaming data from drive at the exact same time.

    Regarding Synchron Strings I and velocity crossfade: If you need Vel.XF use the "Soft", "Med" and "Load" variants of the articulation to reduce the velocity layer count.

    Best, Ben

    Ben@VSL | IT & Product Specialist
  • P
    P

    Thanks Ben. It's good to know MIR is not as resource-heavy as I thought, and I can see why Dimension Strings can be as ( relatively ) taxing as MIR when it fetches so many samples concurrently. Also, that IR in Synchron-Ized products are not much different than MIR is useful knowledge.