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  • Practical advice for using VEP7 with limited computing power.

    Hello everyone and compliments of the season!

    So, I'm just looking for advice and thoughts really. 

    I have a 2015 macbook pro 2.7 GHz with 8 gig ram running OSX Hi Sierra (10.13.6) and Logic 10.1.1

    I have managed to build up a number of VI libraries (Cube standard, Orch Str full, App Strings full, Dim String 1 full) and would like to be able to access all of them fairly quickly.
    So I built a big template using VEP7 with separate instances for App Strings/harps, Solo/Orch/Chamber Strings, Dim violins/violas, Dim celli/basses, 2 Woodwind instances, 2 brass instances and 2 percussion instances.
    Problem is, when I load the corresponding tracks template in Logic, it practically seizes up straight away.
    After pressing "play" about 6 times I finally get to play or record without the dreaded "Audio engine cannot process all the info in time" type message.
    And this is with all the samples from the template unloaded by VEP7.
    So my thought was to freeze multiple tracks which of course means that I'm freezing an entire instance as the logic tracks are multi-timbral. So one freeze affects all the tracks corresponding to that Multi instrument.

    SO... next thought was to save each multi timbral track as a preset in the logic library so rather than making many templates of increasing size in VEP7 I could simply launch VEP7, launch logic then choose, for instance orchestral string and percussion 1 say.
    However, I've subsequently found out that Logic will not save a preset as a multitimbral instrument.
    You can save it as a summing stack, but when recalled, it's lost it's multi-timbrality and has replaced each track with a different increasing instrument number. 
    So the only way around it would be to, every time I recall an instance of VEP7, spend frustrating time re-assigning and naming each track of the multi timbral instrument to the instance. Which defeats the purpose of having a preset.
    SO... I then started just using one instance of VIpro2 per logic track and started saving sections and individual instruments in the Logic presets library.
    Which works and is quick, and means that I can freeze track by track so as to conserve CPU power and RAM as I need it
    BUT means of course that I'm not using VEP7 which is a shame as I like it and want to have use of the plugins etc should I need them, especially the EQ with all the presets.

    The only workaround to this I've discovered is to set up, say, one instance of Orch strings for example, with the corresponding multi-timbral tracks on logic, then save that as a project. Then import the project into what ever current project I'm working on from the Logic browser. 
    Which works, if a little inelegantly, BUT still doesn't enable me to freeze individual tracks.

    SO..... any advice or thoughts from anyone would be much appreciated.
    Am I better of just leaving VEP7 for the time being until I have maybe a 2nd slave PC or a much better newer Mac?
    And is running VEP on a single machine a waste of time and resources?

    Would love to hear other's experiences and thoughts on any of this.
    I'd actually like to get on with making some music at some point :)

    Thanks,

    Mike..


  • "is running VEP on a single machine a waste of time and resources?"

    For me it certainly is not. You can see my setup in my sig. I have not used VEP on more than one machine since around 2014. I guess this was v5? But the difference for me between two MacPros, the master being the lighter machine, and just using the one with more RAM/more cores was pretty much negligible.

    I will say this, though, I have had a number of MBPs with 8 GB RAM and it meant a *lot* of rendering tracks. And I'm talking arrangements which (other than my use of Absynth) were quite modest. I personally don't like freezing tracks as it's not different than rendering [except for the multitimbral situation you mention particularly] so just do the render. At this point I have some, for me, enormous arrangements (many Synchron Players with full mixers) with round trip latency of 8.5ms... but this is actually down to the audio interface I'm using, which uses new tech to take load off of CPU into its own memory. That's not a very well-written account of what it does, but (PreSonus Quantum)

    I don't have anything for you as regards Logic, its complexities for VEP were finally more than I wanted to deal with. In Cubase you just would divvy the arrangement into instances of VEP and freeze just the single instance at a time.

    I admit to not quite grasping what's happening there with you, but I saw that question and thought I would reply.


  • Hi, thanks very much for your reply. Can you explain what you mean by rendering and how it differs from freezing? It’s interesting that you say the two machines didn’t give you much advantage over the one. That’s good for thought for when I upgrade. I’ve looked into getting more ram but I’m pretty sure MBP’s from 2015 are not upgradable. Thanks Apple :) The logic thing may be because I’m using an old version of logic. I’ve had people on logic forums claiming they can save multitimbral tracks as presets but I’ve had to stay on older logic and older OSX as I was always using Sibelius 6.5 which isn’t compatible above Hi Sierra. But I’ve switched to Dorico now so just got to labouriously export all my old Sib files as music XML and then I can move up to Mojave or Catalina. ANYWAY.. that’s off topic. Thanks again for replying. M

  • Technically there is no difference other than what you see; freezing a track renders its MIDI to audio in the background - meaning there is an audio file playing rather than the MIDI-to-soft instrument thing - but it's not editable as an {exported} audio file is, it's invisible essentially.

    Back when I used master-slave on two machines, the master was either a MacPro quad core 4,1 with 4 GB or a 5,1 MBP, with the slave a 4,1 MacPro 8-core with 24GB. Long time ago.

    So I think there is a point where I personally was not going to get a super-sized orchestration up anyway with that hardware; with the fact of a 'master' like that not really making the difference. IE: it would have been about a second machine more on the order of the more robust machine - particulary its RAM, note well - for to make any real difference.