Ok here's a serious issue with VEP7:

We've finally gotten around to installing VEP7 on our studio's 11 servers currently running VEP6. However it appears VEP7 has some issues with Windows Server, in that it will not install, reporting that wlanapi.dll is missing. Given that VEP6 installs and works fine on Windows Server 2012, does anyone know what the problem is? Could it be that VEP7 isn't designed for Windows Server?

Any help here would be really appreciated 


PS: I'll just add that VEP7 has installed successfully and is working fine on our dual-CPU PC-Workstations which run on Windows 10 Professional.

Many thanks,

Jon

Hello fellow VEPro6 folk,

Does anyone know of a way to setup a key command or macro in Cubase to Connect to an existing VEP6 instance that has already loaded on a slave ?

I have around 60 instances, with instrument tracks already mapped in a Cubase template.  What I want to do is either have a key command or a macro that will automatically connect (and ideally disconnect) with the slave instance, without having to do it manually.  By manually I mean having to select the server and instance from the VEP6 window by hand.  I would have though it would be possible to write a script or macro to do this.  Each of my Cubase Instrument tracks always connects to the same VEP6 Slave Instance. 

Looking forward to your thoughts?

Many thanks,

Jonathan

Hello fellow VSL Ensemble 6 Pro users,

Does anyone know if it is possible to setup VEP6 (Vienna Ensemble Pro 6) to automatically load the last saved server?

I have quite a large Windows server setup and want to find a way to save time when I am loading all 12 servers with VEP6 and their respective server files.   I have configured the servers to auto start VEP6 each time they re powered up, but cannot find a way to auto load server files.

Many thanks in advance,

Jonathan

Hey Bruno,

Here are a few notes and experiences we have from trying to get to an optimum setup for a fully loaded library and composing studio...

At our little studio, we are still in 'business startup' mode, but have spent the last 18 months experimenting with VEP6 (Vienna Ensembe Pro 6), in a number of different configurations and setups, including MacPro 5,1 and MacPro 6,1, NAS, Windows setups etc.  Its been a long and often frustrating road !!!  Largely because although VEP6, NI Kontakt and EW Play, UVI,  etc, do all tend to follow the same rules to allow for each to work and perform, one or two or sometimes all seem to have technical issues that eventually cause major problems on the front end (ie. on the DAW), and these affect different DAW's and VEP6 setups in different ways.  This is made more difficult by the amazingly broad variety of sample libraries, plugins and effects available today, where again these all have their own little idiosyncrasies that can affect how VEP6 and the DAW perform.

So as far as I (and we at the studio) can tell, there is no ONE perfect setup or configuration.

We have built 3 different setups over the last 18 months, as we have tried to evolve to a near-perfect way of working:

   1)  MacPro5,1 based setup with x3 MacPro5,1s (each with 12-core 3.46Ghz CPU, 96GB RAM, 2TB SSD for samples and plugins, running VEP5 then upgraded to VEP6), with MacPro5,1 (6-core 3.46GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, 1TB) front-end with Cubase 8 and Logic Pro X, and separate MacMini running ProTools for cues and mixdown.  

Advantages:  Fairly cheap setup using MacPro5,1s running El-Capitan.  Quick bootup and loading of libraries and plugins.    

Disadvantages:  Took time to share or move libraries between machines, and alot of time to create VEP6 templates that could work effectively on large projects. Also these Mac's only have slow SATA interfaces, so plugging in an SSD only increases speed by around 1.5 times. Using PCIE interfaces is expensive and only 2 slots available, making expansion expensive.  VEP5 worked ok but suffered from random crashes, which improved with VEP6 upgrade, but still crashed or hung occassionally especially when loading the big libraries..

   2) Same as above, but with all sample libraries and general plugin's stored on a QNAP NAS and connected to the MacPro5,1 VEP6 servers using Ethernet SFP+ (10gb/sec for quicker loading of sample libraries).    

Advantages:  Centralised sample libraries and plugins made it much easier to create, maintain and share VEP6 templates amongst machines and studio staff.  NAS upgraded to SSDs to store sample libraries, so much faster loading times (which reduced the chance of VEP6 hanging), though started to hit load-speed limitations caused by NI Kontakt.  

Disadvantages:  All machines and DAW computer had to be within roughly 20 feet due to cabling limitiations, making the studio very very hot and noisy, and greatly reduced amount of physical room left for composing.  

   3)  Current setup:  x4 IBM 3850 servers (each with 24cores, 256GB RAM, 512GB SSD, running Windows 2008 Datacenter Server) connected to QNAP NAS with SFP+ (10gb/sec), x2 MacPro6,1 (12-core, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD).  The IBM servers each run VEP6 servers loaded with the bigger sample libraries such as Spitfire's libraries, and all percussion, choirs and voices - loaded up in hand built templates.  MacPro6,1s are used to edit templates, and as VEP6 servers to give me fast and flexible working environment in which to create project specific templates and cues, mainly used to load newly created or acquired libraries, and also to load the EastWest libraries (mainly because we've found they are so fussy and don't reliably all load on to any of the IBM servers).  We then have a MacPro6,1 to run Nuendo 8 and Cubase 9, and Logic Pro X, with MacMini running ProTools and other mixdown plugins etc.   We also found that with more sample libraries loaded than before (due to projects creating more samples) which imposed greater load on CPU threads and RAM, that the MacPro5,1 audio couldn't handle the latency, so we started getting alot of dropout and clicking on the DAW.

Advantages:  All VEP6 server machines reloactaed ot heir own machine room.  So noise, heat and space is no longer a problem.  DAW machines in the studio are connected to the VEP6 servers via ordinary CAT 7 ethernet cables.   Greater flexibility for borring additional VEP6 machines if / when we need to, to support bigger projects.

Disadvantages:  Much more time needed to install and setup the IBM servers, due to complexity of Windows 2008 server software (but less time needed to maintain).     We had to remove our SFP+ network due to needing the PCIE slots in the NAS for additional SSDs, so have defaulted back to using CAT 7 ethernet to load sample libraries on to the VEP6 servers, and normal Thunderbolt for the MacPro6,1s.  This means it takes around 60 to 90 minutes to load the sample libraries, especially if we want to load and use all of the Spitfire Symphonic libraries. When budget allows, I'd like to upgrade the NAS to something that supports SFP+ to support either 10gb/sec or 20gb/sec. Also, because of the variety of sample libraries and plugins, together with the 50 feet distance between the machine room and the studio, we had to turn up the buffer setting on Nuendo and Cubase to max (2048), and the same for VEP6, in order to get rid of low level clicking.  Ideally we would replace the ethernet connection with Thunderbolt, but then we run in to all sorts of challenges as we would need to figure out how to build or acquire a Thunderbolt switch to connect the backend VEP6 servers to a single network.

Bottom line - there is no one solution to fit all, and if you're not careful you end up with a whole army of I.T. experts trying to figure out how to support your growing studio and server farm.

The easiest solution, is to not have all your libraries loaded, but just the ones you need onto a backend server (with lots and lots of RAM and highend CPU power), and only load the samples you want to use.  This is probably easier if you are just composing from home or if its just you.

Lastly, VEP6 will work fairly seemlessly on any platform (Windows or MacOS).  The best way to get accustomed to it, is to play around with it in a simple setup.  One computer running a DAW with VEP6 slave plugin loaded, with VEP6 server also running and loaded with a simple library. 

Hope that helps in some way :-)

Jon

Hello VEP6 colleagues,

I'm afraid I don't have a solution to this either.  However, I have some observations since upgrading from Steinberg Nuendo 7 to Nuendo 8:

   1. My VEP6 servers and their libraries are taking around 8 times longer to load (I have 3 IBM Windows servers each with 256GB memory and 48 CPUs).  The biggest instance which contains all Spitfire Strings libraries now takes about 90 minutes to load.  With Nuendo 7 it took about 20 minutes. Interestingly loading this instance in to a VEP6 server connected to the NAS by Thunderbolt2 and running on a MacPro 6,1 only takes 15 minutes to load - go figure!!

   2. Nuendo 8 is often crashing or hanging for no apparent reason, though I have found it seems to be when loading Spitfire's bigger libraries (such as Symphonic Strings and Symphonic Brass) in to a remote VEP6 server

   3. Nuendo 8 will often freeze for up to 20 to 30 minutes, or even crash when loading remote VEP6 server libraries if there are mp4 video and .wav audio tracks.  This doesn;t happen with Nuendo 7 or LogicPro.

   4. Nuendo 8 hangs whenever I try to load EW Play libraries on a remote server.  But on the same machine as Nuendo this is not causing this problem and VEP6 server libraries with Play and EW instances load and play without any issues.

   5.  VEP6 servers often appear to freeze when loading large instances (could this have something to do with the Kontakt RAM limits mentioned earlier in this thread?).  For example the Spitfire Strings library will often freeze for up to 5 minutes before continuing to load the instance.  This happens when Nuendo 8 is loaded first, and it happens when Nuendo 8 is loaded after the VEP6 servers are loaded (with Nuendo 7, we used to load up the Nuendo project first, and then load the VEP6 servers, but this approach is no longer reliable with Nuendo 8).

   6.  VEP6 always crashes now when unloading or closing VEP6 for larger libraries and instances - or at least it freezes after about 5 minutes after clicking on VEP6-File->Exit in Windows.  I have left it alone for up to 30 minutes, and then killed the VEP6 process due to inactivity and task manager indicating the process has either been 'paused' or 'is not responding'.  The same happens when the larger libraries are loaded in to a VEP6 server on a MacPro 6,1 when I try to close down the VEP6 server.

I'm guessing most of the above issues are related to Nuendo 8, and have now decided to stop using Nuendo 8 for the time being, as it is wasting too much of my time. After all I'm a composer, not an I.T. engneer :-)

Hope this helps in some small way,

Jon

Hello VSL and community,

Can you help?  I need to be able to control VEP6 slave Kontakt instrument parameters from Cubase (on my master Mac) and from my MIDI keyboard.

So, I have VEP6 installed on a slave and host, with Nuendo 7 running on the host.

I have several Kontakt string libraries setup in the VEP6 slave, and have created a master template in Cubase and the string libraries each have a Vienna Ensemble 6 instance connected to the Kontakt libraries on the slave.

So far so good and working fine.

However, I have found that by having one VEP6 Instance for each sample library, and then having a Cubase track for each instrument in the library connected using VEP6 Event Input, that this seems to be the best way to avoid VEP6 crashing or freezing and also seems to use the lowest amount of memory on the slave.

One problem with using Event Input sdeems to be that I can no longer control Kontakt or instrument volume or any other instrument parameter from Cubase or Cubase track automation, or indeed my MIDI keyboard (which is an NI Komplete Kontakt S88).  The only parameter that works is modulation.

I am guessing that there is a way to setup VEP6 to allow the Kontakt instrument parameters to be changed in real-time and also in playback mode, but despite looking through the VEP6 manual and also Cubase's manual, I cannot find how to do this.  Hopefully that all makes sense.

So, can someone help me please?

Many thanks,

Jonathan

Any one ?!?!?!

Hello VEP team and users,

I've posted this before, on another thread, but have decided to re-post as I've had no responses.

I'm trying to run VEP (Vienna Ensemble Pro 6) on a virtual machine.

The VM in question is the Virtual Station running on a QNAP NAS TVS1282T (though I have also tried this on a TS563 with the same result).   I've set up the VM to run Windows 10 and have also tried it with Windows 8 and Windows 10 Server.  I get exactly the same result with each.

The result being that whenever I run VEP6, there is no GUI displayed, but VEP6 is running in the background, using about 2MB RAM, but no CPU or network activity.

I see others have had similar problems, and wonder if there are any tips to solve this.

By the way the QNAP NAS TVS1282, has i5 processor with 16GB RAM and 500GB spare SSD.

I have successfully run VEP6 on Windows 10 under Virtual Box on a MacPro, MacMini and a PC, but in order to make use of the NAS and set it running as a VEP6 server, I really need to get this resolved.  I've been trying to sort this out for about 5 weeks now (on and off).

Many thanks in advance,

Jonathan

Hi Simon,

Just wondering, did you manage to get a solution to this issue?

I have been trying to get Ensemble Pro 6 to run on a virtual instance with Windows (versions 8 and 10).  The software seems to start running inbackground but no GUI and no way to connect or communicate with it from another machine.

I have managed to run it under Windows 10 on VirtualBox running on a Mac Mini, to prove it can be done.  But as yet, I've no way to get it to run properly on a QNAP machine (I've tried it on 2 models QNAP TVS1282T and TS563).

Best wishes,

Jonathan

Hello,

Did this issue ever get resolved?

I have a QNAP NAS (TVS1282T) and have setup a VM to run VEPro 6.  Actually having had exactly the same issues as above (ie. VEP5 and VEP6 run in the background but with no GUI interface.  Task manager shows them as idle occupying about 2.5MB each, but further activity despite leaving them running for 2 to 3 hours).

I have tried a VM with WIndows 8, 8 Server, 10 and 10 server, and I get exactly the same each time.  VEP starts but no GUI.   

I've been pulling my hair out over this for 3 days now, trying various things, but always the same result.

For info:  I have set up the VM with 8GB RAM and 100GB HDD space, with 2 i5 Intel cores.

Any thoughts please??

Thanks,

Jonathan

Hello VSL team,

Having not received a response from the various e-mails Ive sent to the VSL team in Austria, I thought I'd have a go here!!

I have come across Vienna Ensemble Pro today as a tool to support the multi-node setup and configuration for my network based composer studio to support my growing sample library (on 2 Macs) and Logic Pro X on a master server Mac. 
However, I have no experience of working with Vienna’s tools and software.  

Before I go ahead and purchase Ensemble Pro 5, I would like to understand:
1)Will Ensemble Pro 5 work with Mac OS El-Capitan ?
2)How many Ensemble Pro 5 licenses do I need to purchase to run on 2 slaves and one master (all Mac Mini’s running El-Capitan) ?
3)Does Ensemble Pro 5 work with NI Kontakt 5, ProTools Lite, and EW Player v4.3.2, Spitfire Albion ?
4)Is there a ‘try before you buy’ version of Ensemble Pro 5 that I can install on all 3 Macs for a few days, that I can play around with and decide if the investment is really worthwhile for my requirements ?

I very much look forward to your response.



With kind regards and wishing everyone at VSL and on the forum a very Happy and Healthy New Year!!!
Jonathan