I see. Thanks for the reply Paul and looking forward to seeing something similar in Synchron player. Other than this I had a great experience with it so far!

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't trying to set it to a BPM; those were just examples I wrote because there is no way to measure "speed" in the Synchron Player interface. Ultimately, I'd like the first slot to be between 0-65, second to be 66-82, and third to be 83-100. This would have been very straightforward in the VI-Pro interface by just dragging the threshold values. I'm attaching a screenshot to make it a bit clearer.

Hi all,

I recently got my first Synchron library - the Synchronized Dimension Strings. I've been using the VI-Pro player for several years now, and I'm shocked at how certain simple patch settings are impossible to do with the Synchron Player. After spending several hours on this, I'm trying to figure out if I can make this work at all, so I would be glad if someone can point out what I am doing wrong.

The problem I'm having is with the dimension controls. I'm trying to set up something very simple: a three-slot dimension with a speed controller. In VI-Pro, I would have added the slots and dragged the threshold values for the speed to my taste. This is, I believe, not possible with Synchron as I need to use a curve instead. However, I cannot get the values I need with the curve. Here's what I'm trying to set up:

1. One slot for all articulations slower than 80 bpm for 16th notes.

2. One slot for all articulations between 81 and 159 bpm for 16th notes.

3. One slot for all articulations from 160 bpm onwards.

First problem: when I set three slots, the player does not distribute the values evenly. The threshold values are 32 and 95 out of 127: a very large middle slot. What I'm trying to do is the opposite, however, I want the first slot to be much larger than others. Based on what I can measure, I need the threshold to be 66 and 83 (out of 100 - another complication is that the dimension controls go up to 100 in the control tab but up to 127 in the dimension view. I need to convert the numbers back and forth).

I think I can go on and on about what I'm trying to do but before I get into more detail, why is this so complicated to do in Synchron? I could not get it to work in any curve setup, bipolar/unipolar, with any range values. Is this simply not possible to do in Synchron player? And in general, how can one set up the speed controller in a usable way? The only way I can imagine is to duplicate the slots to fit into the scale, which obviously would be a poor way to go for the resources (and even then, would require a lot of trial and error).

Thanks in advance for all the replies!

Hi Dietz,

Sorry to revive this thread but I had a similar question. I'm demoing MIR Pro now after using MirX for years and I'd like to achieve a "theoretically" similar setup to a real recording situation. What I'd like to do is to route my VEP outputs to achieve these individual channels:

* Spot mic channels per instrument group,

* Stereo channel of the main microphone,

* Stereo channel of the secondary microphone.

How could I achieve this? I guess the "spot" mics would the the full dry sounds, so I can route them in VEP as described at the end of the  MIR Pro manual, but I can't understand how to get the "authentic" main and secondary microphone sounds - since the full wet sound has the dry element completely removed, I'd need to add some of that back to the main microphones but what would the value in your opinion?

In other words, if I'd like a mix of main mics with NO spot mics, how would I achieve this with MIR Pro?

Thanks!

Hi Andi,

Thanks for the reply! I was just about to send you the files, but I came up with a debugging idea and figured out the culprit. There is (apparently a known) bug in the Sibelius playback system about the trill lines. I have been using the trill lines mostly as "fixed" with 1 half step, and they work well in that configuration, but in this file I had trill lines with larger fixed steps which made the playback mess up. Apparently, Sibelius keeps sending the trill soundID in those cases, even when the trill line is over. So, disabling playback of the trill lines solved my issues. If anyone with playback problems stumble upon this thread, I'd suggest checking that out. (And according to the release notes of Sibelius 8.5, this is not fixed there either.)

I found that adding the technique text "natural" to the end of the trill line somewhat works around the problem, but I still got some issues, so I'll most likely delete the lines and use written-out trills. However, if I would manage to solve this issue with the trill lines, is it possible to configure the trill line so instead of the trill1 and trill2 samples in solo strings, I would trigger legato or fast legato? It would be useful for the cases where the trill size is larger than those two. Also, has this problem ever been encountered here, or has anyone found another workaround?

Hi,

I selected the "solo" instruments from the VSL house style. The SoundIDs (programs) are from the solo string instruments from the "Special Edition Vol.1+" sound set. And the patches I used in VI Pro are from the Sibelius patches made for the solo strings in Special Edition Vol.1+. I can post screenshots when I'm home, but I'm fairly sure that they were correct. Also, the switching problems start appearing after a while in the piece; not in the very beginning.

Hi Andi,

Thanks for you reply! I have read the document multiple times and tried everything I saw there. Here's what did not help:

• Reloading the house style
• Reloading the (correct) instruments and deleting the older ones
• Setting the instruments to "auto" in the mixer
• Trying out different libraries (dimension vs. special edition, with the correct sound sets)
• Adding "ord." before the problemmatic parts.

Is there anything else I'm missing?

Unfortunately I cannot update my Sibelius at the moment (due to problems I have had with Avid). But given that these Sound Sets have been around for a long time, I would hope for another solution. But thanks for the suggestion!

Hello,

I have been using the VSL house style and soundsets for a while now, but I've been having serious problems with my last project. 

First of all, I started the project with the Dimension Strings (1 per section, i.e. 5 solo strings in total). I selected the corresponding Dimension Strings instruments and SoundIDs and everything was fine at first, but later I started getting mixed soundID switches, i.e. pizz. notes appearing out of nowhere, etc. I decided to try out with Special Edition+ solo strings (switched the instruments and soundIDs), and got somewhat better results, but the Solo Viola just refuses to switch articulations. Tried adding "ord." texts, etc. Is there any limitation within this soundset system that I'm hitting now? Are there any workrounds? I tried reinstalling the sound sets, relaunching the playback configuration, and restarting Sibelius and VEP multiple times but it did not work.

An interesting observation is that, there seems to be a delay of some sort in articulation switching. I.e., a pizz. marked note does not switch, but three notes later, an arco note gets played back as pizz. etc. Could there be some latency issue? Tried different buffers but did not help. The sad part is that, I was hoping to upgrade my Special Edition solo strings to the full library, but since I mostly work with notation, if this does not work for me, it probably does not make sense for me to make the upgrade.

Some details:

• Windows 10 (i7 4770k, 32GB memory)
• Sibelius 8.4.0
• VE Pro 5.4.15566

I hope someone has some ideas that could help. Thanks in advance!

Yes, the fusion drive doesn't seem to be a good solution for our purposes. But the thunderbolt port should be good for sample streaming also.

How about a full spec'd 27 inch iMac?

And there are rumours that a new mac mini will come in a while, which might have the same specs as the Macbook pro you mentioned, sans the screen. And also the broadwell chips are around the corner. There is always new technology coming up...

But seriously speaking, you didn't write what kind of workload are you looking for. The MBP might be just fine but won't the screen will feel small after a while? Also, 16 gbs of ram might not be enough in the long run. You could also make your current Macbook your master and look for a beefier slave that can have at least 32 gigs of ram, just to be future proof.

Thanks! I will check it out.

In my case, since I don't have VE Pro, I tried using VE as a plugin in Logic and route the tracks via IAC. But the plugin VE didn't have IAC as inputs; it only had the VE midi in, and I couldn't find a way to route them. Maybe I can do it in the environment, but I don't know how to access VE Midi In Port 2, 3, 4 etc.. so I wouldn't be able to get past 16 tracks. But the standalone version of VE did have IAC as an input option and that was why I had to try that to see if helps in performance. Since it was standalone, it only had physical outputs available, and that's why I had to use soundflower to route the output back. But of course, when I use it as a plugin with the VE server, the output is already in Logic.

Does VE pro have the option to use IAC as an input even when VE pro is used as a plugin in Logic? If so, that might be another difference between VE and VE pro.

I meant putting the VE connection to the "instrument" slot of a software instrument track in Logic, as opposed to running the standalone version. I didn't know how VEP is used and I thought people were using the standalone version but I was wrong. So, you're right, when I use VE, the core distribution seems to be handled by VE. I realized that the CPU meter of Logic and the CPU meter of the activity monitor are not the same, and VE distributed them equally to my 4 threads.

I also tried connecting to the standalone VE through IAC and route the sound back via Soundflower. The performance was worse than using VE server. So I'm back to the beginning. :) Later on, if I have the time I'll try to demo VEP and compare it, but I think I should get a somewhat similar performance.

I see. I still would like to believe that VE and VE pro have the same base program, and VE pro has additions like networking and using one instance for many projects. I think one problem I realized is that, when VE is used as an instrument in Logic, Logic basically treats it as a single instrument no matter how many VIs there are in that VE instance. I still need to test it though because I only looked at Logic's cpu meter. But if the standalone VE has poorer performance than the Pro version, it means that there are some programming things under the hood that are actually different. 

Which brings me to this:

In the evening, I will try routing Logic to a standalone instance of VE via IAC to see what I can do. Actually, I can't work without freezing tracks with my current rig, and if using VE pro through IAC is preferred for Logic/Mac setups, it's not going to help me much. But I'll just test it and write here what I find out. I hope standalone VE and VE pro are behaving similarly.

(I wish there were some kind of benchmarks about these things. It would be great if there was something like "recommended settings" and measurements for different kind of PC or Mac configurations.)

Also, if VE pro is absolutely necessary to get a proper performance from VSL products, I guess I might consider getting a PC slave and using my Macbook pro in the clamshell mode as a master. But I would really like to have a one machine setup. Let's see! I'll be back with some observations. :)

Thanks for all the info so far, it's really helpful!

Sorry! I actually meant VI within Logic, as in I load VI pro instances directly to my midi tracks. An exception is Dimension strings where I load a VE per section. 

I have this observation:

When I started with VSL, I only had the SE vol.1 and plus. I was loading everything to VE, and I had something like 3 VE instances with around 48 tracks in total. Then when I started using Dimension Strings and Brass, the track count multiplied and I had to have quite a lot of instances of VE.

Then, when I was trying out MIRx, I downloaded the demo song for it. I've realised that every instrument (41 in total) was directly loaded to a midi track as a VI pro instrument, bypassing the VE completely. The performance was quite good, so I did the same for my template. I still don't exactly know what would I be missing out by not using VE, other than the fact that in VE, all the instruments are at the same place, easy to find. But I don't mind that in Logic.

Then, I did the following test: I put 16 Dimension Violins to a VE instance. When I record all of them simultaneously, Logic was using just one core. When I played them back, Logic was using just one core (even when I select a stale audio track, for example). The performance was obviously not so good. Then, I loaded the same instruments directly as VI pro instances within logic, so one VI pro per midi track. When recording, Logic again processed them in one core, but when I played back, Logic used all the cores (or I should say threads actually) equally, which resulted in a better performance.

I searched through the forums to find out about any performance increase in using VE pro in a single computer, but I couldn't find any. I would be glad if some one can point me to a thread where I can read about it, or write their own experiences about it because from what I could gather, if I compare using individual VI pro instances to using VE pro to host everything, the difference only seems to be the fact that VE pro is more organized, and one does not need to reload samples when one changes projects etc. with VE pro. 

But I think, when one uses VE in a track in Logic, and uses 16 channels (=instruments) within that, Logic seems to treat that whole VE instance as a single instruments and processes them in a single core. But I only monitored this in Logic; it is possible that the VE server is redistributing that load in the background. 

Did anyone else try using VI pro directly as an instrument in Logic? Or what else may I be missing?

I see. May I ask why would you recommend 6 cores? Is it because of the possible higher clock rates, or is logic and/or VE pro not at utilizing cores? I still find it hard to understand whether I should pay attention to single or multi-core performance while I'm deciding on a computer.

By the way, I don't have VE pro actually. I use VE within Logic. So I guess it's Logic that decides the core utilization, or am I wrong?

Thanks for joining in Cyril! I'm writing something more detailed below.

Thanks for this real life example. It seems very close to what I plan to do, which I'm writing below:

[Apologies for the novella-length post]

Here is a summary of where I'm at right now:

I use Logic Pro X.

I have a standard template of 70 tracks. In these 70 tracks, some of the VI instances have two slots filled (like two dimension violins). Since I use Dimension Strings and Brass as my main libraries, most of the samples are actually mono. But all of these 70 tracks have MirX on them. I don't have MIR pro. I don't usually use things like the APP sequencer in VI, and I don't really use anything fancy in VI except that I have humanization in all instances. I do some automation, usually breath and expression. And I automate the tracks in Logic from time to time. I also put one algo reverb, and a couple of eqs and compressors. I use effects on stereo busses that I route the instruments through, so, I probably won't have more than 24 such tracks.

Like I wrote above, I have a 2010 Macbook Pro with dual-core i5 2.4 Ghz, 8 GB ram, and a 7200 rpm drive. I run into bottlenecks into all these three areas (CPU, RAM, and HDD) so I'll try to write as detailed as possible about what I need.

The first problem I encounter is that, I can't really use Dimension Strings. I use them like this: I double each section with the transposition trick, so I have 16 First Violins, ....., 8 Double Basses. I really like the sound, but sometimes I can't even solo and play just the first violins. Even with high buffer rates. I think the most urgent solution to this would be to switch to using SSDs, at least for the Dimension Strings. But my computer has only sata II, and no thunderbolt, so I didn't do that kind of an investment yet. Even if I do, I will probably see an increase in the performance, but that probably won't be great since I will: (a) have the sata II speed as bottleneck, and (b) I will still have 1 (or at most, 2, if I replace my superdrive) disk to do all the work; another possible bottleneck.

So far, I have been working in a way where I freeze the dimension strings tracks. When I do that, I can actually work hassle-free with the rest of the orchestra. But of course, DS takes half of the template in this scenario. In any case, I think the most vital upgrade would be to a machine that can have possibly multiple disk drives, and sata III speeds. In a way, I guess I can actually do that with any mac machine with thunderbolt since that seems to be fast enough to use multiple drives though it, but a Mac Pro seems to be also a natural choice for such a task.

So, memory. 8 GB fills very fast of course. Recently, I tried this: when I load up my template, but don't load any samples, the 70 empty VI instances add up to 3 GBs (with the preallocated voices in the smallest setting, so 49 mb per instance). I tried loading samples until I come to the limit of the machine (when the OS starts compressing the memory). I could load 2,5 GBs, which corresponded to all stacc and legVib samples for all the instruments. I work around this limitation by using the optimize function in VI but sometimes that doesn't cut it, especially if I use a lot of articulations with the dimension strings, which I would like to. But sometimes, even with everything else loaded off, the samples I require for just the violins might end up forcing the OS to start compressing. And that compression and de-compression eats up the CPU cycles of course, resulting in a sluggish performance. Of course, if I start using SSDs, I can use a smaller buffer size and load more samples, but I'll still be limited to 2,5 GBs which doesn't seem to be enough in anycase (note that this is without Logic running), so I think I need a machine that can have a higher amount of memory, which can only be relatively recent MacBook Pros, Minis, iMacs, or Pros. Nonetheless, my gut feeling tells me that I should aim for a machine that can have the potential to go above 16 GBs of memory, since I feel like I'll hit that ceiling quite fast, and RAM is not so expensive anyway. Besides the Mac Pros, only the recent 27" iMac can go above 16, and that can only go to 32, and it starts from 1900 euros. It's not easy to find a second hand one anyway, since it's new itself. 

Of course, my CPU struggles too. But sometimes, it's not the CPU itself that has a problem but it's a combination of above: trying to constantly stream from a 7200 drive (thus waiting for the drive to react), and constantly compressing and de-compressing the memory. Other than that, here is a benchmark: I loaded the demo project for MirX. It had 41 tracks, and I could play it back with a buffer of 1024 samples in Logic, and 4096 in MirX. Obviously, the latency is quite high, but it did work smoothly. The project was not very dense, and it only had SE samples, so the memory print was low, and there was not a lot of disk streming going on simultaneosly, so it allowed me to see what my cpu does when the machine is not suffocated by other factors. My machine has a geekbench score of 4093. Any machine that satisfies the requirements above has more score than mine.

So here is the bottom line after the long explanation: I think that an old Mac Pro is would satisfy these and it would be the cheapest way to address all my problems. But am I missing something here? If I go with an 8-core 2009 machine, it still has a lot of possibilities to upgrade later on, up to, I've heard, 12-core 3-something GHz and 128 Gb Ram. That looks like a more future proof solution than any mini or iMac I can buy now, not to mention the price is much lower. But on the other hand, essentially I'd be buying a 5 year old machine. And it's not going to have thunderbolt, which, honestly, I don't know what to do with right now.

So, the question is, should I go ahead and get an 8-core (or even 4-core, maybe) 2009 machine and upgrade as I can afford and as I need, or should I get a mini/imac with 16 gigs of ram and call it a day, and get a contemporary mac pro whenever I can afford? Are the 2009-2012 mac pros adequate for our kind of work, or if I go that route would such a machine be obsolete within a year or two?

Thanks for reading this long post, and thanks for all the help! :)

Oguz.

Hey, thanks anyway! :)

Dear collective wisdom, I'm currently looking at a 2010 machine with 1 x 6-core 3,33 Ghz cpu, 32 gb RAM and 512 6g ssd disk. Would you think this machine could suffice? If I get this, there wouldn't be any way to upgrade it since there is only one cpu slot and that cpu seems to be the highest I can put, but would I be able to get a good performance and do what I wrote above? Some people say anyway that for music, single core performance might also be important and 3,33 ghz clock rate is quite high I guess. Thanks for responses! 

I know that Geekbench scores do not exactly represent the power necessary for our kind of work but,

3930k has a score of 20684 (64-bit multicore)

a base 8-core 2009 Mac Pro has a score of 13869

a fully upgraded 12-core Mac Pro has a score of 27532

(although I've heard that one can put an even higher cpu into the 2009 Mac Pro)

So, if these 100 tracks are MIR tracks, I might maybe expect to reach around 70 mirx tracks with high buffer settings even with the base 8-core 2009?

Thanks for the replies!

At this point, I don't plan to part with my laptop as I still need a portable machine for other purposes. :)

So, I was already sceptical about the 2008 Mac Pro and I don't think I will go that much back in the Mac Pro line-up. Plus, the memory is more expensive than I thought. I am still considering the 2009 one though; the hardware can be upgraded up to the latest version of the 1st generation Mac Pro, so I'm guessing it _should_ be enough for my purposes (with a PCI-e SSD of course). So, any comments from 2009-2012 Mac Pro owners are welcome! :)

Hello everyone!

I am currently working on a 2010 Macbook Pro with a dual core i5 processor and 8Gb ddr3 1067Mhz ram. I use Logic Pro, and my samples are almost exclusively VSL. I use Dimension Strings and Dimension Brass as my main libraries, in addition to VSL woodwinds and percussion. And I actually double every instrument in Dimension Strings. So, I end up with having quite a lot of tracks. Obviously I can't work real time, even with maximum buffer values it's impossible for my machine to handle this load. Actually, I can't even use 16 dimension violins when I want to play a legato line with velocity crossfade turned on (and release samples off). And on top of it, I use MirX. :) Therefore, my workflow is quite slow and involves a lot of bouncing, freezing, and guessing.

It is evident that I need to update my system, but unfortunately I don't have a lot of funds for it right now. I want to stay in the Mac world, and I want to get something that will be upgradeble and last long, so I was thinking about saving for a while for the new Mac Pro. But recently, I had the chance to purchase a 2008, 8 core Mac Pro for 500 euros. That's why I wanted to ask people here what would be their recommendation about such an "upgrade".

Now this machine is actually two years older than my laptop, so I am not sure how much of an upgrade it is, but here are my thoughts and what I need:

I usually have around 100 tracks, which means around 70 MirX instances. 

I don't need to have low latencies with MirX. In fact, I don't mind entering in midi data in with MirX turned off. But I would like to have lower latencies while I enter the notes, so at most something like 256 - 512 samples initially. Which means I would like to be able to play, say, 16 dimension violins at once at that kind of a buffer.

In general, I don't use the release samples, and I don't use the velocity crossfade with faster notes. So, my voice count is not that demanding. Then again, DS is unforgiving in that area.

Since my current laptop doesn't support sata III, I didn't invest in an SSD. This Mac Pro can have sata III speeds with a PCI-e card. I believe this would help with a lot of issues I have with DS. But, the mac pro can only have ddr2 ram with 800 hz. Would the ram speed be an issue for me? (especially with Mirx) I thought the ram would be expensive for ddr2 but I actually found some good deals on ebay for 32 gb kits.

Those are the issues I can't decide on. On the one hand, my current machine can handle around 40 mirx instances and when I freeze DS tracks, I actually don't have much problems with the rest of the orchestra. The geekbench score for 64-bit multicore performance of the mac pro is around 3 times more than my macbook pro. On the other hand, it's a 6 year old computer. But then again, maybe it would end up as a slave machine if I happen to buy the new mac pro later on. The question is, do I need such a powerful machine as the new mac pro?

Oh, and as an audio interface I'm using Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 which is a USB2 interface, and I will go on using it, at least for now.

Sorry for this long dump of data. I hope I put in everything relevant and I would be glad for all the help I can get! Thanks a lot in advance,

Oguz.

Edit: What would you think about a 2009 8-core mac pro for about 900-1000 euros? They have ddr3 (up to 1333mhz I believe), and the processor can be upgraded up to 12 core Xeon X5675 3070 MHz. 

I was thinking something along those lines but the rest of the violins are grouped as 5-6 and 7-8.. 

On the other hand, I did a desk setup with violins 1-2 and everything sounds ok. It would be good to have some guidelines about making custom patches for DS, though.

Hello!

I've been building my custom patches for DS, and I was wondering why the 1st and 2nd desks of Violins have players 1-3 and 2-4 respectively, while 3rd and 4th desks have 5-6 and 7-8, instead of the more sequential 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8. I'm doing mostly desk patches myself, should I follow this numbering? Does this somehow conform with the original seating used in the recording sessions?

Same question for the celli of course, since they are 1-3, 2-4, 5-6 in the factory patches for desks.

I was thinking the same before I purchased the DS, but I actually didn't need to transpose yet. There are 3 different legatos, the trill legato, and 3 different portamentos, plus all different string possibilities and open positions. You can combine a lot of stuff! Sure, some of the sul G, sul D, etc. patches probably share samples but if you plan wisely, you can get a lot from DS. I recently did a project with only DS for violins and cellos, although I also have the SE orchestral and solo strings. 

I use both 1st and 2nd violins. One can play with the numbers for sure, but for now I did 16 1st violins and 14 2nd violins, and it sounded quite good. I had a different track for each "desk" in my DAW and humanized things differently. I was thinking the same, that it would be better if they recorded at least something like 12 violins but there are so many different articulations that the combinations are really fruitful. Check out the manual. 

By the way, celli are already 6 so they are quite enough by themselves I think. I did add 2 more to have more variety though. 

In general, I really like this library. But I should probably give a disclaimer that I really enjoy all kinds of divisi writing and I do it more often then not. I you want to have a lot of tutti 1st and 2nd violins in the very low or very high registers, it might be very difficult to achieve that.