Hi there

For Dante networks, there are quite a number of network optimizations you can make with managed switches:

https://service.shure.com/Service/s/article/configuring-sg350-switch-for-shure-devices-and-dante?language=en_US

I'm thinking of using this SG350 switch for Vienna Ensemble (I have one spare) instead of my current switch, and wondered if doing these tweaks (which make Dante/AES67/Ravenna rock solid) would work for Vienna also? Any pitfalls?

Thanks!

OK....tentatively I may have solved it. Touch wood...

I disabled hyperthreading on the Nuendo machine, and now it's all just fine. Something about using both DANTE and Vienna and having hyperthreading on is causing Vienna or the host cpu to literally "skip" an entire audio buffer (or two, or three) sometimes. No idea why. Now I can run 64 buffer and it's not so much as glitching once....

No FX Plugins used - or even installed! There is one plugin installed, Kontakt.

MIR - never used it. Looking into how to disable it if any component of it is enabled by default, but I've never knowingly activated it...

Just for reference, here are two dropouts as an image attached. This is at 128 buffer, 2 vienna buffers. 24/48khz. Barely any system resources being used on either machine. The left glitch is precisely 128 samples. The right glitch is precisely 256.

Fixed IP addresses on the 10.0.1.X and 255.255.0.0 subnet, both machines have an Intel X550 card, directly connected with CAT 6A.

I'm starting to suspect that the Focusrite DANTE card might be a problem (it's the only thing I haven't changed between any setups experiencing these glitches), so I've got an RME Dante USB interface arriving tomorrow, to see if it's a problem with the Focusrite ASIO drivers or PCIE.

Main machine - Intel 9960X, 128gb Ram, W10 Pro high performance with all bluetooth and wifi disabled in device manager, intel x550 network card connected directly (ie no switch). 128 ASIO buffer, and 2 buffers additional in the one connected vienna instance. Running Nuendo 10, latest version. Connected to....

New Slave machine - AMD 3950X, 128GB Ram, Corsair PCIE4 NVME system and samples drive. Vepro 7 latest version.

I keep getting intermittent audio dropouts, about one every 30 seconds or so. If I bus the audio back to a group and to an audio track and print it, I can see that the audio literally just cuts out. Here's the funny thing though - it's always exactly 128 samples. I tried dropping down to 64 buffer just to see if it increased and the frequency of them didn't but the length oocasionaly was a multiple of 128, eg 512 samples dropout. Always a multiple of 128.

The dropouts seem to disappear if I go up to 512, but then the latency is 20ms and unacceptable, and besides, we're talking about one patch on one slave.

On the ethernet connections - I tried turning off interrupt moderation, which changed nothing, but even with that disabled changing the interrupt moderation rate to extreme increased the number of these dropouts. Jumbo frames currently disabled.

I know it's not performance based because there's plenty - tons - of CPU and RAM, disk and ethernet bandwidth on both ends. The fact the dropouts are precisely one buffer long seems to be a clue. There is no switch involved but the same happens if I use a switch, incidentally...

Thanks for reply, but no, I didn't, first thing I checked....it's a bug...reported it to support!

Having a weird bug on all of my slave machines where Exponential Audio R2 - with a stereo send from a stereo track and with the signal within the R2 gui appearing clearly as stereo....becomes mono once it comes out of the plugin back into the mixer....anybody else experienced this? 

If the multichannel thing includes 7.1 or good Atmos (7.1.2-6) support I’ll be very happy to pay the upgrade price. Just 5.1 some would be obsolete fast. Stability and efficiency is what I’m after. If it’s just cosmetic with some inbuilt plugins, then...a big meh.

I hope the score/Dorico thing isn’t true. It took Dan Spreadbury and team years to make a good engraving program and he’s the best at it there is. A mediocre score editor would be a disastrous idea.

And I appreciate that you're trying to improve it - we love that! But listen to your community. Lots have seen this announcement and said exactly what I'm saying. We don't know it all, and we don't know what you have planned, but inviting us to part with a solid chunk of cash....for software we won't get for a while and no way to ascertain the value of the upgrade, and changing the pricing structure in a way that benefits new users and frankly, shafts prior users? 

It's not a good look. I mean, hey, at least grandfathering an option....or a price to upgrade the three-pack so it's a little more commensurate with an upgrade...or telling us why it's worth the amount asked? Wouldn't be a bad idea. 

It's also cool that I can drive my car....but I did pay for it.

I think the problem many professional users who have numerous licenses have is simply that the upgrade price of 400+ euros (for me) for a completely unannounced feature set is...silly. Really silly. 

And I'd take issue with the "works well". It works well sometimes. Other times (like closing sequences) it crashes repeatedly. I've just learned to live with that because I have projects and deadlines. I'd pay 400 euros for it to be stable, frankly.

I'm not trying to bust your balls, I love the software, I just think you're seeing a lot of negativity here for a really good reason, and some of us like your software and wouldn't even look twice at the samples...a starter orchestra isn't of interest.

And the few conversations I've had with other composers around LA I've only heard negative reactions. I hope it's worthy of a .0 upgrade and the asking price or I think quite a few people will be quite grumpy. But, look, what do I know, I've only been doing this for two decades and I've been a customer of yours only since...pretty much day one minute one on the Vienna Ensemble side.

I guess those questions aren't important, then.

Hey Paul - the reply is a little helpful but the real questions are these:

- I have nine licenses. Do I really have to pay 45 euros to upgrade each and every single one and buy an orchestra I likely won't use (I didn't use the old epic orchestra) at a total of over 400 euros?

- and because of that.....this is a .0 release. Is the price tag of the upgrade commensurate with the new feature set?

- is any further bug fixing taking place in VE Pro 6?

If we don't want epic orchestra, are we forced into buying it to keep upgrading VE Pro?

Thanks!

I've run into a VEP6 problem recently with Kontakt 6. Latest updates on both. If I load my metaframe, my template, frequently the first instance - and sometimes the second - will load empty. It's saved with stuff in it (usually Spitfire patches)....but loading it up, boom, the Kontakt instance is empty and remains empty even if I try and reload the same metaframe.

Same thing is happening over three different slaves. Each instance is fairly full, but there's plenty of RAM and sometimes it seems to work fine, I'll save and reload and it'll reload just fine. Then at some point...it just won't. Other Kontakt instances within the same instance in VEPRO load fine. It's mostly typical of Spitfire samples but not exclusively so.

I cannot get VEPro to stop dropping audio. Main sequencer running Nuendo is a 7940X with plenty of RAM and all SSD (Samsung NVME), and slave computer(s) are Intel 9900k with 64gb RAM and Samsung 970 pro SSDs, connecting to it via RDP so no graphics cards to mess with anything. Windows 10 on both. Machines are connected via a 10gbe Netgear switch with static IP addresses.

I'm loading the Cinematic Studio Brass trumpets, and playing a legato line - nothing else, and this is what is happening.

https://ufile.io/y7zvx (link below)

Dropouts mp3

It happens on both of two slaves similarly, these audio cutouts, they happen in different places every time. Nothing appears to be overloading, CPU meter on Kontakt doesn't go over 3%, disk isn't even flickering off. No reverbs...nothing else except a direct Vienna connection. Audio card buffer is at 256, with 2 extra buffers on VEPro. On the main computer similarly not seeing any resources going over more than a couple percent....and it's happening similarly on two different slaves!

Any suggestions? In advanced settings on the slaves it's set to programs and set for performance (all graphics enhancements turned off). In terms of multicore I'm loading everything on one instance which is set to be able to use all the CPU threads within Vienna and similarly in Kontakt, but the CPU clearly isn't being stressed at all, it's plenty of horsepower to play one legato line. Happens on every instrument as far as I can see...

Hi there,

I have a secondary system I use as a backup. It has two Vienna slaves driven from a main daw machine (cubase).
I'm getting weird audio breakup/clicks/pops.

The slaves are i5-3450 with 32 gig of ram each. The samples are on an SSD raid array of two drives. If load up my template, it all loads fine, but one of the two machines, if I pick an instrument that individually can pull a high voice count quite easily, I can crap it out at around 300-400 voices. For example, if I select the Spitfire harp, and play lots of big glissandi, the voice count gets up to 300-400 pretty easily. But 300-400 voices seems like it shouldn't tax the system too much, especially if the drive has no issues and the network usage is barely anything, so I can't quite understand why it is crapping out.

What I am noticing is the CPU on the one Vienna Ensemble instance is what is maxing out. The cpu in total isn't maxing out, just the one core, and I guess that's because one instrument in kontakt within an instance of vepro is assigned to one core. I'm currently set to two threads per instance, but going up to four doesn't seem to change anything.

If I use latencymon it does flag one thing - the RAID driver from intel. I don't know if that is the problem, since the disk usage isn't the issue, but the driver flagged is IastorV.sys - however, I'm thinking this is likely not the issue. Since it is a socket 1150, and I'm hitting the limit of what one core on the cpu can do, would there be any merit to swapping out the i5-3450 for a 4770k or a single xeon e3-1290 (both of which I can obtain pretty cheaply?) as a quick upgrade? Wondering what sort of improvement that would give...

Any ideas?

thanks!