Hi William,

I re-listened to those parts I tried to describe as "hissing", and apparently it's a cumulative effect of the tremolo and violins on the left, which I didn't mention because my brain is too small. It's still very short-lived and now I'm thinking it would actually sounds the same in a real-world performance. At 2:30-2:32, for instance. Anyway, the performance is so good that this rather tiny thing is the biggest complaint I could think of.

Oh yes, thanks William and VSL for the walkthrough!

Cheers,
Crusoe.

Hi William,

Wow. This sounded more or less flawless to me. Which I don't remember hearing in the field of virtual orchestration. Maybe a couple of times. The first 2 minutes were 100% convincing and musical. Maybe, and I'm not 100% sure here, a few times you could use filtering to reduce hissing that is created by the tremolo strings. I reckon that hissing is created by the reverb. Very much impressed!

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Look what I've found:

CPU Performance vs. Real-Time Performance in Digital Audio Workstations (DAW)

Really nice explanation of the DAW performance subject, simple but without oversimplification. I'd sum up it like this: it's the same as with one's children. One has to invest time and sweat into their kids, no amount of "smart toys" can replace that. Hope you catch my drfit :)

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Holy ... Thanks for pointing this out :)

I've just had a look here:

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-amd_epyc_7302-996-vs-amd_ryzen_threadripper_3970x-948

TR price is substantially lower, must be a different model pair that you looked at. Nevertheless, this page gives a pretty good idea of the comparative performance. 

All the best,

Crusoe.

Ok, then I guess you need not concern yourself with the thread number. I don't know how it works exactly, but it's more or less a resource management thing. Any CPU of the grade you are aiming at is not a bottleneck. Not even remotely. This CPU will sit 97% idle in the stratospehere, while mere mortals, memory chips, SSDs and the like are trying to pull of the mighty feat of moving around those 256Gb of data.

The shopping list looks fine to me. You might want to consider the newer Threadripper 3970X, although it has higher TDP, which is enough to substitute a fireplace, if your client needs one. Also, the audio interface could become a bottleneck, depending on what your client has right now. Samsungs are a good choice, btw, I'm not convinced by the performance of the new PCIe 4.0 modules. But this will probably change in the future.

Good luck :)

Crusoe.

Hi Trickytrick,

You are welcome. I wonder why you've selected a server CPU? This is not obvious to me at all. Also, I don't really understand the question about threads per instance. It's just a number of cores times two. Or you meant something else that I didn't quite grasp.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Maarten,

This is a beatiful piece, I liked how you used the strings to create the background for the melody, really beatiful. And the melody is catchy and likeable, you centered your piece around it, I only wish you'd develop it further. I wonder why you called this tune a jazz piece, I thought it's a pre-jazz tonal piece with maybe a few touches of jazz harmony.

The clarinet is very nice, too. Maybe with a few additional articulations you could make it even better.

A few technical criticisms:

- The claps and cajon are very dry; I believe adding some reverb could give them a better place in the mix.

- The bass is too quiet or at least saturated by the piano; you need to give it some more space in the mix.

- The instruments don't follow each other well rhythmically. Claps are out of sync with the piano, I think, but I couldn't figure this out 100%, maybe it was something else that confused me.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Dave,

Lovely piece, I liked it. I thought the bassoon remained clueless as to what the oboe is up to, it just went on happily, maybe suspecting something just a for few short moments. That's the power of harmony :)

Counterpoint was more or less flawless, and the interplay between the instruments was clever, as usual. You also used fairly straightforward harmony of the classical period; it was clear and very easy to follow.

Sometimes panning tricks worked for me, sometimes they didn't. At 1:42 oboe jumps half the stage in an instant, which doesn't sound as if it was intended (even with your explanation). And indeed, those stage settings blur the feeling of space that unites the trio. Dynamic panning of those proportions is very hard to pull off, in general, and I understand your focus was on fun. And torturing the mix settings is not a very fun thing to do, yes :)

All the best,

Crusoe.

Hi John,

3.1 is a very good option, I suppose. If you have enough space in your room, that is. You will hear plenty of bass with a subwoofer, but how helpful it will be in a small room (for mixing) is not a given. But there's no question, if you care about bass below 60Hz, you need a sub.

Foam, yes. Stuff from Universal Acoustics is reasonably priced and works well. It also doesn't smell when unpacked, which is nice. Pluto-1 is a good starter kit. Use it to diffuse direct reflections fro the speakers.

Bass traps - yes. Can't give the exact recommendation here. If you are adventurous, you could make them yourself following the advice here. Set them up in the corners, as many people suggest.

Acoustic measurements... maybe, but that's after the previous two points. You will get used to the new room, and after some time you will actually know what needs a correction (with some luck). Not precisely, of course, and that's where the measurements will come in handy. But the other way around... I'm not so sure. It's the same principle as with mixing in general - don't do something unless you know why you need to.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi John,

it's a pretty big subject. There's plenty of information on the the web, YouTube included. How did I personally know that my room needs treatment? I turned on some talk show, very well recorded audio, and yet half of all the words were munched, drowned in a wash of the room echo. It's as simple as that.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi John,

Aside from what was already said, include your room into the equation, too. If it's a small un-treated room, you will easily overwhelm it with 2 5'' monitors. Want more bass? Get a subwoofer, not more speakers. And treat your room, if it's not treated. The question of low frequencies is really orthogonal to the quantity of speakers.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Merry Christmas to Dave, Becky and everyone who reads this!

Dave, Becky, indeed, your performance brought a smile on my face. Thanks for doing it.

Crusoe.

Hi Martin,

I'm not an expert on the subject by any means, so what follows is a bit of speculation.

Who doesn't want that, hehe. This is a pretty ambitious goal, I'd say, whatever choice you make in the end. And the problem is the 128 samples plus 0 issues combination, not the CPU power or anything else. The average performance will certainly improve with a newer PC, but the *worst*-case situation could stay. Audio performance is a function of many variables, and I therefore refrain from a direct advice.

I'd personally consider economic reasons above all else. You do have VE Pro, and you do a working set-up, and you have enough money for a reasonable new PC that you could upgrade memory-wise etc. as the time goes by. You'd also retain a working one-machine set-up, which is nice in my opinion, given all the hassles of a new PC. 

You can look at the LatencyMon measurements of my AMD 3900X here.

Merry Christmas,

Crusoe.

Here's the results of LatencyMon run on my system.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Ben,

sure, I will send them some time soon. I think I have LatencyMon installed.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Ben,

That's good to know. Without any extra knowledge of the specifics, one would think that the bias could be the case indeed (with Intel compiler around, and Intel's overall dominance not so long ago in the past).

Just to add a bit of info on 3900X, all 12 cores get their share of work under a heavy load, resulting in not as much of a load on a single core, which is noticeable (Cubase and VE Pro 6). It's also worth noting that I still stay on the X370 platform, upgraded from Ryzen 1800X (which was pretty good, too, especially given its price). Works as a charm.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Dave,

Totally makes sense, and I understand this from my own (rather humble) experience. But then, and this is why my thought went this way, you provided a very specific, detailed text that summarizes the piece. So even if there's no literal translation from music into words, you still had something to add! 

Thanks for the explanation about the violin. Amazing... I should have another listen :)

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Oh, and again, very nice piece. 

Hi Betuel,

Like the ones Slate advertises? Care to share the experience? I wonder if it's more than a snake oil.

Thanks,

Crusoe.

Hi Pyre,

Recently bought AMD Ryzen 3900X, it's been a blaze so far. Even if VSL software favors Intel for whatever reason, it's not that noticeable when all those cores just shred (I can't confirm the bias, btw, just referring to your message). My thought - worry less about the CPU and invest the money saved by staying away from overpriced Intel, into more RAM, faster SSD, etc. They are quite important for performance, too, as has been discussed a lot of times here and elsewhere.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Dave,

I understood the composition on a basic level, I think. You start with a theme, and then modulate to a "darker" tonality several times, before the violin fully enters in the "dark" middle of the piece. The violin then leads the way back into the light. 

Well, the "dark" part was not that dark, which makes me doubt the above interpretation. This was partly emphasized by the violin being in the higher register most of the time (if not all the time). It also reminded me some of your works for clarinet (with the author being the same, I guess that's not too surprising :) ).

On the technical side of things, the piece is very well-made, I thought. Convincing individual parts and dynamics. One little remark that I could make is that the solo violin is positioned very far from the listeners. It does sit in the orchestra well, but then I *personally* would like to hear some more detail/character in its part. Maybe it's a property of the instrument itself.

Ok, now that I've outlined the criticism that I hope to be useful in at least some way, let me say that the piece is beatiful, enjoyable, and very-well programmed. Keep up doing the good work.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Ricardo,

>>  Is single-threaded performance really better in the new AMD processors?

No. Intel is still ahead of this, even with AMD's 3rd gen. Should you care about this at all? I'm not so sure. The number of cores is quite important, however. 

>> Is the new the zen 2 processors and PCI-E Gen 4 really worth it for Vienna Symphonic Library or should I get Intel 9th gen instead?

I'd say both will do the job well (I used Intel before, and then moved to AMD), but in terms of "bang for the buck" AMD 3900X is beyond competition right now. Arguably, it's beyond competition, period. And probably 3950X, which we are yet to see. Just my opinion.

Regards,

Crusoe.

Dave, thank you for taking time and explaining the thought process behind the compositional decisions. Even though I did undrestand them to some degree, a lot of times my understanding was ambiguous. And you helped to clear that up. With zero initial understanding, the explanations would probably be meaningless, as you rightfully said in another message. But half-way through, they are certainly useful for a guy like myself (pretty much uneducated). I myself often have trouble with finishing a piece properly, and your explanation is very helpful since your interpretation is unambiguous.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Dave,

an interesting piece, it went a lot of directions, they were fun to follow, even though I'm not sure I fully grasped the "main" idea. More on this later (hehe). The clarinet was somehow more assertive, and the strings followed it more often than speak their own word. The stringed instruments were also in unison often, which made me thinking about their... secondary role compared to the piano+clarinet. I could be wrong here.

The ending felt just a little bit abrupt, as if its composer (you) all of a sudden decided: "Enough!".

Overall, I enjoyed the ideas and clever interplay, even though I'm not really a huge fan of chamber music in general.

On the technical side, I felt sometimes there's too much resonance in the low-mids (~250-500Hz) that is created by the reverb (I think). 

I went through a discussion in this thread, and would like to add something vaguely related. I went to Paris once, to see the beatiful paintings of the D'Orsay museum, and then to see more of that in Louvre. Even though in visual arts I was as educated as an average caveman. It was overwhelming in terms of new information, but I didn't think there was a painting thing in particular that I *liked*. And then, a couple of days later, I went to Versaille, to see the palace, of course. The palace also boasted a few paintings, but to my amazement, they were horrible. Maybe they are not, maybe it was just me pumped up with the beauty of all those great masters, and just incomparable. It was amazing not only because the French kings couldn't find a single decent painter. It was also amazing because I knew by heart that what I saw a couple of days ago was more beatiful than what I saw in Versaille. I learned to appreciate paintings!

Well, not even vaguely related, so it seems :) 

Cheers,

Crusoe.

P.S. Disappeared, indeed, but not entirely :) just went on vacation. I for some reason don't get notifications from your YouTube channel, even though I'm subscribed to it.

Hi Philip,

my personal experience boils down to a few things:

1) If you "sink" a part into a properly mixed virtual performance, noticeable ambient difference diminishes quite a bit. Depends on your specific setting, in the end, but the scenario you describe has a pretty good chance to work. Check this out, for example:

https://www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/t50866-Boccherini---String-Quintet-op-41-ndeg1-with-the-turkish-Finale----violin-and-VSL-Instruments#post280410

I think you should be able to find other good examples on this forum.

2) Since it's a soloist, you actually *want* that part to stand out, in a certain sense. As soon as you find a proper dry/mix ratio while doing #1, the difference will actually work to your advantage.

Regards,

Crusoe.