Cool. Thanks again for the reply.

Thanks, Mike, you're exactly the person I needed to hear from!

Quick question, though - do you have all your VSL samples on HDDs? I figured that since I keep all my VSL on SSDs, I didn't need to worry about lots of RAM.

The new (refurbished) Mac Pro arrived Monday at 4PM, and I'm shocked to say I was up and running at 10AM the next day to finish the project that had been interrupted by the old one dying. That's of course largely thanks to my whole VSL setup being on a slave, though.

Thanks for the reply.

You said 8-core, but is that the newest Mac Pro, and what speed? I've got most of the full libraries and Dimension Strings, so probably would be pushing it harder than you, so I'd be curious what your computer specs are.

Of course I will try it myself eventually, but I just wanted to hear from others' experience a bit so I can prioritize what I do and when. I wasn't planning on getting a new Mac Pro until later in the year, so funds are tight!

For many years I've been happily using:
1) a 2008 3.2GHz 8-core Mac Pro with Digital Performer, often running 20-30 audio tracks with basic effects, up to 8 Omnisphere tracks and a few EW Play tracks, and
2) a Windows 7 Xeon server slave I built with plenty of power for a large VSL orchestra in VE Pro with MIR and sometimes GVI for some old Giga samples I just can't let go of. The VSL samples are spread across 4 240GB SSDs.

The Mac Pro suddenly died this week so I've ordered a 3.5GHz 6-core Mac Pro, 32GB RAM.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to whether I will be able to ditch the slave machine? I'd put the existing 4 SSDs into a TunderBay 4 mini. Could this new Mac handle multiple audio tracks, a little EW, Omnisphere and a decent sized VSL orchestra?

I just wanted to report this and see if there's any tips. I just updated everything (VEP, VIP, MIR Pro & the Suite) and have a very obvious decrease in performance. I just opened a project I finished last week to test it out and have crackling and stuttering when lots of Vienna instruments are playing. This played without a hitch last week but with the latest software updates can't make it through the big tuttis. I've restarted both my machines and repaired permissions on the Mac. No other changes have been made.

Host is Mac Pro OS 10.6.8 and is running Digital Performer 8, a couple of live guitar channels with GuitarRig 5, 1 instance of Omnisphere with just a couple channels in use, and 1 instance of Play with just one channel in use. Slave is Dual Xeon Windows 7 and is running 1 instance of VEP-64 using a variant on Herb's Teldex big orchestra setup (so full orchestra on 5 Event Inputs) and 1 instance of VEP-32 with a drum kit in GVI.

Any suggestions are appreciated, but mainly I just wanted to report this in hopes that there's a "whoops, we'll fix that next time!"

Actually, The Trouble with Harry was Herrmann's first film with Hitchcock, so if he had been unavailable, the film & music worlds may have been robbed of the great H&H pairing forever. I don't mention this just to nitpick, but to say this - I have always been amazed that Hitch & Herrmann first met for such a light film, yet Hitch knew that he had met his musical partner. Bernard's brilliance and their process together must have been so clear on Harry, because just from the music, you would never know that he was the right composer to stick with through to films like Psycho, or even The Man Who Knew Too Much, which was next up for them.

Well, this is my cue. Any excuse I get, I post in... please give us a second clarinet! We've got two flutes, two bassoons, and a few types of oboes, so 2nd clarinet really is an obvious hole in the woodwind collection that I'd love to see filled.

I'll just echo MOH's comment, not necessarily about Lemur, but just about switching to using expression rather than velocity crossfade when the doubled sample issue bugs you. It's not ideal, but you just have to pick which you can live with.

It's true I've never even bothered to learn how to use decoupling and will look into it, but in the 9 months or so since I posted that, the problem has gone away. I don't know if it's VSL's upgrades or DP's, but it hasn't happened to me in a long time.

So sorry, JBova, for the moment it seems you're on your own!

I use DP 8.01 on OS 10.6.8 with a dual Xeon Windows 7 slave via VEP with no problems other than the known Event Plugin/Bounce issue. I just did a huge orchestral piece with one instance of VEP and 5 or 6 Event Inputs, also including a couple of audio input tracks of live instruments, without a glitch.

I do not however use Kontakt. I do use Tascam GVI, which hasn't been supported in many years and required a hack to even install on Windows 7, so I've been pleased as punch with VEP's compatibility. Perhaps there is something particular about Kontakt which is a problem. I hope for you all that that gets sorted.

It is irritating not to be able to bounce tracks, but it's totally worth it to have a large template in one instance.

1) yes

2) no need to do anything in your sequencer, as it's all handled within VSL's software

3) hmmm... that one I'd have to look up. But... you know... go Pro, it's great.

4) You can drop the Preload Buffer size in the Directory Manager much lower on the SSD to take most advantage.

5), Yeah, you can absolutely mix types of drives.

You'll love the difference. Practically no loading time when opening projects. It's great.

This pretty much echoes comments above, but there are indeed two flutes, multiple types of oboes, and two bassoons. If you ever need three of those instruments playing independent lines, chances are good you can orchestrate the 3rd part using some of the same samples but never overlap the same notes. And yes, I have at times, as you suggested, just accepted that 3 clarinets doesn't sound THAT different from 2 and used those samples. As long as it's in the mix of a big orchestra, it doesn't matter too much. For the most part, however, I do whatever I can to have different samples playing for each player whether in unison or not so I can a) composer more naturally, b) not change the character of the "players" and c) play or randomize each part separately, so my flutes don't hit every note at exactly the same time.

But the main reason I'm responding to this post is to once again plea for a Clarinet 2. :) The different types of clarinets don't work nearly as well as substitutions for a second instrument as the different oboes do. For me, a second clarinet would complete VSL's woodwinds.

Brass on the other hand is much more difficult until you can afford Dimension Brass. If you need 4 independent horn lines, for example, then I guess you have no choice but a lot of transposing. The Dimension release was an absolute Godsend for me.

And a quick answer to one of your questions, as to why VSL chose 4 horn players versus 3 of everyone else, I'd imagine it's because that's what you'll find in real orchestras. Four horns is the norm. The other brass and woodwinds are harder to claim a standard for and two could arguably have been a better choice. Three woodwind players in unison is rare in the whole spectrum of orchestral music, but it was probably just considered the best bang for our bucks and for the software and computer power at the time these were recorded, back in the early days of VSL. Any composer who knows how a real orchestra works would rather have a full set of samples for every player that would be in an orchestra, but back in the days of GigaStudio running on your Pentium computer with 1GB of RAM and 200GB of hard disk space, it was inconceivable.

You left out one simple clarification, Dietz. Corte, do you have Roompack 2? That's where you've got to start for a drier sound in MIR.

I can't speak exactly to your situation as I'm on the top of the line 2008 MacPro, not a MacBook Pro, but here's the thing. If you're using a PC slave and are not mixing any other virtual instruments or live audio tracks, then all your MacBook Pro is doing is being a MIDI sequencer, which barely takes any power at all.

As for PC shopping, got any computer geek friends? I used ADK once before, for a mega-laptop when I was living in a remote place for several years, and I loved the computer and the service, as noldar said. But it is pricey. I was going to go back to them to build my current PC, but a friend insisted that I send him the specs I was going to get from them, and he priced out the parts at several thousands dollars less. I put most of that back into getting a more powerful machine than I would have. You lose the tech support, but all the parts come with warranties of their own. We built it just over a year ago and I have no regrets so far.

Re: Library

If you can afford it, I'd say start with the cube. That way you've got a full orchestra with lots of choices for percussion and winds. I personally couldn't live without Dimension Brass now, but it can certainly be added later. It depends on whether 4 separate horns, 4 separate trumpets, etc., are necessary for your writing style or not. For strings, I would definitely say that Dimension Strings is a later "icing on the cake" purchase rather than the best starter strings.

Re: Software

VI Pro indeed. VE Pro is necessary if you use a slave machine.
What VSL piano scroll software?
MIR Pro is awesome. If you can afford it, get it. It's not necessary, but... neither is any of this. :) But especially if this is a hobby rather than professional thing, it makes it easy to just plug in and go with something that sounds good rather than stressing about mixing technique.

Re: Hardware

I happily ran DP 7.24 on a 2008 Mac Pro for a long time. I just recently upgraded to DP 8, but it's not a huge deal. But rather than worry about your DAW computer, I recommend spending money on a slave. I work on a Mac in DP, but my VSL orchestra is on a PC server I built with a friend. Your DAW can be just about anything you're happy working in if your orchestra is running on a powerful slave. VE Pro allows the slave to be 64 bit even if your DAW isn't.

Yes, you can do that in VI Pro.

Pyre, you'd mainly have to do what you want with the controller, not within VI. I do something similar with my keyboard controller. Rather than using keys to do the "keyswitches" I have a bank of 10 buttons right above the keys assisgned to send those keystrokes. It's very easy. I do still use the mod wheel for the vertical axis, though. It should be easy to assign any MIDI controller to send the right note messages.

To address the problem of the octave switch of the keyswitches between basses and violins, I simply have two different programs in my controller. Program 1 is set for the majority of instruments with the keyswitches in the lower octave. Program 2 on my controller is identical except the keyswitchers are in the upper octave for basses, contrabassoon, etc. It just takes a second to switch my controllers program when I need to and the result is that indeed I do the same thing to switch matrix slots on all instruments.

Fantastic news! 

Willie, just to clarify, we've always been able to bounce normal MIDI tracks going to the first 16 channels of a VEP instance. The question is whether we can bounce MIDI tracks using VEP Event Input to more than the first 16. Can you confirm whether that's what you did? I was holding off on buying DP* as I normally wait for the .1 update of any software, but if you're bouncing Event Input tracks, I'll order today!

That's just silly! But I will take this opportunity to repeat my request for Clarinet 2. We've got two flutes, two bassoons, a few types of oboe to pull of multiple parts, but there's just one Bb clarinet. That's all we need to dimensionize our woodwinds. :)

I've been having this odd problem on and off for a long time, over many versions of VEP, and am wondering if this is a known issue at all. It's not deadly, but very irritating. I work in Digital Performer 7.24 and a Mac Pro. The bulk of my VSL library is on a slave PC, Windows 7 Professional, with all the sample libraries on SSDs. Both computers have heaps of power. Normally, everything works perfectly. But then...

So I'm currently working on a feature film and have about 30 different "chunks" in DP representing different cues of the film. There's a lot of live audio tracks and the occasional virtual instrument in the main sequence, but most of my virtual instruments are in a V-rack as most of the film uses the same basic template. I have an 32-bit instance of VEP in there hosting GVI on the slave machine, a 64-bit instance hosting 16 VSL instruments using MIR on the slave machine, and Vienna Imperial on the host computer.

I've been working on this project happily for several weeks, then today left everything running when I went for some lunch. I can back, and the 64-bit VEP was disconnected. When I tried to reconnect, I got the error message on the PC, "The project you are trying to load was created with a newer version of Vienna Ensemble Pro. Please download and install the latest version at..." I have the latest versions of everything on both machines. Other projects open fine, but this one doesn't. I tried restarting both machines, but the same error comes up when the project tries to open.

I went to a backup of the project file. That opened fine. I saved the 64-bit instance as a viframe, closed the backup project. Reopened the main project. Got the error. Dismissed it and loaded the viframe, and everything works fine.

So like I said, it's not deadly. As long as I keep project backups and/or save viframes of every project as I go, I can recover from the error. But if there's any way to avoid it, that would be much preferred! I suspect it has something to do with DP as the project file gets larger over the course of a big project, but I don't know. Any ideas would be appreciated.

The dicsussion of philosophy and evolution of a more visual culture is all very interesting, but there's a much more practical and less philosophical explanation for the change in style and standards in film music, along the lines of what rverne10 said about preview audiences. People in the golden age of film scoring still listened to and were educated in classical (the big definition of classical, from baroque through romantic) music. Audiences and filmmakers today do not have a deep connection with classical music and therefore do not have high standards in orchestral music. It doesn't make for a very deep discussion, but I think it's as simple as that.

Film music has pretty much always been popular music to an extent. Early Hollywood brought in European operetta composers because they had experience working with narratives, and this was the closest existing form of popular entertainment to the new medium of talkies. Film music as we all know over the years incorporated all kinds of popular music, and we've all heard it said that John Williams' success really brought back a new era of orchestral film music when synths and popular music were taking over. 

Audiences of the golden era of film music and even the 1980s were more literate in classical music than audiences of today. Music appreciation and music classes were core curriculum, not totally abandoned as they are today. The "classical" music of Korngold, the more experimental work of Herrmann - it's all foreign to mainstream audiences and filmmakers today. The hot young filmmakers of today were raised on 80s pop and had little or no music education. Why would there be intelligent orchestral music in their films? Why would that have any connection with today's young audiences?

It sucks, but that's the truth and I don't think there's much to be done about it except continue to be grumpy old men, enjoy what we want to, and try to shre the good stuff with those we can influence in our real lives.

I've got all of my other VSL samples on a slave PC, but I'm still on a 2008 Mac Pro, HDDs and lots o' RAM with DP 7.4 as my DAW, and I use Imperial on there and have no problems. Sound quality is up to your own ears, but technically, I have no problems and love the simple interface that still provides flexibility. 

The current project I've got open right now has a Imperial, a bunch of Omnisphere patches and several live audio tracks with effects and I have no problem at all. If you're talking about DP and only Imperial, it'll be a breeze for any half decent Mac.

Hey guys, just go have a look! I had the previous version, and I see the new files in my user area.

Yep, check out the demo and see how it goes. Like you said, you'd definitely have to get more RAM, though, because MIR eats up a good chunk before you even get to loading samples. I have a top of the line 2008 Mac Pro that I used to do everything in, but with the release of MIR Pro, I added a PC slave as Paul suggests. For the cost of a decent new Mac Pro, I built a ridiculously powerful 12-core Xeon machine with SSDs that I use only for VSL and GVI, while still running my sequencer, live audio and other virtual instruments on the Mac just like before.