It's really sad, and in my opinion poor customer relations that VSL have provided no information on their plans and timeline for M1 compatibility for about a year now.

I've always felt that VSL is a PC centric company from comments by the developers/programmers. It's likely they develop on PC first and then port over to MacOS which often results in disregard of Mac development guidelines and aesthetic issues as well as slow adoption when Apple makes changes to the OS.

They are not willing to officially say so, but I do believe VSL would actually prefer if everyone just used PCs.

As a developer, should it not have been clear that Carbon was only ever a transitional technology and the future of software on OSX was always going to be Cocoa?

That's funny because the argument normally is that there is such a huge permutation of hardware/software combinations on the PC side that it's much harder to troubleshoot software issues on PC. You have your various motherboard and component designs and then there's Windows 7 - Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate. Most available as either 32 or 64 bit and then there's also the Vista variants and of course XP.

On Mac I believe that the latest VSL software no longer officially supports PPC code so that would make things a bit more even.

Unfortunately we have Steinberg to thank for not making the complete specifics of the VST format available. They presumably saw it as a competetive advantage, and so Apple was forced to develop their own standard in order to not look bad for poorly supporting audio software. And of course Steinberg continued to use VST on Mac to complicate things. In my opinion VST on Mac should have been depricated in favour of AU since AU is an open standard and VST is not.

I appreciate the hard work in supporting both platforms, however, it seems to me that the points you expressed would simply be the other way around if the VSL team were primarily programming for Mac and then supporting Windows. Coming from a Logic background I think I'd find Cubase a bit awkward and problematic and vice versa.

It is really disappointing to hear what I suspected long ago... that the VSL programmers are biased towards Windows. That benchmark link really is just so silly, I expect more form VSL. I would bet that none of those programs get as much attention and expertise on the Mac side as they do for the Windows side, and who knows what kind of clunky workarounds they implemented to get that software that was developed on PC to work on Mac OS. Perhaps none, perhaps several, but we don't really know do we?

As for the programming being easier for Windows, well I work much quicker and efficiently in Logic than I do in Cubase. Does that make Logic better?

Of course if you're preference is to develop on Windows and then you have to port to Mac out of necessity it's always going to appear that Windows is superior.

DG, I really get tired of your Mac bashing on this forum. We all know by now you just love Windows so much and seem to hate Macs. You take any opportunity to tell us how much superiour a PC system is. This is just plain bollocks when you factor in the headaches you get from dealing with Windows, and then there's the whole good coding issue.

Oh, and I should mention that if you're happy to run your Vienna Instruments on the slave then there is no need for an additional key or license. From all the information I could gather here it was unclear whether I could host VEPro with VSE on the Mini and still have the VEPro Server connection running on my MacPro without an additional key. I was pleasantly surprised that it worked, but of course I can't use any Vienna Instruments on the Mac Pro. So the limitation is that if I want to deviate from my template I have to do it on the Mini rather than just insert a single instance of VIPro in Logic.

The Mini makes for a good little server (it's almost silent and you can put 8Gig of RAM in there for about $60-70). Keep in mind that any server will have to have a vienna key and additional licenses which becomes quite costly. One Mini can comfortably host VSE. If you add all of the special edition + then 8Gig may not be enough but there is a new version of both VEPro and VIPro coming up that may allow for a smaller memory footprint while using SSD.

The current generation iMacs are really quite powerful machines. Apparently they get around the same benchmarks as the 2008 MacPros. The biggest limitation there would be memory, but that may also change when 4Gig sticks become cheaper.

Personally, I love having the VSE hosted on my MacMini. I also use it as a media server and for other stuff.

A PC slave would be the most powerful option, but can you build a nearly silent one for $600-700? It would be a tower case which may or may not be an issue. In Australia, the full retail prices of Windows 7 are at $299 for Home Premium, $449 for professional and $469 for Ultimate. I have no idea how cheap you can get them or which is the lowest incarnation that will do the job as a server for VEPro. And then there's Windows to deal with ;)

I have suggested this a long time ago in another thread. I'm pretty sure the VSL team are aware of the suggestion, but whether it will be implemented has not been stated yet.

How about a password check in order to access the key. This could be at regular intervals like monthly or bi-monthly. Entering a password to make your key work is not a lot of hassle and that way a stolen key would be useless after a certain time.

In another post I have already suggested that the Server and Instances of VEPro could easily be integrated into one window with tabs. That would solve the window clutter. The server is like a separate application at the moment but it has no meaning without instances.

I think window position and size should be saved with VIFrame but they had problems with this recurring bug.

I agree, naming is a bit tedious with all the clicking that has to be done.

Tom

This would be an excellent feature to extend the expression possibilities of VIPro.

It could be implemented (although it would not be a perfect solution) by applying a special fade in to note transitions (it could also apply to portamento). This special "fade" is more like an envelope attack control, so you can set start level and time to reach %100 volume and perhaps a curve value to give even better control.

I think this could be built into VIPro but it's up to the VSL team to decide if it adds enough value for the effort to implement it. Also they are the only ones able to try it out and see if actually works well enough to be useful.

I would certainly vote for its usefulness. The more we can shape the sound the better.

Tom

@RainerL: so 2 wrongs make a right?

Let's not get all silly and call it begging. That's really not very constructive, just insulting.

What we're trying to do here is express to the VSL team that it may be a very good policy to reward their loyal supporters by giving them discounts on their products. We are not asking for free stuff. Money will still be generated to produce more libraries. In fact quite possibly more money will be generated as the decision to purchase will be made easier.

I would much prefer some discount on the products I really want rather than these pseudo deals that were offered recently. For example, I almost took up the offer of the Special Edition Plus DVD, but then I realised that the stuff I was getting for free was the stuff I didn't really use very much or at all, and all I really needed was the standard library.

Tom

Yes!!!

One window with tabs would be great. I thought of this early on when using VEPro. There is a lot of generously utilised space in the VEPro interface that could accommodate this. The VEPro server could also be integrated. Too many windows at the moment, and having the Server as a separate application just makes things more complicated than they need to be. You can't have an instance without the server so the two are inextricably liked anyway.

Thanks guitarandy. That was a very thorough and helpful reply. It's great that people on this forum are willing to give their time to help out others.

On the other hand...

Thanks so much DG for giving us your Apple hate yet again on a thread that doesn't concern you. Great work on really contributing something useful. You just have to insist and put your mustard everywhere don't you?

Vel X-Fade can be switched on and off (or global) in the advanced section of VIPro. So you should be able to create a matrix with the long note articulations controlled with a slider for vel x-fade and the short notes with velocity (setting x-fade to off will only affect that articulation), but if you want to switch between which midi controller affects vel x-fade then I don't think that's possible within VIPro.

Cheers,

Tom

Hi Roberto,

You can run both the 32 and 64 bit servers for VEPro connected to their plugin counterparts in a 64 bit Logic project. You can use 32 bit audio units within the 32 bit VEPro metaframe but everything that is running in the 64 bit VEPro metaframe has to be 64 bit.

In Logic you can use any combination of 32 and 64 bit audio units to process your sounds, however, the 32 bit audio unit bridge has been observed to be somewhat unstable and is really only a temporary solution until all plugins go 64 bit. This will hopefully happen soon. I'm am not sure about timetables for Altiverb and Sonalksis plugs going 64 bit.

Cheers,

Tom

Many sequencers (I'm not sure about DP) are currently limited to 16 midi channels per instrument. This means you have to have a VEPro instance for each 16 instrument block of your template. I think Cubase allows for ports on on the VST3 audio instruments so the people who use Cubase can just have one big instance of 64 bit and one of 32 (if needed).

Either way, performance is apparently very similar. One could even argue that it's nice to have a template organised into instrument sub-sections (eg strings, winds, brass, etc).

You should not have to click to connect to the instances if you use a template in your sequencer (happens automatically).

I'm using an 8 core MacPro and have found the 1 core per instance setting to work well. I have 4 instances in my template.

Hope that helps.

Tom

Dear VSL team,

I do appreciate the class, sophistication and quality of support you bring to the world of music production, however, I would like to make a request that your programmers start respecting the Macintosh conventions. Currently VSL software creates files and folders all over the place and this makes it difficult to maintain a clean and organised operating system. This is one of the curses in the PC world and should not be brought over to the Mac side.

To give some examples:

VSL folder in my home folder (containing some sort of cache files). The home folder is generally best kept to the default folders that Mac OS creates. Things would get pretty messy if every developer decided to put folders in there. The proper place for such files is in the Library folder.

The Custom Data folder in the Shared folder (which has been discussed but I would like to see an option to change this as I never had any permission problems and I really don't want my custom files to be in a strange spot I would never think to look unless I read about it).

All sorts of preference files (could so easily be placed in one VSL folder in the Preferences folder which then makes it so much easier to check for corrupted or unnecessary files).

The same is true for elicenser, but I suppose there is no hope for any changes there.

Anyway, I think you know what I mean.

Cheers,

Tom

Yes, the save one is not such a big deal. I can understand why you don't prioritise that one if it's also not an easy one to fix.

Cheers,

Tom

By the way, my impatience came from the fact that I thought of these bugs more as buglets that would take up very little time to fix. Perhaps that is not the case.

Anyway, I look forward to not having to rearrange my VEPro windows every time I open a metaframe.

Cheers,

T

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your reply. I will be patient

One thing I do appreciate very much about VSL is how communicative the developer team is.

Regards,

Tom

I just tried out the latest VEPro version and am dismayed to find that it STILL does not save the window maximised state and it still asks to save the metaframe even if one second before you have saved it.

(I'm using the Mac version)

Tom

I have to say VIPro does look very well thought out. Congratulations on taking this software some good steps further. The new videos are easier to make sense of as well, partially due to the new UI being much better.

Some very useful options to customise the way you work with VSL.

Good work VSL Team!

Cheers,

Tom

Hi George,

This needs to be fixed ASAP before too many users have to change this over.

The proper place for such files on Mac OSX is in the users/~/library/application support folder or

users/~/library/audio/presets

This is a basic convention followed by other software.

I really don't appreciate having all sorts of random/arbitrary file/folder locations all over my OS HDD. That is perhaps acceptable on PC but not on MacOS. I am very surprised at this choice of location. Perhaps there is a serious reason which could be explained to us, however, since almost all other software follows the proper convention (of course Microsoft and Adobe don't) I doubt there is a real technical reason for this.

Cheers,

Tom

Dear Vienna Team,

Please fix this for Mac OS!

The proper place for such user data is in the user/library/application support folder.

Cheers,

Tom

Wow, that is very interesting indeed.