Friendly bump!

Anyone have current recommendations for network hardware to get < 10 ms total latency on 2-3 machines using Ethernet?

As mentioned in the first post I've tried both onboard Intel and separate Intel CT Desktop cards (https://www.amazon.com/Intel-EXPI9301CT-Gigabit-Desktop-Adapter/dp/B001CXWWBE) and I just can't get low latency like I had a while back.  I've also tried three different gigabit switches (Netgear, Linksys and Cisco).

Thanks,

rgames

Originally Posted by: patmaddox

I use VEP on a single machine, so I'm not in your situation.

But, I get crackles whenever my WIFI is on. Disabling WIFI clears it up for me.

Yes - good point.  WiFi can be a cause of such problems.  I should have mentioned that mine is disabled so it's not the problem for me.  But thanks for the reply!

Anyone else have any ideas?

Thanks,

rgames

I've been running VE Pro over the network for years and it used to run just fine all day with no dropouts.  But over the past year or two I've noticed that my dropout rate is now something like 20 per hour.  By "dropout" I mean a click or pop or crackle in the audio that causes an ASIO spike in Cubase.  The frequency varies of course but it's definitely worse now than it was five years ago.

Of course my hardware and software have changed and I've just dealt with it but I decided to see if I can get back to the zero-dropout setup I had five years ago.  I'm running the latest versions of VE Pro and the behavior is the same in both Cubase 9.0.40 and 10.0.  I have a master and 2-3 slaves (depending on the project).  The spikes are not affected by buffer sizes on the sound card or VE Pro.

The problem is definitely related to VE Pro because I can disconnet all VE Pro instances and the project will sit there for hours with no spikes.  So it's clearly not a problem with the master machine.  But as soon as I connect a VE Pro instance over the network I start to get spikes on the ASIO meter at the rate mentioned above.  They're not constant but they are annoying when they appear every few minutes.  And they didn't use to occur so it seems I should be able to do something to make them go away.

Here's what I've tried:

- Put all machines on a dedicated network with a dedicated switch and no internet connection (my old setup that had no problems used a router that handled all internet traffic including WiFi)

- Used on-board Intel and dedicated Intel gigabit network adapters

- Disabled power saving features on the network cards

- Disabled interrupt moderation on the network cards

- Set interrupt moderation rate to off on the network cards

None of these changes has any effect.  The droput rate is the same.

So here's my question: is anyone getting zero dropouts with a 2-3 machine setup that uses VE Pro over Ethernet?  Maybe that's just too much to ask these days - I don't know.

If not, what else might I try to get back to zero dropouts?

Thanks in advance,

rgames

I seem to recall discussion of this issue a few years ago but I'm not sure if there was ever a solution.

I have two Win10 slave machines and both will load up my VE Pro instruments then, after 5-10 min, spontaneously unload a large chunk of memory.  I hadn't notices this behavior until switching to VEP 6 (I recently upgraded from 5).  For example, one slave loads up to about 45 GB of VI Pro/Kontakt/EW Play instruments then quickly drops down to 36 GB after a few minutes.  You can load up the Windows Task Manager and watch the memory usage - rising during load, flat for 5-10 minutes then a 9 GB drop over about 10-20 seconds.

The problem is that I'd like to load some more samples on that machine but I start to get crackles/pops if I load it up more at the start, presumably becuase it's starting to run out of memory.  So I'd really like to have that extra 9 GB available.

Any thoughts on what to do about this odd behavior?  As I mentioned, I never noticed this with VEP 5 but my switch to 6 also corresponded with adding some new libraries and increasing my RAM usage.

Thanks in advance,

rgames

+1 to Jeff's comment - I'm in eactly the same boat.  I boot up my slaves and never look at them, so having a dialog box sitting there waiting for a response is a big pain.  Projects hang when you try to load them...

Please provide the option to disable the update check.  I'm surprised there aren't more comments about this - lots of folks never touch their slaves.  This behavior forces us to do so.  It's annoying!  Stop it!  :)

rgames

This started happening when I upgraded to VEP5.  Every few days, the 64-bit VEP5 server hangs when loading my metaframes on three different machines (one DAW and two slaves).  They all happen at exactly the same time, so it seems that the software is doing some type of scheduled activity that causes it to hang up.

I had been running the earlier versions of VEP on those machines for about 18 months with no issues.

Any help?

Thanks,

rgames

Looks like someone else tried to ask this but the post is blank.

If I want a Vln I section with 8 players and a Vln II section with 8 players, I will, of course, have a phasing problem in unison lines.  How are folks dealing with that in Dimension Strings?  Is there any way to do the old transpose trick?  What other processing are folks using to get around the phasing issue?

Thanks,

rgames

Well that's a bummer.  I guess VEP 4 has been around for a while... I did the VEP 5 upgrade and, indeed, it works fine.  Too bad I have no interest in the VEP 5 added features :)

For anyone else who comes across this thread, I down-graded to the previous VE Instruments Pro 2 version and it worked fine in VEP 4.  My guess, though, is that we won't see any more support for VEP 4 past that one, so anyone on VEP 4 who wants VI Pro updates will have to go to VEP 5.

rgames

Bought dimension strings and did the latest updates for VE Pro 4 and Vi Pro 2.  Now I can't load my previous template and I can't see VI Pro 2 interface when I click on a VI Pro 2 channel.

I can load the VE Pro 4 server (64 bit) and add a new instance.  I can then add Kontakt and Play channels with no problem but when I click the "Add VI Pro Channel" button, I get a new channel but I can't see the interface - it stays stuck on the mixer view.

I installed VE Pro 4 first and VI Pro 2 second, if that matters.

Any help?  Really looking forward to using DS, and the rest of my template...

Thanks,

rgames

The preload buffer option in VI Pro 2 is a HUGE plus - any chance that it will be included in the regular VI?

I don't use all the VI Pro features because of the CPU usage hit.  So having that single option added to the regular VI would be a REALLY BIG DEAL for a lot of us!

Any chance that might happen?  Please?!?  Just that one little feature added to the regular VI.  Please!  I'll even pay for the change!

rgames

Ok - 10 minutes after I post this question I get an e-mail from VSL about the free upgrade to VI Pro 2.  Perfect timing!

Still curious about others' experience with CPU usage.

rgames

Has anyone checked CPU performance with VI Pro 2 in a large template?  When VI Pro 1 first came out I replaced VI in my template with VI Pro and it wouldn't run - CPU overload.  So I've only used VI Pro in a few spots - I'm curious how CPU performance compares VI Pro 2 vs. original VI.

Also, is there upgrade pricing for VI Pro 2?  I don't see any discount or mention of upgrade pricing.

Thanks,

rgames

 Yes - that's basically what I've been doing for the past few years - sticking with what I know.  That's not always a good thing...!

Even with only a few tracks it still seems like the ethernet connection would better.  Whether you look at bandwidth or latency, ethernet *should* offer *much* better performance:

1.  Gigabit ethernet has bandwidth equivalent to 450+ audio tracks at 24/44.1 (theoretically it's about 473 but you'll always lose some bandwidth to overhead).

2.  Typical ethernet LAN's have latency around 0.2 milliseconds (equivalent to a buffer of about 8 samples at 44.1 kHz)

So at the hardware level, the ethernet solution seems far superior.  Of course, there are processing overhead issues that reduce the performance from these theoretical values but it seems like some good software design would get you in the ballpark of this performance.  Why is it not on some systems?

rgames

 DG - do you know of anyone who's actually set it up and tested it?

The reason I'm asking is that I switched to full ethernet a few years ago and got much better performance at that time.  I haven't re-visited it since and I'm wondering if something has changed to make it worthwhile to consider going back.  Right now I can run my DAW at 128 samples w/ 1 buffer to my slaves - that works great if it's just orchestra but sometimes I have to kick it up to 256 when I add a lot of Omnisphere to a track.  Would be great if I could keep it at 128 or lower at all times.  Perhaps putting the audio cards back in would let me do that.

The thing that confuses me is that ethernet has much higher bandwidth and much lower latency (about 10x) than the best audio hardware, so I can't quite explain why the audio hardware would be the better route.  Plus, networking is integrated at a very low level into the hardware and OS, so it can handle the transfers at much lower CPU loads than audio hardware (at least that's my theory).  That's why I'm curious if anyone has done the comparison with recent hardware - the tests I did several years ago did, in fact, show that the ethernet connection gave much better performance.

Thanks,

rgames

 I did some detailed benchmarks here: http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22055&highlight=slave

Also, I used 2 buffers in this benchmark but have since reduced it to 1 and it still does fine.

rgames

OT, I guess, but since you asked: it's about 75 stereo pairs coming from the slaves.  In my template I have about 10 instances of VE Pro sending the whole orchestra back into my DAW w/ separate audio tracks for each string section (Vln I, Vln II, etc), each WW section (flute, oboe, clar, etc.), each brass section (tpt, hrn, etc.), pianos, harps, guitar, bunch of perc., etc.  Plus, I have not only VSL but other libraries, as well.  So it adds up pretty quickly.

rgames

There's been a discussion for a few days over at VI-control - some folks have reported better performance using VE Pro w/ audio hardware and some have reported better performance over ethernet.  By performance I mostly mean latency but there's a bandwidth element to it as well.  I'm curious what others have experienced w/ recent hardware and what VSL thinks on the matter.

I switched over to ethernet several years ago and my overall system latency improved quite a bit - whereas my slaves occasionally had trouble running at 512 samples I got that down to 128 samples when I switched to VE Pro over ethernet.  I have a total of about 150 tracks coming into my PC DAW (Cubase) from 2 i5 PC slaves via VE Pro over ethernet.  My main DAW runs at 128 samples with 1 buffer to the instances on the slaves.  Very heavy sample streaming from the slaves puts slave CPU usage at about 50% - 60% and DAW CPU usage at 15% - 20%.  My DAW is an i7 920 w/ 24 GB RAM.

The reason for my interest is that I did that switch several years ago and haven't revisitied the audio hardware option.  Perhaps things have changed over the past couple years that would get me better performance if I switched back to hardware...

Anyone tested the difference recently?

Thanks,

rgames

 I recently built a couple of i5 slaves and found them more than sufficient for a sample streamer using VSL and LASS off of SSD's.  Detailed benchmarks here: http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22055&highlight=slave

As Paul says, if money is no object, it's better to go for the i7.  But for what I do the i5 is more than sufficient when coupled with SSD's.

In fact, I lowered the Kontakt preload buffer down to 6 kB (it was at the default 60 kB in the data given in the link) and it performs just the same.  I gained another 3.7 GB of RAM after doing that.  Looking forward to having that option in VI :)

For what I do, the disk is the bottleneck, not the processor.  Of course, if you run a bunch of plug-ins inside VE pro (I do not) then you might need the extra processing power.

EDIT: forgot to mention - the benchmarks linked above used 2 buffers for VE Pro but I switched to 1 buffer a few weeks ago and haven't noticed a difference in performance.

rgames

 Any guesses on where to start debugging?  I've uninstalled then reinstalled elicenser and VE Pro but that had no effect.

Thanks,

rgames

 I recently upgraded my slave machines and am now having trouble with random crashes while loading a metaframe.

I use the slaves decoupled - they just load up a metaframe and sit there waiting for a connection from the sequencer on another machine.  Probably half of the times I boot up the slave, it crashes while loading the metaframe.  So I close the crash notification dialog box, load the server back up (without rebooting), then it works fine every time.  The trouble is that I have to log on to the machine to load up the metaframe - for the past several years, I just booted the computer and had a shortcut to the metaframe in the startup directory, so it loaded up automatically and I never had to access the slave until I needed to shut it down.  The old slaves ran under WinXP 64 and the new slaves are Win7, so there is an OS difference in addition to the hardware difference.

Now here's the real kicker: I bought two slaves, exactly the same, and this only happens on *one* of the systems.  So it seems like it's related to the particular metaframe on that machine.  The other machine loads up just fine every time.

Any suggestions on where to look to solve the problem?

Thanks,

rgames

 OK - I was pointed to the option to "open instances minimized on load"

Duh... didn't think to look in the preferences...

rgames

I have a metaframe that is in my startup directory on my slaves, so VE Pro launches automatically with that metaframe when I boot my slave.  I have a standard template that just loads up all the instruments and the slaves just sit there and wait for me to connect.

I just upgraded my slaves to new machines w/ Win 7 64-bit (used to be XP64) and now the window for each VE instance opens when the server loads.  It didn't do that under XP - the server dialog would show up but none of the VE windows would open.

It's a problem beause I get clicks and pops when the VE windows open up and the mixers are visible.  So now when I boot up my slaves I have to log on and close the VE windows.  It's a pain...

How do I change the behavior back to the way it was under XP64?

Thanks in advance,

rgames

 Figured it out via some help at VI Control - the buttons don't work when the instance is not connected.

I usually create the instance in the server then link to it later.  While the instance is disconnected, (most of) the buttons in the custom UI don't work.  Some still do - odd behavior.

rgames

 Yes - I have the latest patches for everything.

Thanks,

rgames

Recently ran in to a problem with Voxos in K4 under VE Pro - the instrument loads up but none of the interface buttons work.  While debugging I tried another library that has a custom graphical interface and (most of) its buttons didn't work, either.  Both libraries work fine when run under Kontakt within Cubase, so the problem only arises when I run them in VE Pro.

I have the latest patches for everything.  Anybody run into this problem and find a fix?

Thanks,

rgames