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Anyone Familiar with VSL Vienna Ensemble Pro?


nat whilk II

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I'm always having latency and over-loaded CPU, maxed-out RAM issues using the VSTs I do. Virtual instruments like East West Quantum Leap Pianos, u-he's DIVA synth (what a fantastic synth BTW), Reaktor, Kontakt, BFD3, a ton of Waves plugs, etc etc, all going at once is just too much. So I do a lot of freezing and bouncing and fiddling with buffers. Just kills the creative flow.

 

I've been toying with the idea of using two computers for a long time. I'd love to have one fast computer with a big SSD operate as a mega-sound module and take a huge load off the computer with the DAW. I've read very, very many threads where others have tried this - and the trade-offs have been daunting. You gotta sync things...if you just port audio across, you lose MIDI editing...have to use two interfaces...getting it to work technically looks like a whole lot of work and rigging things for marginal gains.

 

But I've run across Vienna Ensemble Pro and this is a very interesting bit of software. VSL has provided big, pro-level orchestral sampled instruments for a long time - rather like East West - and even with today's huge hard drives and available RAM and CPU speeds, these guys doing film score mockups still have problems running out of horsepower and RAM to run their massive virtual instrument setups for orchestral scores. So VSL has come up with a way to link computers via simole ol' ethernet cables - and with a program or two running on each computer, you can pipe everything from any number of "slave" computers to your main "server" computer with your DAW. And get this - it works apparently CROSS PLATFORM and CROSS 32-64 BIT (!!). Yes - hook up your Apple to your PC - Windows XP to Windows 10.

 

It's not a simple program - there's some geekery involved so not recommended for software/hardware newbies. But the testimonies are pretty universally gobsmacked.

 

Not cheap, either - about $340 USD give or take. But you also get a full sampled Orchestral set to play with.

 

My trigger finger is really itchy for this one - I have an old Win 7 tower PC that I want to keep using for my main DAW computer, but it just can't handle the load anymore. I have an i7 laptop Win 10 with a big SSD - perfect for DIVA and the huge piano sample sets. Add all the storage and processing of the two computers together...plus the additional I/O and USB ports etc. This is a big wow wow wow option from what I've read so far.

 

Anyone with experience with this? Opinions? Caveats? Praises? Blames?

 

nat

 

 

 

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