VSL or EWQLSO with 2 Macs, how?

[jon2u]

Hi all,

This is my first post on these forums. Amazing libraries, talented composers, dedicated sample library developers, and incredible demos. My respect to all of you. You guys are great.

I am a Mac user and I don\'t see a whole lot of Mac users in these forums doing the symphonic thing. I am trying to decide on purchasing either the EWQLSO (ambience is wonderful), or the VSL (incredible realism, legato) library. My goal is to run them on Macs. PC and Giga is not an option just at this time, but I am open to the future.

My current setup is an 800Mhz iMac (1 Gig RAM) that I use in OS9 or OSX for music apps. I think that this will be my sequencer. And 1 Ghz Powerbook (512 MB RAM) in OSX that I was hoping would be my OSX music computer. I was hoping to use the Powerbook as a sample player for either VSL or EWQLSO that would feed into my iMac sequencer.

I primarily use DP3 (switching to DP4), but am toying with Logic (I own Big Box) and switching to Logic 6 and ESX 24.

I am familiar with many of the issues on these forums re libraries, PC/MACs and such, but am still unclear on the big picture for the Mac platform.

My inclination is go with the EWQLSO first so I can get the ambient sound (I don\'t have a digital mixer, or any great reverbs). I one day also hope to work with VSL as well. I\'m not sure which library would be best for my current setup.

I hope some of you might have some advice regarding my questions.

1. How do I connect 2 Macs to get the multi-computer setups that the Giga guys have? I have 1 MOTU 828 interface. There don\'t appear to be any FXTransport types of programs for the Mac.

2. Can I run EWQLSO NI engine on OSX? If not, does that mean I cannot run EWQLSO on the OSX PB? Should I go with VSL for this reason?

3. The Powerbook has a 4200 rpm hard drive, I believe. Is this throughput fast enough for either VSL or EWQLSO to stream?

4. Will 1 Gig RAM on the PB enough for these libraries? How do I setup the PB for streaming?

5. The big question is how will VSL and EWQLSO perform on this moderate system of mine.

There are probably many half-newbies like me who need a lot of help getting these systems started and the ball rolling. Your help is appreciated in advance.

My dreams are bigger than my wallet and so I will not be able to do everything at once. Just taking one step at a time. Thanks in advance for your help.

john

[Scott Cairns]

My first knee-jerk repsonse is to say; sell the two macs and buy four PC\'s.

Then you can run FX teleport, Midi over Lan+, FX freeze, Giga, you name it. No limits.

I\'m not trying to deliberately Mac bash, but they just dont have the market share and hence the performance options.

Now I know this will raise a lot of ire. I\'m not trying to start a fire but as a guy that has worked professionally with both systems let the chips fall where they may. images/icons/wink.gif

[Ned Bouhalassa]

Well, my knee-jerk response is to say, don\'t buy 4 PCs - buy one G5, preferably the dual 2 ghz, and you\'ll be laughing. All you have to do is wait until the end of September. images/icons/wink.gif

[Eric Doggett]

Originally posted by Scott Cairns:
I\'m not trying to deliberately Mac bash, but they just dont have the market share and hence the performance options.
<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">How exactly does market share equate to performance options?

[christianb]

Welcome Jon2u,
this topic interests me as well. You are right in that there are a lot more giga user topics here, but there are a handful of mac users who have more info than I\'m about to try and share. I too have the 800 mhz but the G4 w/ 1.3 g ram. I do alright with Logic in this set-up for the moment (Like Ned said...G5!) but mind you I have much smaller libs. A very respected poster and working composer around these parts is currently making the switch from dp to logic and seems to be having a good go with it. My advice since you have the big box is to upgrade to 6 and at least think about the upgrade to gold. I made the switch to osx months ago and haven\'t seen 9 in a long time and am glad of it. Your problem may be that you are maxed out in the ram department on the imac.. that\'s where a g4 has it beat. but if you are just using it for your sequencer it may not be a problem. As far as connecting the two, I\'ll leave that to those wiser than I!

EWQL- there is a flurry of activity regarding set up for pc\'s this week but not too much on us \'small market share\' mac users. images/icons/wink.gif VSL on the other hand has been released for EXS which is a very positive sign for me. If you are thinking about EXS , just do it. I absolutely love it. EWQL will also work as an au plug in... soon.

1. see above
2. not yet, Kontakts due in late august, but....
3. I wouldn\'t count on \'great\' performance
4. I would max out, but the real issue is hard drive space. These libs are huge. A laptop doesn\'t seem the place to put them. I would think about firewire drives.
5. I am afraid to say, not spectacularly. However a logic 6 upgrade will help with the added bonus of freezing tracks, but eventually thise frozen tracks become a bit of a system load too.

Short of upgrading your computer, which you should consider, there are great deals to be had on g4\'s now that g5 is in the pipeline, I would consider going the other way and using the pb (Titanium?) as your daw and getting some external drives to handle the storage issue. Look into getting a firewire 800 card and the accompanying drives.
You have a lot of options, and if you have the dough for either one of those libs it might behoove you to scratch a little more together and upgrade your actual system to get the most out of them.

best of luck

christianb

[Joris de Man]

Some good points already (apart from the \'buy a pc yadayada\', here\'s my two cents:

-Unless you\'re using an external FW drive, the internal drive of your powerbook will seriously hamper its performance.
My advice: use the PB with an external drive as sequencer, with possibly running the EXS24 with it. 512mb is not much if you want to use softsamplers, esp. the large ones like QLSO and VSL.
Then use the iMac for extra softsynths; it has 1 gig of memory and should be roughly equal in performance to your PB.
-get an additional interface with adat (Firewire), then use the ADAT ports to interface with your 828; you can use that to route 8 channels of audio back in your sequencer and even apply processing to them.
This way the \'host\' (with sequencer) can receive signals from your \'client\' computer (that runs the softsynths).

The exs can do streaming automatically by enabling the \'virtual memory\' setting in its menu. I suppose the QLSO streaming is similar to that of Kontakt, and will probably be enabled by default.

The exs performance has been IMHO very, very good. I give it plenty of memory though, and make sure that the polyphony per instance isn\'t any higher than it should be. Within an orchestral setting this is relatively easy; if you have 3 trumpets for instance, you needn\'t set it higher than 3 anyway, or 6 if notes get cut off to early.
On my dual 1ghz I\'m currently running around 42 instances which take up around 80-85% of one processor; a lot of these are converted giga patches.

I currently don\'t know of any teleport fx for the mac, although I\'ve heard that there are similar things in development.

Hope this helps,

Cheerio,

Joris

[Hasen]

Those Macs probably aren\'t up to it but four pcs in one room can\'t be fun either so I\'d go with Ned and get a G5 instead. images/icons/smile.gif

[jon2u]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all of your replies. I truly appreciate your honesty. I\'m happy this did not turn into the usual debate.

Scott - Thanks for being honest re PCs. There is a reason why most people are currently on Gigas and you summed them up. Appreciate it.

Ned and Hasen - yes, the G5 will shake things up. I\'m hoping that some of the OSX audio issues will improve. It should be a killer and maybe our answer.

By the way, the money issue is a struggle. If I go with the G5 it will be a while before I end up getting one of these libraries. If I go with a library, the G5 will have to wait.

Oh, the lottery beckons.

christianb - thanks for bringing reality to the plate. I\'ll move forward with my small upgrades (probably to Logic, RAM, and perhaps smaller libraries). I do have a firewire external drive 120Gb, 7200 which would help on the streaming. So, I\'ll go small upgrades until I can figure out how to move forward.

Joris - I\'ll try using the PB as the sequencer, and externals. Sounds like a good option. What Firewire ADATs? The new MOTU 828?

Just to let you know, I\'m still at work at 9PM (usually 12 hours a day) and don\'t have a lot of time to play at home...but this will change.


I appreciate your support of us Mac users. Its hard for me to switch—using them since 1984. Maybe one day I\'ll be able to return the favors.

Thanks again, everyone. You guys were great.

EWQLSO and VSL are great too! I want them.

P.S. its hard to type in this little box.

john

[Kobb]

Originally posted by jon2u:


P.S. its hard to type in this little box.

john <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Then maybe you should move your computer out of that old refrigerator box. I know it\'s fun to play \"fort\", but you\'re going to ruin your back.

[esteso]

OK, here\'s the thing. There\'s way too much going on right now to make a move. I know there\'s always a lot going on but now it\'s just totally insane. I don\'t think anybody really knows how it\'s going to shake down. Keep your ears open and WAIT!

Here\'s the other thing. You know you want a G5. Just get it. You can use it for anything. Throw all the libraries you want at it. Try EXS or Mach 5 or Kontakt. Whatever. Then you\'ll see the real world performance issues and how it relates to how you work. This is very important. You\'ll get a clue from asking questions here but it\'s not going to be anything like trying to drive your rig at home.

I\'m just trying to say one thing really. You\'re on a Mac. Stay with it. If you find out the G5 doesn\'t run your entire orchestra in real time and that bugs you, just use your Mac for sequencing, running VI\'s or smaller sample/synth libraries and then buy two to four PC\'s to run your mega orchestra. You can\'t lose.

[jon2u]

Esteso - good argument. Yes, these are wild and exciting times and waiting is good. The G5 may be the way to go and then build the libraries. Unfortunately, I\'m not a pro with the resources for that level. I will just wait a little longer. Thanks.

So my path will be small upgrades, G5, then the libs. (this will take years) (picture the smiley graemlin here).

Koob - Haaaaaa!

WHY DO I WANT TO DO THIS?

FYI, I come from a MIDI background, was empowered by a simple sequencer to write a bunch of music years ago, then stopped. A year or so ago, I discovered these forums and heard the MIDI mockups of Antonio Genovino, I believe, and the many composers on these forums. My jaw dropped. I couldn\'t believe it. And then, VSL and EWQLSO. The new demos. The talent of the composers on these forums. Incredible.

Now, I want to write music again.

OT

P.S. A thank you to the 3 guys that sparked (and in my opinion, moved) the sampling industry to discover ambience (Thomas J, Marteen S., and _________ ). I remember their convincing arguments. And special thanks to Nick and Doug for acting on those arguments, and to visionaries like Herb for creating VSL. And certainly the many other lib developers who constantly push the envelope.

This software should be in the hands of every music college student in every university.

Are the university composers of the world aware of all of these developments? I hope so.

Sorry to go OT.

Thanks, again.

[Nick Batzdorf]

I am a Mac user and I don\'t see a whole lot of Mac users in these forums doing the symphonic thing. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">There are plenty of us, but Giga is a PC program!


My first knee-jerk repsonse is to say; sell the two macs and buy four PC\'s. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">The problem with that is that you then have to work on PCs.

Oops, was that inflammatory?

images/icons/grin.gif

jon2U, the issue is that as of now no single computer is enough to run an entire orchestral library all at once. So you\'re going to want to use both machines. The cheapest solution is to fill both your Macs with 1.5 gigs of RAM, add a couple of IDE drives (in Firewire boxes) and use both machines for streaming samples; even if it would be nice to just use one machine for MIDI, most of us aren\'t rich enough not to use everything we have - i.e. both your Macs are overkill for just running MIDI, so why not put them to work.

FX Teleport is eventually going to work on Macs, but in the meantime you\'ll need a second Firewire or USB box if you don\'t want to use the built-in sound.

[jon2u]

Nick,

Thanks for the reply. You\'re right of course. Ideally, we want to have the whole orchestra playing at the same time. That will take some cpu power.

With both of my cpus, I believe I will max out at 1Gb RAM but I will use both now that I have some insight from the group. I\'ll just use them for more traditional sequencing at first and then migrate to orchestral.

I\'ll be waiting in line for FX teleport.

ok, I guess its time to close this topic and start upgrading.

Thanks again.

[tomhartman]

Originally posted by jon2u:
Nick,

Thanks for the reply. You\'re right of course. Ideally, we want to have the whole orchestra playing at the same time. That will take some cpu power.

With both of my cpus, I believe I will max out at 1Gb RAM but I will use both now that I have some insight from the group. I\'ll just use them for more traditional sequencing at first and then migrate to orchestral.

I\'ll be waiting in line for FX teleport.

ok, I guess its time to close this topic and start upgrading.

Thanks again. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">One potential problem on the Mac is that even with the Kontakt new disk streaming \"fix\" it still doesn\'t work well on my Mac. It can\'t even come close to the performance I got out of Giga, takes forever to load, and is just buggy. Maybe not on PCs, but on my Dual 1 Gig with 1256 RAM it isn\'t close to Giga. I hope QLSO is better, but there are just too many things I use on a daily basis that haven\'t translated well to other samplers. So I\'m almost forced now to go back to using a PC with Giga. I know EXS is supposed to be great, but that would mean running Logic, which for me is a scary proposition (I\'m in Pro Tools).

Even with a G5, I still think it\'s asking too much of one computer here in 2003. I\'m running Pro Tools with lots of plug ins and if there was an OSX version of QSLO trying to run as well as a plug in I think I would need HAL from 2001 to make the setup work. Still think you need more than one CPU.....JMHO.

[tomhartman]

Originally posted by Nick Batzdorf:
That\'s bad news if it\'s universal, Tom. But I can confirm that EXS\' disk streaming works very well.

By the way, I use PT for mixing and Logic for writing (when I\'m not using DP). You can easily use Emagic\'s ESB utility to turn Logic\'s native engine into a DirectConnect plug-in. In other words, you can run up to eight channels of EXS24s into Pro Tools.

You just sync the two using OMS IAC. It works very well - not at all like the kludgey house of cards this kind of set-up would have been five years ago. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">I use OSX exclusively now, so there is no Direct Connect anymore...so I haven\'t used Kontakt in awhile.

I would like to check out using Logic for at least cutting the midi tracks to disc, because I used to use Logic years ago and loved the midi aspects. But I haven\'t really gotten straight what all is involved in getting the OSX version of Logic to work with TDM hardware....seems very confusing so I\'ve just kind of ducked my head and stayed all in Pro Tools;)

[Nick Batzdorf]

That\'s bad news if it\'s universal, Tom. But I can confirm that EXS\' disk streaming works very well.

By the way, I use PT for mixing and Logic for writing (when I\'m not using DP). You can easily use Emagic\'s ESB utility to turn Logic\'s native engine into a DirectConnect plug-in. In other words, you can run up to eight channels of EXS24s into Pro Tools.

You just sync the two using OMS IAC. It works very well - not at all like the kludgey house of cards this kind of set-up would have been five years ago.