CPU Optimization in DP: multiple VEP or VEP Event Input?

[toodamnhip]

I would like to chime in amidst this false idea I never compliment DP.
I am comping guitars and having a blast! I think DP has the absolute BEST comping capabilities out there. I did a different guitar session for a Pro Tools friend last week and boy did it suck not having my DP comping tools. What a mess. And the other producer ended up comping it and , while it was “ok”, had I done it in DP, it would have been 5x better. Poor guy had so many silly takes sitting on his Track overview...he needed dp!

And, about 7 months ago, on a record for a multi multi platinum artist, I demanded to get to comp the vocals in DP instead of Pro Tools. I had to actually fight the artist and the rec co. president. I bet no one here knew I did such things..lol..I actually made a short comping video and sent it to the pres, (who is a friend)...to SHOW him.
Because DP is just GREAT at comping things,
I am certain of this. I do not have to say this gingerly do I?
I sure as hell didn;t say it gingerly to the artist or rec co. pres. This is such a perfect example of my points about being certain of what I am certain of here that it sounds made up. I couldnt have made this up man. Had I been tentative and gingerly made my "request”, the vocals would have been comped in Pro Tools. And with all the trial and error and takes,,..forget it man..too slow in Pro Tools.

Now, one other point. There is ONE thing Pro Tools is WAY better at than DP in Voc Comping.
And we must take the criticism with the accolades. No one cut my head off now... In Pro Tools, the comp track holds the color of the track from which the vocal snippet came. I soooo wish DP did that. Alas, No DAW is perfect which leads me to another point..
I wish they’d all steal from each other more..lol...
Come on MOTU, let the voc comp track hold the colors of the track from which each snippet came. Wouldn;t that be cool?...
So, to sum up, I am a “certain-of-my-opnion", "opinionated SOB” at times......sometimes that’s a good thing.
People have different styles man. I know some real a-holes that have mega hits. I know one a-hole that cost me a mega hit. I know gentle people that have huge kudos and great gigs and do it all with a whisper.
It takes all kinds..but never mistake my love of DP just because I am opinionated.
Maybe I am also schooling a record company exec out there on the benefits of DP?
I have done that at least twice now.
Fighting those guys takes a lion at times. Roar.

[Shooshie]

Fighting those guys takes a lion at times. Roar.

And I'm really glad that your self-confidence is put to good use at times like that. I had to fight my way through uninformed opinions all through the 1990s and 2000s. By the year 2000, the Mac was powerful enough to handle about 50 stereo tracks in DP, with busses, auxes, and plugins to boot. Nobody I knew of had a Pro-Tools rig with that many tracks.

So, some executives at Dreamworks told my manager that if her guy wasn't using Pro-Tools, he didn't know what he was doing, and she should get someone else. I called Waves, who made the best plugins for everyone, and I asked which software would theoretically get the highest resolution and best sound. With my manager on the line to hear it, the engineer at Waves said without hesitation: "DP has 32 bit floating point internal resolution, which gives it far more headroom than Pro-Tools which tops out at 24 bits internally. Our plugins can calculate far more precisely in DP than in Pro-Tools." We got off the phone and I said "see what I've been telling you?"

Still unconvinced, they took one song into a studio with a high-dollar digital board and spent three days mixing the tracks I'd recorded in DP. A friend dropped off a copy for me at the end of the third day. By the time the manager and artist got back home (about four hours later), I had literally copied their mix in DP and finished it, making their moves and effects more profound. I left a copy on each of their desks. Next day they asked how I did that. I told them it's easy in DP when you've got ears to hear and knowledge of what you're doing.

They never listened to an outsider again.

That was a typical occurrence in my career, as I'm sure it is in yours. I'm glad that you are also a fighter.

[frankf]

Look man, when DP can be a sturdy on VIs alone, and does NOT need VE Pro to be crashless---, I will say so.
I have said also many positive things about DP.

As I wrote earlier, TDH, DP is already there for me and for other professional users and before jumping to VEP, DP64 bit users should try first staying in DP . You cannot make a blanket statement like the above because you have an issue and must use VEP. If you would like to try to find a solution so you can let VEP go or if you'd like to discuss detailed scenarios where VEP is needed, by all means, let's continue the discussion. This would be helpful to users. Until then, please add "for me" to your comments like these. I feel a need to jump in when I read comments like these that seem definitive when in fact I know from personal experience, they are not.


Frank Ferrucci

[swpowe]

I too have had better performance with instruments loaded in VePro outside of DP (on the same machine) than with running the same instruments inside 64bit (32gb ram) DP.

I haven't read through the whole thread (looks like a lot of back and forth) but I want'ed to throw my experience out there in case it was helpful to anyone. Of course, do what works for you. If DP works great don't bother with VePro. I'm always a fan of having less involved.

[doodles]

I haven't read through the whole thread (looks like a lot of back and forth) but I want'ed to throw my experience out there in case it was helpful to anyone. Of course, do what works for you. If DP works great don't bother with VePro. I'm always a fan of having less involved.

Agreed, you should use what you need to do. But for me, DP just collapses with the amount of VI's I throw at it - it just doesn't like running that many. And with a template of 94 gigs of RAM permanently loaded up, you kind of need to use VEPro or similar to hook up your slaves. I adore it, and it's rock solid. I just wish there was a better way of freezing/bouncing the MIDI tracks simultaneously. (setting up an AUX for 250 odd MIDI channels is a no starter!).

Having said that, I know that expecting any programme to deal with these kind of things thrown at them is unrealistic, even with today's processing power. PTools struggles when we're mixing to the max aswell! DP still rocks.

(And I'm saying all this from 7.24 land -need to install 8.06 when I get a chance between projects. Can't wait to enter the brave new world of 64 bit!)

[frankf]

Doodles, I had to use VEP with 7.24 due to 32 bit limit. I hope I mentioned that I was able to drop it only with DP8 running in 64 bit mode. When you make the move, experiment!


Frank Ferrucci

[Chris T]

I know this is an old thread but since it's my issue I thought I'd put my question here:

I've been running 2 Mac Minis slaved to my main Mac Pro (until just recently a 2007 running OS10.6. - see my signature). I have a large orchestral template and had set up large metaframes and Kontakt Mutis in VEP on both my host computer (as server) and on each Mac mini. The MIDI stuck note problem was DEFINITELY an issue on the Mac Minis, though I'm not sure if it's an issue (or at least not as bad) on my VEP Server on the Mac Pro.

Does anyone know if the Event Input MIDI problem happens on VEP when run in server mode on the same machine in addition to over the Ethernet to slaved computers?

Thanks