Opinions on VEP vs V-Rack

[arthurputy]

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to get everyones thoughts on using VEP locally vs using V-Racks. I was reading somewhere recently that using VEP even locally is highly recommended from an efficiency and performance point of view. I must admit it was a bit of a revelation as I thought about the benefits of decoupling the instruments from the DAW. But the benefits of V-Racks are quite huge too. Anyhow, would love to get some input from you all before I go to far down either path with a new template.

Thanks.
Mark

[Shooshie]

Vienna Ensemble Pro is commercial software with lots of features. It can host a lot of instruments and does its job thoroughly. Periodically, threads appear with compatibility problems in VEP as it, the OS or DP or any of the instruments being hosted within VEP go through updates. They all get worked out fairly quickly.

V-Racks is one of the greatest features in DP. It can host instrument tracks or aux tracks, which makes it ideal for applying an entire audio setup to MIDI files in chunks. If you've got 20 MIDI sequences, or chunks, they can all use the same V-Racks setup, which vastly streamlines the process of bringing MIDI into the audio realm.

The chief advantage of V-Racks is that it's a part of DP. It's always going to be compatible without having to wait for various companies to iron out the wrinkles in their updates. It's also free. It can be used very creatively; make a V-Rack for each set of aux and instrument tracks and turn them on as needed, or turn them off when you don't want them draining CPU cycles. Store a V-Rack in a Clippings file, and you can quickly import it into any DP project file.

Prior to the 64 bit memory addressing found in almost all computers these days, DP (like all apps) was limited to 4 GB of memory. That runs thin when hosting instruments such as Ivory, with its 12 layer grand pianos with una-corda samples, which can run something like 80 GB by itself. Then, V-Racks ran out of room pretty quickly, and VEPro or Plogue Bidule made a lot of sense. They offloaded their instruments in a way that gave DP a lot of room and enabled tons of instruments. After DP went 64 bit, V-Racks could handle all the instruments and plugins you could throw at it without running into that limit. It works flawlessly.

Much is made over the "inability to automate" plugins in tracks in V-Racks. While that's true, it's kind of a hollow argument. Put plugins that need automating on tracks in the main sequence, not in V-Racks. But what about automating instruments themselves? Most instruments worth their samples utilize MIDI Learn or some other means of utilizing MIDI Control Change events (MIDI Controllers, CC#s 0 - 127). This makes it possible to control the instruments with faders, pedals, breath, ribbon controllers, or any other device — hardware or virtual — that can sent CC numbers and values. In short, it's never been a problem for me, nor has it been a consideration that has changed the way I use V-Racks. There are enough places to apply automation without having to do it directly within V-Racks. Just use a receiving Aux track in the Sequence Editor and automate plugins on that.

There's nothing wrong with having both V-Racks and VEP, but a lot of people who were big VEP users before the 64 bit evolution of DP have dropped it in favor of V-Racks now.

Shooshie

[doodles]

different beasts.

[labman]

Since using it for maybe 3-4 years, VEP has made my day so MUCH easier, as I can keep all my scoring rigs loaded with the startup template regardless of what DP is doing. I do all VEP file management apart from DP, so the DP save times are near instantaneous, even while playing back, and the DP file sizes rarely gets about 4mb. This is with over 300 trks and tons of plugs and routing. Even now that DP is 64bit, I will not give up VEP. And the last few VEP5 builds Vienna has done for us DP users have brought some truly cool stuff, specifically for MAS! Who'd have thought? LOL

Go MOTU, Go VEP

[frankf]

but a lot of people who were big VEP users before the 64 bit evolution of DP have dropped it in favor of V-Racks now.
Shooshie

I'm one of these "lot of people" who used VEP with great success in one computer but stopped when DP went 64 bit. I've maxed out my MacPro's 3,1 RAM and use SSDs and haven't looked back. For me, the DP/VEP architecture reminds me of the days when I had a room full of Roland samplers, tons of synth modules, SCSI hard drives and SCSI switchers to load them up for each cue. Using VEP reminded me of that independent loading of external samplers, especially when running on a second external cpu. One argument for using VEP is that if DP crashes or you load a new project it does not have to reload samples to v-racks when restarting. This is true but DP8-9 has rarely crashed here and SSDs have made loading times extremely short. Give me v-racks please. Of course YMMV.



Frank Ferrucci

[timmeh]

I ended putting all of my instruments into VEP because I run into some really bad stability issues when Kontakt and Play are loaded into DP. Are those of you who are using VRACKS loading Kontakt and Play into them, or have you found a way to circumvent this issue?

[labman]

In VEP, it isn't so much of an issue now. You can just load all the play ones in one instance and all the Kontakt in another. Works great that way here.

It used to be that the workaround was to make sure to load all PLAY inst in DP ahead of Kontakt ones. (meaning higher in the DP track list). But as I say, VEP doesn't have that issue with it's built separation.

[zuul-studios]

For me, VEPro 5 & DP 9 with V-Rack is a winning, stable combination. I do not know why, but I can not get DP 9 (or DP 8, for that matter) to reliably handle the modest amount of orchestral VIs as I can when using VEPro 5 to handle those same instruments. Even now, with my rather robust system, the computer chokes when I attempt to have DP 9 handle a modest amount of orchestral instruments (housed in VSL's Instrument Pro, Play, Kontakt, etc.) I am NOT an expert. So, this most probably contributes significantly to my problems. However, life is good when I simply use VEPro 5 to handle the different libraries and let DP 9 (using V-Rack) handle the MIDI sequencing and audio editing.