Idiots guide....

[brolly]

Hi all
I'm currently using a single macpro to compose with & am limited by the 4gig ram issue. I have VSL Ensemble Pro but with DP's history of flaky routing it's unworkable. I currently load & freeze, load & freeze all frikkin' day.
I know some of you out there 'farm out' your soft synths to other machines such as Mac minis & i'm becoming very interested in looking at this.
The idea would be to have a mac -NOT PC- computer for brass, one for Strings, one for woods & one for percussion. But where do I start?
I don't even know what this technique is called but the idea that i could fire it up in the morning & it would run all day without needing to reload each cue & playing in the audio at the ned of the cue in one run is such a huge timesaver i could afford to take time off & go fishing!!!!

I'm initially looking at mac minis which I know can be run at 7200rpm & will unofficially take 16gigs of ram.
but beyond this including how to set it up I have no idea..
Hope you guys can help.
brolly

[FMiguelez]

MacMinis rock as slave computers. Especially the Server model, which has 2 internal 7200
RPM SATA disks and you can add another via FW (so you have one for system stuff and two for samples). You can fill it with up to 16 GB of RAM.

You may not need a different computer for each section... perhaps start with one MM and add another one if necessary. The key is to distribute your samples smartly, so every HD works roughly as hard as the others. The idea is not to have one spinning like crazy while the other sits idle.

BTW, even with one single computer, you don't need to keep reloading your samples with VI Pro. They stay always loaded if you use the Preserve function, so this has nothing to do with the amount of computers you use. All you need is a good ethernet hub and an ethernet cable. The rest is setup in the software, so it's pretty easy to setup such a computer farm.

Even when DP goes 64 bit, I will still use the slaves because they really help distributing the workload and leave DP mostly alone for more important things.

This technology is pretty amazing, really

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I have more hope for 64 bit than that. Yeah, I kept all my old cassettes. Then again I don't think I've burned more than a handful of CDs in the last few years.

Moral: Move forward when possible. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

I want it all in one box and hope an 8 core with lots of RAM can make it so.

Wow. A Star Bores *and* a Star Dreck quote in the same post! Do I get like a prize or sut'um?

[rickorick]

Sure what do you want¿

[MIDI Life Crisis]

DP8. When do I want it? About 4 months ago...