consolidating onto new Mac Pro from old Mac Pro plus 3 Windows PCs -- your opinion on VE Pro settings

[JohnG]

Hi everyone,

I'm starting a new project and will be consolidating from four computers (one older Mac Pro plus three PCs) to one new Mac Pro M2.

Your Opinion Please

To consolidate VE Pro down from four computers to one, would you recommend:

1. About 25-35 instances, with three really big instances that have dozens of plugins; necessitating many audio outs per VE Pro instance (like 16); or

2. A lot more instances (like 50 or 70) but none of them holding too many Kontakt or other plugins, and each instance would have only a single stereo out; or

3. Something else?

I will be replicating in the new Mac Pro the three instances (one for each PC) from the PCs. Each of those instances has a LOT of Kontakt and Spitfire (and some Opus, SINE) plugins. Like, 40 Kontakt and maybe 20 Spitfire for the 'strings' PC.

That has performed fine on PCs but I hear that Macs and DP do better with many, smaller instances, by contrast with PCs that perform best with only one instance that holds lots of plugins (Kontakt, Spitfire, SINE etc.).

I realise that there is some trial and error but am hoping someone has an opinion. I won't have time to redo all this too many times!

Thank you,

John

[HCMarkus]

Bumping this for John. I can't offer any relevant input; perhaps others can.

My only thought at this point is, you might want to wait for M3 to get to the Mac Studio/Mac Pro before making the leap.

[JohnG]

Thanks! Ideally I would wait, but have a job under way and have to move fast.

[Helen]

I can't speak to the M chip Macs, but I have a 2019 intel Mac Pro and use VEPro on it with DP11.

In your circumstance, I would make the new setup look as much like the old setup as possible, then see what works. I think the machine can handle either of the two configs you described. I would keep threads in mind vs. processors, of course, but beyond that I would guess that time efficiency would be paramount, and that would probably involve organizing your VEPro instances in as familiar a way as possible. You could then learn what works and what doesn't. Even if you find you're not happy doing it this way, at least it would be easier to find your way around.

Good luck, and please let us know what you ended up doing and how it worked.

-Helen

[zuul-studios]

Hi John -

My largest VEPro templet has three "Instances", each housing 15 - 20 Virtual Instruments (VIs). Each Instance is configured to handle 8 MIDI Ports, and 56 Audio Outputs. The VIs used are from a rather wide variety of companies including VSL (using Vienna Instruments Pro), Native-Instruments (using Kontakt 6 & 7), and Music Lab (using all of their virtual guitars).

For good or for bad, I let Digital Performer 11.31 do all of the processing including EQ, Reverb, Effects and Panning (the effects are mainly for the guitars and electric piano). Each VI processed in DP 11.31 has its own MIDI channel and AUX Audio channel. DP's V-Rack "houses" each of the three VEPro's "Instances" as well as three Reverbs. With this set-up, I have control over each VI, which is nice.

There are probably better ways to configure VEPro 7 to DP 11.31. But this set-up works for me! It's stable, at least for me (with only the rarest of crashes). I actually transferred this set-up from my aging 2017 iMac Pro computer onto my new Mac Studio (with its configurations noted below). This large templet (using earlier version of VEPro 7 & DP) worked well within my Intel-based iMac Pro. (I purchased the Mac Studio to handle my modest video-editing projects using DaVinci Resolve Studio. Even after the dreadful update to the macOS SONOMA 14.4, this set-up between VEPro 7 and DP11.31 works as intended. (Unfortunately, my M2-based Mac Studio crashes whenever I add Kontakt 7 directly onto DP11.31. In fact, a work-around to this problem is to allow VEPro7 to house Kontakt 7 VIs.)

I hope that this information helps you.

[JohnG]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

I think it's not wrong to say that nobody is 100% certain what the best approach is. However, sifting through these posts and some others, and speaking with some buddies, a few guidelines seemed to emerge:

1. Many instances ok with few audio outs / instance -- It's ok to have lots of VE Pro "instances" (not server projects, but individual instances) as long as you limit the number of audio outputs of each instance. From what I could discern, sending pairs out (or quad maybe) is a lot better than each instance having dozens of audio sends.

2. MIDI doesn't seem to be a major issue one way or another. -- Nobody said, "watch out and limit the number of MIDI ins for each instance." I have ten each.

3. One VE Pro Server -- In general, I heard from people that it's better to have a single server instance. Opinion on this was not unanimous.

4. Settings are a guessing game -- nobody was willing to be prescriptive on the optimal VE Pro settings. What I ended up with was: 10 MIDI ports per instance, 4 audio outputs per instance, 4 audio inputs per instance, 4 threads per instance.

Everything is running even with a very dense arrangement of a big cue.

Thanks again for your suggestions everyone. If anyone has a different configuration of course I think it would be of interest. Many people may be embarking or thinking of embarking on this journey.