Studio suggestions (VE Pro/slave machines etc)

[Justin_K]

Hi all,

I'm getting to the stage where one machine is JUST coping with my orchestral template.
I'm still using regular hard drives, so my first step is to upgrade those to SSDs, but after that, I'm considering a two machine setup.

Can anyone offer some suggestions regarding where my money would be best spent?

As you can see in my signature, this is my current machine:

Mac Pro (Mid 2010)
OSX 10.10.5
2 x 3.33 Ghz 6-Core Intel Xeon
42 GB 1066 MHz DDR3
DP 9.13


The 3 options I'm considering are as follows:
1) Keeping my Mac Pro as my main machine and adding a purpose built PC as a slave (maybe even 2).
2) Using my Mac Pro as the slave and buying an iMac as my main machine.
3) Wait and see what an upgrade to SSDs do, and forget about the 2nd machine...

Am I right in assuming that once all my samples are hosted elsewhere the majority of processing will be lifted from my main machine? Or does DP still take a lot of juice to run?

Computers aren't my strong suit, but hopefully I know enough to comprehend your suggestions

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Justin.

[mikehalloran]

SSDs will give immediate gratification in the speed/performance department. The 850 EVO sets the benchmark. A PCIe blade will be faster on a Mac Pro but I don't know how noticeable the speed difference is. Enable TRIM in Terminal. If using a standard 2.5" SATA drive, you will need one of these brackets:
https://www.amazon.com/Fenlink-Internal ... SXE0KN73BM

Going to Sierra will improve the efficiency of 9.13.

You may still want to explore the other options but I'd start there.

[FMiguelez]

I couldn't be happier with my Mac-mini slave farm. It just works great.

I got the best server models with double disks, which I replaced with SSDs and maximum RAM.
I thinK you can put now 32 GB of RAM on the newest models.

I used to have PCs for slaves, but I simply gave up on Windows. I kept experiencing random crashes, they wouldn't boot without me having to download Windows componente out of the blue, etc. Vey unreliable, and maintenence of 2 different OS is not very efficient or desirable.
PCs are not welcome in my studio anymore. I was glad when I threw them out and replaced them with my mini-monsters.

[Justin_K]

Thanks both of you for your comments

[Michael Canavan]

I couldn't be happier with my Mac-mini slave farm. It just works great.

I got the best server models with double disks, which I replaced with SSDs and maximum RAM.
I thinK you can put now 32 GB of RAM on the newest models.

I used to have PCs for slaves, but I simply gave up on Windows. I kept experiencing random crashes, they wouldn't boot without me having to download Windows componente out of the blue, etc. Vey unreliable, and maintenence of 2 different OS is not very efficient or desirable.
PCs are not welcome in my studio anymore. I was glad when I threw them out and replaced them with my mini-monsters.

This is great news, I've been thinking about VEP for a while now, I have a decent older retina macbook pro 2.7 4 core, it's still in the running performance wise, Geekbench etc. it could easily handle being the main head for the Mac Pro as a slave here. Been contemplating this for a while, since the Mac Pro has 12 3.33GHz cores, but the Retina beats even the 12 core 2013 black trash can Pros in single core tests. In other words on a single track the retina Macbook Pro beats the 12 core. So for the main machine it can do mastering duties better etc.
Even with optimization you look at the CPU meter at 60% in DP9 and in Activity Monitor it's only using maybe 25% or less of each of the 12 cores. IMO this is because DP wants headroom for all the fool things you're going to do with the track running. It seems to me VEP having only one job it can chug along and grind out more CPU, plus of course the fact of running two computers etc.

[Justin_K]

One more quick question re: SSDs.

Is there are 'real world difference' to be experienced when comparing performance of SSDs in the regular drive bays of a Mac Pro, to connecting them in a PCI port.

I was under the impression that the main benefit of an SSD is the speed it can be read, rather than the data transfer speed.

Any thoughts, my geeky friends?