Can I use 2 G5 Machines as a cluster with DP7?

[noah330]

I am running DP7 on a G5 (2.3 PCIe with 10.5 gigs of RAM).

Someone just gave me another G5 (2.5 PCI).

This raised some questions for me.

Would it be possible to use the second G5 (PCI) as a glorified expansion chassis? I would love to be able to install my old PCI UAD-1 and Powercore on it and use the machine as part of my system.

I have never done anything like this, but it seems like something that may be possible.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Well, there is MIDI over LAN and you could essentially use the second machine as a giant MIDI instrument. I don't think you can share processing power directly, but I'd be very happy if I was wrong about that.

I've never done either but have seen info on MIDI over LAN in several places. Here are a few:


http://lmgtfy.com/?q=MIDI+over+lan" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.musiclab.com/products/rpl_info.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[noah330]

Thanks! I have seen the MIDI over LAN for PC, but I have yet to try an OSX application.

I know FXTeleport was supposed to go Mac, but I do not believe they ever did.

[rodger1811]

I'm going to have to say no. At this time, DP doesn't have "NODE" functionality. It would be nice though!!!

[Don T]

Have you considered Bidule's link through LAN? I remember reading about it on their site but I have never tried it. I intend to when our new iMacs arrive and I attempt to link the old G5's.

[Siryne]

Here is a very good SOS article on setting up MIDI over LAN:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar07/a ... 0307.htm#5" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have a G5 dual 2.7 that I use to run LASS. My main machine is a Mac Pro as you can see in my sig. I used to do it with MIDI over LAN and it worked great. I wanted better options for getting the audio back into the main machine so I bought an old 828MkII on ebay, it has a MIDI port so now I doit that way. In any case-it is great to run the G5 as a slave to run Kontakt as a stand alone and take some of the weight off my main machine.

Peace!

[conleycd]

You use Vienna Ensemble Pro to network the two. Use one as a hardware box with your UAD cards etc.. or virtual synth.

CC

[kenrinc]

I guess the real answer is "sort of" but there currently isn't a really nice solution. I think you could cobble something together using Bidule and the optical audio out from the G5 into the card on your new system. It's been done. Many use Mac minis for that. I was also going to say Vienna Ensemble but it's not "officially" supported on PPC machines. So it "works" but I wouldn't want to be in that camp.

$.02

ken

[kwiz]

Do any of you guys currently use Vienna Ensemble Pro?
If so, how responsive is it latency wise?

[Frodo]

Do any of you guys currently use Vienna Ensemble Pro?
If so, how responsive is it latency wise?

Latency is near-zero. I would say "zero", but nothing is absolute. However, the response is quite wonderful and arguably better than that of direct MIDI connections. One nice thing about VE Pro is its offline bouncing for all machines on the network. That spares the lugubrious task of bouncing each machine in real time. That would require taking those bounces to the master machine before doing the final mix. VE Pro's offline bounce feature means that your project on multiple machines will behave is though all data were on a single machine.

Mac users should be aware that some features of VE/VE Pro are either for PC only (at this time) and/or for future Mac use, such as the MIDI channel trickery (where you can't access 16 MIDI channels of a VI on one MIDI instance in VE Pro). Right now, it's one sound = one instance, although it only *appears* as if accessing 16 MIDI channels on one instance is possible. The restriction is directly related to Audio Units protocol, fwiw.

Also, because of some "interesting" VI compatibility issues with certain instruments, it may be more feasible to use hardware audio cards and smaller MIDI interfaces folding into the respective interfaces of the master machine. Works every time, but it's not always the most elegant or even affordable solution. I like the "works every time" part of it.

MOL? Not sure about the latest versions or which version works best on which machine in which version of OSX. I had trouble with it a couple of years ago and needed different approaches. With that said, I've not seen a flood of complaints about it lately from those using it in combo with Bidule.

[kwiz]

Cool, thanks Frodo!

[mikod]

Audio and MIDI over ethernet a success story of virtually zero latency!!

This subject got me thinking, because I too crave more processing power than I currently have to run Omnisphere, Trilogy, LASS, Mojo Horns, ect (I love big sounds) So I took it upon myself to run a proof of concept test. I have my main machine MacPro Xeon, and a 15" 1.83 Ghz Dual Core macbook pro that I do not use any more. I was interested in offloading some of the heavier programs such as Omnisphere and Trilogy. I didn't want to spend a butt-load of money. So this evening I did some quick research on the web and I have found 2 programs and a walk through of how to get MIDI and AUDIO over ethernet!

Tools:
Audio Unit Container (free for 15 days) - Rax Version 2.1.2 Ver 3 doesnt like AU's it still needs work.
http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/support/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Audio over Lan Utility: Wormhole - FREE
http://plasq.com/wormhole" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

MIDI over Lan: OS X 10.5-10.6
Instructions from SOS (supplied by another poster in this thread)
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar07/a ... 0307.htm#5" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
(Thanks Siryne, without this, the whole thing would have fallen apart)

Quick overview:
Audio Unit container needed because I didnt want to run another instance of DP on another machine, too much overhead for just a container unit. As many MIDI channels as you want.

Audio over Ethernet, I didnt want to use the headphone jack for sound, and I didnt want to invest in another 828 or the like just for sound. As many audio channels your 2nd machine can handle (I will only use for big ones)

MIDI over LAN, so I can control the laptop like another AU in DP.

And as a bonus I used teleport to remotely control the laptop from my KB and mouse on my rig.

Now to latency, there is virtually ZERO, ZIP, NUNCA, NADA, NYET, in either audio or MIDI. DONT USE WIRELESS if you can help it, a GB wired network would allow for more audio, but 100MB will let me do about 6 streams before that mac starts crying.

And there is NO CPU hit on the main rig. This is as close to clustering as possible as far as I can tell.

If you have any questions comments or need help setting this up or want me to post detailed instructions, or just call me names, let me know. It will work in a Mac/PC world also, but why would you want the windows headachs!!

miko

[James Steele]

Hey Miko. I fixed that SOS article link for you. Just so you know when you see those links with the "..." in them, that's the board software shortening how the link appears in the message that we see, but it's not really part of the URL. To repost a link in another post, you need to click the link, let a new browser window open, then select and copy the URL up in the URL field at the top of the browser. Then paste THAT into your message.

Just trying to help. Good info here by the way. Thanks for sharing. I have G5 sitting around doing nothing. I might use the darn thing just to run a couple instances of Aether which is a killer reverb but hits the processor rather hard!

[Frodo]

I have G5 sitting around doing nothing. I might use the darn thing just to run a couple instances of Aether which is a killer reverb but hits the processor rather hard!

Hey, JS--- keeping the G5 in service is highly recommended. We're finally at a point where "older" computers need not be doorstops.

[waterstrum]

I like the concept of using multiple Macs.
My only caveat would be that in a pro situation, you would have to be sure that all of the machines are being maintained and upgraded similarly.

I can imagine a scenario where you are trying to re-open a big session across two or more machines.
Oops, Mac 2 won't boot.
Or, for some reason, Mac 1 is not seeing Mac 2....
Or, a hard drive crash on the system disk of Mac 2...
Or a system update on Mac 1 changes the way the the interconnect software sees Mac 2.

Not to be a wet blanket, but this stuff has to be rock-solid if you are charging money.

As a lab thing, I think it is great and I want to know more about the possibilities.