Producing Music for the Virtual Orchestra: Computer Setup and Performance
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- Опубліковано 15 гру 2013
- This video gives an overview of a a typical three-computer setup used to produce music for the virtual orchestra. The video provides information for expert users, novice users, and people curious to know how modern composers use computers to make music that sounds like it is being played by a live orchestra.
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the only video on UA-cam that explained setting up PCs for DAW detailed for audio production, with proper logic and explaination. Thank you so much. This video has been my reference for the last 5 years! Would love to see new benchmarks with the current 10th Gen processors and latest techs.
This has been the absolute best introduction to digital orchestration that I've seen. Superb job!
TheChosenOne Thanks!
Great information. No matter that it's ten years old. Thanks for your work.
Very well put together video. However, it might scare newcomers as it suggests that a deep understanding of technology is required, when in fact, all you need is a Mac, ProTools, some decent plug-ins that are not memory hogs (which VSL is notorious for being), and off you go.
had to press like after your intro already for "write bad music more quickly" :D
Nicely done. A few year old now, but no less valid. Thanks.
Great video Richard! You have cleared up several questions I've had for quite some time. The video was well done and interesting. Thanks for taking the time to make it!
Richard, great job. You sure smoothed out info that most never explain, or teach. Keep it up.
That was a brilliant and completely clear work up, with all the cool details. Such a pleasure. Beautiful VO too. Applause
This is the best guide for DAW system build! Gotta watch it a few times to really understand. Thank you!
Man this is gold, thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Extremely useful video and no blabla or superficial knowledge. Thank You!
This is the exact video I was looking for. Thank you!
wow. I've been doing this for a while and just watching you vid I,ve learned A LOT . like, I never knew what the whole " chunk" thing was. im glad you explained it. keep doing this. please
Really great. I learned a lot from this one video and hope to see many more from you soon. Subscribed!
WHAT FOR A GREAT VIDEO!!!!! No words... Thank you very much.
Excellent. The clearist easiest to understand video. I am a complete beginner in virtual music production. I really understood this and it makes the subject much more approachable.
Hi Mark - thanks for the kind words and good luck!
thank you so much for doing this.
Hi Richard,
Thanks a lot for this great video, the best and most comprehensive I have seen so far on this topic!
I hope you consider doing more videos, I really like your presentation style... In particularly I'd love to see a video specifically on virtual orchestra instruments placement an reverb use (e.g. ER, reverb tail, etc.).
Keep up the great work;-)
All the very best,
Max
Great video!
Thank you.🙏
Excellent Video! I learned a lot!
Grazie mille, Maestro!
Very good man, thanks alot!
Richard-Congratulations ! Exactly the right and difficult balance of geek vs musicality and invaluable for a newb like me. Would love to see a tutorial on constructing a template and for a basic orchestral setup for mix of classical and film/epic what would be a good starter set and intermediate set of sample libraries. Especially since I understand folks are mixing libs like violins and sweetening with sample modeling instruments. Then maybe a workflow tutorial with an example composition start to finish. PLEASE keep the tutorials coming !!! THANK YOU, THANK YOU.
Hey Richard, awesome video! If you're looking for ideas, I think a video about getting the most out of VePro would be awesome.
awesome Video !! thanks for share !!
great,,,, thank you
Hi Richard, thanks for the very comprehensive tutorial. I'm currently looking into expanding to multi computer setup but am struggling to find the information I need to get started. Can you recommend any resources that would help get me started on networking and configuring computers for this purpose? Thanks,
Great
Great video! Thanks.
Well thought out allocation of large sample libraries on SSDs via SATA is definitely worth spending time on to find the best combination. Don't just go by the primary transfer rate of the SSD; the random access time might be more of a factor, especially with high streaming demands and/or heavy sample access (e.g. a large percussion library with a high 'round robin' count).
BTW, every time I've tried to overclock my CPU, my DAW & VSTIs didn't like it. Finally decided to run the CPU at stock speed (i7 3770K, 16GB G.Skill PC3-12800 RAM, Asus P8Z77-V PRO mobo, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480, 2x RME Hammerfall PCI - Multiface IIs, 2x UAD-2 - 1 quad, 1 duo, Windows 7 Pro SP1, Cubase 7.5 - 10, East West Play 6.1.5, Synthology Ivory II, Kontakt 6, HaLion 6, etc). The Asus is very flexible; I tried clocking down the ram and other combinations, to no avail.
Perhaps the RME and UAD cards don't like an overclocked environment.
Great Video Richard! What is your take on Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 as to the functionality and realistic sounds it produces?
Hi Richard, great video. In your video you mention a solution for pops and clicks by changing the latency to 1024. But, still my big problem and question is how to use many VST plugins without changing the latency. Any words of wisdom?
Hi Richard.Great video, thanks for making it available.
I also have a Master-Slave configuration and I was thinking about the way a template should be split between computers; the "per section" approach makes sense the most but I have heard opinions that a "per sample engine" would be better. Especially for PLAY.
I will also be looking into further overclocking my i7's (inspired from your video). I am struggling at a higher buffer size than you are using (so higher latency) and I still get occasional clicks. I use however 12 instances of QL Spaces (on Master) and both HS and HB Diamond, etc.
Catalin Marin wow!
Thanks for this video! any chance of an updated video on your current DAW and how it compares to the one from this video? I'm a PC builder but not an DAW user but this segment is fascinating. curious if intels 10 core unlocked broadwell-e will be able to eliminate the need for slave computers when it's released.
AWESOME, EPIC, MASSIVE VIDEO!!! Thank You!!! I see you have VSL "Dimension Strings" could post some Demos?.....Pretty PLEASE??? I plan to buy "Mostly" Spitfire stuff....but I'm STUNNED by VSL DS and I am not ruling out purchasing SD in the future as an String Alternative "COLOR" if I want one.....
Hi Richard,
Thanks a lot for producing these very infomative videos. I enjoyed to watch and learnt a lot.
One thing I did not understand is, how you made the connection via Ethernet-cables:
I only have one Ethernet-Lan-port per computer
Best regards from Northern Germany
Richard
This video is great !!! I learned more here than in a year studying music production
Could you explain how the connection of several pc slave is made to create this orchestra? What is the name of the software used? I want to build a setup like this for my orchestra
In the 23rd minute here, you talk about reasons to avoid the VE Pro mixer. One of these, that you need to run coupled to use FX and mix from VE Pro isn't correct. It is a matter of saving just the same as you save it with only instruments. Of course your preference to use 'one' mixer is what it is, but I don't mix in Cubase, so it's more 1.1 mixers than 2 mixers anyway. My reasoning is that returning less outputs is more efficient and the same load of FX in VE Pro is more efficient than in Cubase. So I use the automation map capability of VE Pro extensively. While I have a few practically dummy Instrument Channels in Cubase up.
Can you go over how you connected your slaves to your computer and how you installed VEP on all the computers and everything? I now understand how the master and slaves work together, but I don't know how to get them to work together to begin with. What sort of connections and programs would I need to get the computers to all recognize each other, and then introduce VEP, and how to get them all to work together harmoniously..
Thank you so much for the time and knowledge you have shared!
I could be wrong but this is the only real detailed tutorial I've found on youtube on this subject. Thanks for posting this. I saw it was done in 2013. Are you still slaving computers now that computers are much more powerful now?
Great video Richard - very in-depth and easy to understand. I was wondering, within your template setup, you say that each instrument on the slave has its own separate audio channel running into the DAW. I'm just wondering how you reconcile this setup while using Kontakt (instead of VSL for example). By this, I mean that Kontakt is a multitimbral / multi-out host. Do you load one instance of Kontakt for one instrument then, or one Kontakt multi per instrument-type for example?
+Tim Rideout Apparently, Richard no longer monitors this site as he hasn't answered anything in the past 6 months.
Hi Richard,
Thanks, for your very usefull information. I have enjoyed it. In this case I have a question to you. It is possible to configure an iMac 2014 as master and use Windows PCs as Slaves? Is that generally possible or would you prefer the same platform for the whole system configuration. I have also VSL Ensemble Software, Cubase 7.5 and Kontakt for my current Mac Boook Pro late 2013 - with 8 GB RAM - without possibility to change the RAM :-( - But after composing now such orchestral titels and loading a lot of plugins I have seen that 8GB RAM is really not enough to work with. Many Thanks for your feedback! Ismail
like it!!
I have been looking for a "tutorial" like this for a long time and suddenly stumbled upon your video. Thank you so much for explaining all of this!! I run my libraries on a single, "medium-good" computer and getting into problems very fast. Will look into slave-systems in a near future when I can afford buying it.
1. Just have a few questions. How much did the computer hardware approximately cost you?
2. What computers did you buy? And did you have to buy additional RAM with them? If you don't want to mention specific brands you can send me a private message instead.
3. Is all software needed for the master-slave system free or did you buy the Vienna thing? I am a bit low on budget at the moment so anything free is good for me :)
Woule appreciate any answer very much! Thank you,
Elias
You can get a single machine. A workstation can have a lot of RAM. Plus, it is ECC (error checking), but I don't know if it matters for what we do. Also, you can install 2x physical CPUs with many cores (Intel Xeon series). For more data rate and/or data protection, you may set your drives on RAID. A workstation will be a lot more upgradable for the future than a typical system. If we plan for the future, we should think about it. Will a workstation be more reliable than multiple machines acting as a whole? It depends on what you can find for your needs. I know a workstation made for music production (capable of 768GB of RAM), but it initially cost $2500. It is called the "CoreMC Gen3". But there is many workstations. As I said, maybe you can find a better price for your needs.
This is an older video - I’m wondering what your thoughts are on the new imag pros and their ability to be the ‘one computer’ to handle everything now? Thanks
hi can you make a video with mac and pc ?
Those boxes at the bottom of the screen are chapter markers - click on them to skip around the video. Still figuring out this UA-cam thing...!
Great video, Richard! Interesting - you're not using hyper-threading on your slaves? Did it hurt performance having it on and utilizing the extra virtual cores with VE Pro? I noticed it was on your Cubase system, however. I am hoping that with the addition of ASIOGuard in the latest versions of Cubase / Nuendo and the RME "Enable MMCSS for ASIO" hardware setting will further improve playback at lower sample buffers.
One more question I think I missed - you've overclocked your Cubase system, but what of the slaves? I know you said you leave the CPU power-stepping on in the BIOS, but was curious whether or not you also overclocked them.
I think you should also create another video that goes into the optimization with PC DAWs as well. There is a lot of advice out there regarding DPC Latency Checker / LatencyMon tools, but it would be cool to see your take on your exact methods in identifying and correcting Windows issues - including whether or not any kind of processor affinity assignments / scheduling is used, preferred priority for programs, etc. It would be interesting to learn whether DAW performance varies with NVidia vs. ATI video cards, etc. All the stuff that makes Mac users squirm. ;-)
Rodney Gates Yes - the slaves are overclocked to 4.4 GHz. I think stock is 3.6 GHz or somewhere around there. Regarding DPC Latency checker and those tools, they are handy for finding big problems but I haven't found them very useful for fine-tuning a system (note that DPC Latency checker gives incorrect readings in Windows 8). I've tried messing with the program priority and not found it to affect my setup. Maybe I'll do an optimization video - thanks for watching!
Any special cooling for the overclocked CPUs?
Great video!
The thing I'm still not sure of is how to slave 1 additional computer to my main one.
I know, with the network. And the connection itself via capabilities in the Op systems.
For me it'll be Win 10 (64-bit) with a slaved Win 7 (32-bit).
There is a way to tie 2 computers together inside Cubase actually.
I have never tried it so far, but planning to do soon.
This may be a subject to cover :-)
Can you produce music with this software interdependently without the need of real instruments? I would like to experiment with it. Now that you've mentioned John Williams, he is my favorite composer followed by Philippe Rombi, Joe Hisaishi.
Wow. I always wondered why my DAW with 16 Gb of RAM wasn't able to sound like this
Why is the master daw choking if all it is Playing is midi?
Are any of the tools you use in the video 3rd party and if so what are they (e.g. the various test meters, etc. showing cpu usage, latency, etc.) ? Or are they in Windows, Cubase, Kontakt, Play, VePro, etc. ?
Late reply - been making music the last few months...! I can't recall for certain but I believe all the tools are the standard Windows stuff...
Richard, Okay, My only question after all of this is: What software programs are installed on each slave (VS) the master?
Hey Richard - really interesting stuff here.
I was thinking of Using Mac-minis slaving to a Mac Pro.
However, today there is now the Mac Studio and this has its Internal RAM which is faster.
Would this negate the need for Slaves as you could have everything on the Internal SSD (Say 2-4GB).
My reasoning is that internal SSD is going to be a lot faster than external SSD's even if these are being controlled by Eithernet.
You mention ASIO - that is PC Specific isn't it?
Is there a reason most people say to have 2 slave computers? If I had all my sample libraries on one slave and then used my main computer for the daw would it work as well or do I really need 2 slaves?
Thank you Richard for the video. I have a question. Will upgrading to a better Audio Interface solve some of the issues you mentioned halfway through the video? My computer's CPU performance is fine, but like you pointed out the ASIO driver is causing me endless problems. When at the highest buffer size setting there are no pops/clicks, distorted sounds etc, but with the latency it is unbearable, to the point where I cannot play/compose music. If the settings are lower then the pops return. I am willing to spend the money in a heart beat if it will help, but don't want to buy a top-of-the-range RME audio interface just to find out that it makes no difference and that something else like a video/network driver is the culprit. I will appreciate it if you can give me some advice.
Dirk Claassen Hi Dirk - the quality of the sound card drivers can have a HUGE impact on pops/clicks. RME are among the best for low latency but most of the major brands are perfectly workable. I'd definitely check the video/network/USB drivers first to see if the problem is there - you can do that by updating drivers and/or disabling devices in the Windows Device Manager. Good luck!
Richard Ames Music Thank you for replying. I will look into it. Hope to see more of these videos from you in the future.
This is the first video that actually explains how a real setup should be made, very clear!
But I have one question though: I have seen some info on the web about DSP interfaces (like this PCIe DSP card www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/UAD2Octo) but what nobody has really answered on forums and alike on the web is: does a DSP card reduce Realtime Audio-processing load?
+RazerBlue6 I don't have experience with them but my guess is that they would have at least a small effect on real-time performance. If your system is marginal then it could be a big help, especially if you're having real-time problems because of CPU overloads - I bet they can take some load off the CPU. However, CPUs are so powerful these days that I doubt they're nearly as beneficial as they used to be. Cheers
What is a voice actually?
Thanks for the awesome video! I can't find anyone who explains this process like you have here.
This is my dream, but I do not have the funds to set this up unfortunately.
I have a Mac Pro 2009, Intel Xeon 8 Core (2x2.26) with 16 GB of RAM. I can't even load my template anymore and have to use the lite samples from PLAY just to squeeze by.
With my current setup, I keep running into walls and it's the most frustrating experience. I've been bouncing to audio just to hear the track, but this just can't work because I always need to go back to change something. Not to mention, once I start adding automation for the expression and breathe, my computer just wants to blow up...
At least you can make the music! My issues is trying to learn the programs and getting the VST's!
You can make the music too! just get that extra job to buy the right tools and software. I'm 26 now, but when I was 18, I started working in a bar, saved up a bunch of money, 5K, and bought a high end Mac Pro early 2009. The only way to learn is to just jump in and just start hitting buttons and experimenting. I watched you videos on your profile, you definitely have the knack to make music, you just need the right tools. If i was you, I would definitely get Logic pro or cubase if you want to make scores. They are easier to use that Pro Tools for composition. I've been out of the game for awhile, but you can listen to some of my stuff on soundcloud.com/cwguyer. I used Logic for some tracks and pro tools for others
Curtis Guyer I do not have a mac unfortunately. I got a windows PC for my birthday, so that didn't work out. I checked Cubase, that seems a lot easier. Now the VST's... Hmmm... Can't get those if I'm not allowed to work
@@curtisguyer3917 I like your music sir!
Great video Richard! Two points - you might get more viewers if you broke your chapters into separate videos with different titles and metadata to help UA-cam's search engine. Also, I'm a but unclear on the point made when you went to compare the brass sections and the different players. Is the real takeaway message that brass libraries need more CPU per voice, or that EWQL scripting of brasses is less efficient, or that EWQL Play is less efficient in general, or that EWQL Play has a lot of functionality that is not getting exposed in this simple comparison? Perhaps a subject for another video! Thanks again.
Hi David - agree that different videos are the way to go. I'm completely new to the UA-cam world...! Regarding EWQL - yes, in general the PLAY engine is less efficient than others, so it's harder to get the same number of voices for a given hardware configuration. However, they're great libraries and worth the extra hassle.
Richard Ames Music Yeah you can't go wrong with the east west brass library. It is quite lovely in spite of play's more lack luster character, however recent updates and play 4 have made it much better in some ways.
And how do you feel about this these days?
'If you write music before watching this video, you will write bad music after watching this video'. That's where I stopped.
Just kidding. Some good valuable information there Richard.
so let me get this straight even though you have 64gb of ram on each machine , you still were going over the voice buffer so the ram in the end has nothing to do with it? im using 16 gigs of ram and i start to get some buffer under runs,
Not everything is loaded into RAM.
ovo nisamja care to elaborate?
Well I've noticed that when loading samples into a player, let's say Kontakt, it loads only a portion into RAM, and the rest is streamed from a disk. Which parts are loaded, and which are streamed directly is beyond me.
Yeah, and regarding the voice count, I remember reading about it on NI web page somewhere. The article goes into details on how they went about it. If I find it I'll post it here. I can't promise nothing though.
This guy knows his shit..........now only if he can help me talk some sense into my Emotional ass girlfriend
sometimes it boil down to bad scripting on a library
2:12 Bwaahaaahaaaa!
Instead of wasting money building multiple machines, just record your piece in phases. The winds, then strings, then percussion, then just mix it together in an audio program like Adobe Audition. Wallah.
I just saved you like $750.
Lol "Bad music more quickly"
just sell 2 slave you have and buy a new processor and motherboard.. why you bought 2 slave pc ? -_-
Great