Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

Recommended System Specs for Building VEP Slave PC?

J

JPacey95

New Member
Hi everyone!

This is my first post so thank you in advance for any help anyone is able to give.

I'm a film composer currently using one pretty powerful 27-inch iMac to run Cubase 11, with samples hosted on an external 2TB SSD. I often have to work with pretty big templates (60-100 Instrument tracks, multiples instances of CPU-hungry synths etc), and have been experiencing some audio dropouts recently from (I think!?) not enough processing power to handle everything on one computer.

I know VEPro is designed to help with this by offloading the CPU processing for the samples to the slave computer, so I wanted to ask if anyone had any advice on what specs to go for when building a dedicated VEPro server PC?

Presumably, I'll need the slave to be at least as powerful as my current host iMac to get better performance? What areas of hardware will I need to prioritise (RAM/CPU/something else?), and which don't need to be so powerful (GPU?)?

Is it advisable to use the slave PC to run absolutely everything (all samples, and also CPU-intensive synths), or perhaps to split some of the processing duties with the host DAW machine, maybe hosting some synths directly in Cubase on the host?

My current iMac system specs are these:

iMac 27-inch 5K 2020
3.6 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9
128 GB 2667 MHz DDR4
AMD Radeon Pro 5300 4 GB
I run my samples on a Crucial MX500 2TB SSD

Thank you in advance for your help and advice; anything anyone can suggest will be extremely helpful!
Click to read more...
 
JPacey95 said:
Hi everyone!

This is my first post so thank you in advance for any help anyone is able to give.

I'm a film composer currently using one pretty powerful 27-inch iMac to run Cubase 11, with samples hosted on an external 2TB SSD. I often have to work with pretty big templates (60-100 Instrument tracks, multiples instances of CPU-hungry synths etc), and have been experiencing some audio dropouts recently from (I think!?) not enough processing power to handle everything on one computer.

I know VEPro is designed to help with this by offloading the CPU processing for the samples to the slave computer, so I wanted to ask if anyone had any advice on what specs to go for when building a dedicated VEPro server PC?

Presumably, I'll need the slave to be at least as powerful as my current host iMac to get better performance? What areas of hardware will I need to prioritise (RAM/CPU/something else?), and which don't need to be so powerful (GPU?)?

Is it advisable to use the slave PC to run absolutely everything (all samples, and also CPU-intensive synths), or perhaps to split some of the processing duties with the host DAW machine, maybe hosting some synths directly in Cubase on the host?

My current iMac system specs are these:

iMac 27-inch 5K 2020
3.6 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9
128 GB 2667 MHz DDR4
AMD Radeon Pro 5300 4 GB
I run my samples on a Crucial MX500 2TB SSD

Thank you in advance for your help and advice; anything anyone can suggest will be extremely helpful!
Click to expand...
Hey,

I guess there's several ways to this, but mine is to use my slave(s) to run all the instruments on, with some (modest) processing if needed, and use my DAW master to do what it does best; project handling, recording, composition, (FX) processing, mixing, etc.

I've seen people take the hybrid route, where you'd maybe also install a bunch of frequently used synths/instruments on their DAW machine, but to me - that just leaves you with less processing power for your main machine. And it's less organized in terms of what goes where. Personally I like the separation. You'll never find any instruments on my DAW, in the same way I'll avoid having FX/processing plugins on my slaves, except for maybe a few good EQs, like a Fabfilter, just to clean up my returns beforehand.

I've also seen people go ahead and offload a lot of FX to their slave(s), but then again - you'll have to 1; share processing power with your instruments and 2; I feel it's not as flexible and to me - I don't like having my FX all over the place, UNLESS it's part of your basic template, in the same way that, say Tom Holkenborg has it.

I think what matters most is the amount of RAM you can stuff on your slaves AND the type/speed of your hard drive. CPU speed/core count does matter, but you'll be amazed at how much you can throw at VEPro, running on just a bog standard pc, with maybe a little extra RAM addded. I mean, my 2 slaves are between 2 and I think almost 3 years old now and they're really nothing fancy - overclocked 8700Ks and so on. BUT they're all maxed out in terms of RAM (64gB) AND all use NVME/SSD drives. The only thing that sort of makes one of my slaves go 'WTF' every now and then is Omnisphere (clearly, as I've told my wife, I need another slave just for Omnisphere :whistling: ). Other than that, they're blazingly fast. Coach Greg would say 'Ziieeero!' hick-ups (let's see if anyone gets that reference). Oh and just make sure to get rid of anything that isn't music related, on all machines. Keep everything (c)lean and mean.

So that would be my advice; to build your template on your DAW machine (your iMac already looks pretty decent; I'm not a Mac-guy, so it's hard to say for sure), create a Server Project on your slave and go to town. Don't forget to decouple your instances. Cubase will love you for it and it shaves off a whole bunch of loading/saving time. Oh, and disable channels in your VEPro Instances - the ones that you don't need right away.

Another tip would be to start keeping track of all your instruments, audio returns, group/FX channels, all the routing, what's installed on what machine and where. Nothing more annoying than to figure out a routing path while you're busy composing (typical; 'why am I not hearing anything?') or on the clock. I just use a giant Excel sheet. Works like a charm.

I don't know - does this make sense/help?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: bdr
quickbrownf0x said:
Hey,

I guess there's several ways to this, but mine is to use my slave(s) to run all the instruments on, with some (modest) processing if needed, and use my DAW master to do what it does best; project handling, recording, composition, (FX) processing, mixing, etc.

I've seen people take the hybrid route, where you'd maybe also install a bunch of frequently used synths/instruments on their DAW machine, but to me - that just leaves you with less processing power for your main machine. And it's less organized in terms of what goes where. Personally I like the separation. You'll never find any instruments on my DAW, in the same way I'll avoid having FX/processing plugins on my slaves, except for maybe a few good EQs, like a Fabfilter, just to clean up my returns beforehand.

I've also seen people go ahead and offload a lot of FX to their slave(s), but then again - you won't have to 1; share processing power with your instruments and 2; I feel it's not as flexible and to me - I don't like having my FX all over the place, UNLESS it's part of your basic template, in the same way that, say Tom Holkenborg has it.

I think what matters most is the amount of RAM you can stuff on your slaves AND the type/speed of your hard drive. CPU speed/core count does matter, but you'll be amazed at how much you can throw at VEPro, running on just a bog standard pc, with maybe a little extra RAM addded. I mean, my 2 slaves are between 2 and I think almost 3 years old now and they're really nothing fancy - overclocked 8700Ks and so on. BUT they're all maxed out in terms of RAM (64gB) AND all use NVME/SSD drives. The only thing that sort of makes one of my slaves go 'WTF' every now and then is Omnisphere (clearly, as I've told my wife, I need another slave just for Omnisphere :whistling: ). Other than that, they're blazingly fast. Coach Greg would say 'Ziieeero!' hick-ups (let's see if anyone gets that reference). Oh and just make sure to get rid of anything that isn't music related, on all machines. Keep everything (c)lean and mean.

So that would be my advice; to build your template on your DAW machine (your iMac already looks pretty decent; I'm not a Mac-guy, so it's hard to say for sure), create a Server Project on your slave and go to town. Don't forget to decouple your instances. Cubase will love you for it and it shaves off a whole bunch of loading/saving time. Oh, and disable channels in your VEPro Instances - the ones that you don't need right away.

Another tip would be to start keeping track of all your instruments, audio returns, group/FX channels, all the routing, what's installed on what machine and where. Nothing more annoying than to figure out a routing path while you're busy composing (typical; 'why am I not hearing anything?') or on the clock. I just use a giant Excel sheet. Works like a charm.

I don't know - does this make sense/help?
Click to expand...
Hi there, thanks so much for your response. All very good advice.
I quite agree that total separation is probably the best way to do it. My mind finds it easier to compartmentalise with things like that, so leaving all the sample processing to the slave and the FX/mixing to the host sounds ideal. Of course RAM on the slave is of top importance. In terms of slave CPU, if my slave PC is going to have nothing on it except VEPro (and the music apps necessary to host my samples etc), will a beefy processor like the one in my current iMac do a good job? I guess if all it’s doing is processing music samples it should have much more spare grunt than I do now? I’ve seen videos where people explain that core number isn’t really all that important above about 8, and buffer size and clock speed probably have more impact. That and making sure everything is running on SSDs.
 
Yup, I'd say you'll be just fine and your Mac will have a lot more room as a DAW. I think you're good to go. And if your Mac eventually runs out of steam - do what I did and join the dark side (we've got tea and cake). Get that paper route and save up for a nice DAW pc. :thumbsup::whistling:
 
quickbrownf0x said:
Don't forget to decouple your instances. Cubase will love you for it and it shaves off a whole bunch of loading/saving time.
Click to expand...
If you use the decouple feature, don't forget to save and backup the VEP project(s) as well! The DAW will not be able to restore the session on its own, but it will make your DAW save-files as small as possible.
 
quickbrownf0x said:
Yup, I'd say you'll be just fine and your Mac will have a lot more room as a DAW. I think you're good to go. And if your Mac eventually runs out of steam - do what I did and join the dark side (we've got tea and cake). Get that paper route and save up for a nice DAW pc. :thumbsup::whistling:
Click to expand...
Great, good to know. I’ve been considering going to PC for a while now... we’ll see. One step at a time!
 
JPacey95 said:
I’ve seen videos where people explain that core number isn’t really all that important above about 8
Click to expand...
That's true for gaming and some other workloads, but if correctly set up you can take full advantage of all cores available.
Just make sure not to get a server Xeon CPU or something similar to it. They have high core counts but low IPS (instructions per cycle) + low frequencies. You want as much cores as possible, with the highest closk speeds + the highest IPCs. If there wouldn't be a silicon shortage I would definitly recommend to get one of the latest AMD Ryzen CPUs, but as it is now you might be better off with an Intel build (it's hard to recommend the high end 11th gen CPUs, depends on the exact model. If you want to get an i9 11900k, don't, the 10900k will outperform it).

JPacey95 said:
making sure everything is running on SSDs.
Click to expand...
Definitly my recommendation as well!
 
Ben said:
If you use the decouple feature, don't forget to save and backup the VEP project(s) as well! The DAW will not be able to restore the session on its own, but it will make your DAW save-files as small as possible.
Click to expand...
Good one, yeah I forgot to mention that, sorry!
 
Ben said:
That's true for gaming and some other workloads, but if correctly set up you can take full advantage of all cores available.
Click to expand...
You can take advantage of them but I've found that they're not necessary. I've tried a number of different kinds of DAW projects and they all perform the same (or worse) in terms of latency and other metrics relevant to workflow once you get over 8-10 cores. More CPU cores will run at lower CPU usage but I've not seen a DAW project that maxes out a CPU in years, so.... I don't see why that matters. These days you hit real-time bottlenecks long before CPU bottlenecks if you're running 8-10 cores.

At the end of the day, 20 cores running at 10% CPU usage and 10 cores running at 20% CPU usage provide the same performance. If you're getting 100% CPU usage with 10 cores then yes, 20 cores will help you. But I've not seen a real-life project that does that.

Doesn't mean those CPU-limited projects don't exist, just means I haven't seen them. I've tried to create them but can't unless I do something absurd like put 300 compressors in a project, but who does that? I've also had a lot of conversations on web forums asking for people to show me examples of real projects that max out 8-10 cores. I have yet to see one :)

One thing I would definitely watch out for is CPU speed. I have seen good evidence that CPU speed has a significant effect on DAW performance. More cores don't really help but they can hurt if they come along with lower clock speeds.

Concur on the Xeon CPUs - I've found they generally provide less performance for DAW use, especially if you get a dual-CPU setup.

But here's the bottom line: don't worry about it. The days of having to worry about what CPU to get are long gone. Just get something with at least 8-10 cores and be done with it. Everything performs well these days.

Cheers,

rgames
 
rgames said:
You can take advantage of them but I've found that they're not necessary.
Click to expand...
It depends on your workload, sure. Still, if you need more, VEP covers you :)
(I'm a happy user of an 16 core CPU, and it is a little overkill, but now and then I make good use of all these cores).

rgames said:
especially if you get a dual-CPU setup.
Click to expand...
Yeah, these days dual-CPU is a bad idea for almost every workload.
 
JPacey95 said:
iMac 27-inch 5K 2020
3.6 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9
Click to expand...
I have the 2020 i7 version. I had an i7 10700 built as a slave last year (to replace a previous slave), my main rig was a 2013 MacBook Pro. Since upgrading to the iMac, I’m finding the slave is probably no longer required....thanks to dynamic track loading in Logic (and track disabling in Cubase 11). My templates now have anywhere between 250-1000 tracks, and the only instruments that load are the ones you actually require for a given project. Very cool.

So before going the slave route, seriously try out this method if you haven’t already. You have a very sweet iMac, it is more than capable.

what DAW are you running? And are you using an audio interface?

EDIT: sorry, I just noticed you’re on Cubase 11, that’s a major plus for a disabled template.
 
Ben said:
That's true for gaming and some other workloads, but if correctly set up you can take full advantage of all cores available.
Just make sure not to get a server Xeon CPU or something similar to it. They have high core counts but low IPS (instructions per cycle) + low frequencies. You want as much cores as possible, with the highest closk speeds + the highest IPCs. If there wouldn't be a silicon shortage I would definitly recommend to get one of the latest AMD Ryzen CPUs, but as it is now you might be better off with an Intel build (it's hard to recommend the high end 11th gen CPUs, depends on the exact model. If you want to get an i9 11900k, don't, the 10900k will outperform it).


Definitly my recommendation as well!
Click to expand...
Do you have any updated recommendations for VEP?
I've noted that xeon processors should be avoided, that bi-cpu should be avoided too.
But given today's prices, the choices are complicated.
I'd go for a Dell precision tower workstation, but core i9 models are hard to find second-hand.
There's still the possibility of a custom configuration, but what would be a better CPU today?
This for example? AMD Ryzen 9 7900X (4.7 GHz / 5.6 GHz) or a pro version (which seems to have lower frequencies in the ones I've found).
Or a latest-generation Core i9?

Thanks in advance for your help
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom