Comments on: Mac Minis as VSL Farms: An Overview

By: Vince Delmonte

Vince Delmonte — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:34:36 +0000

Hey, nice tips. Perhaps I’ll buy a bottle of beer to the person from that chat who told me to visit your site

By: heem

heem — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:33:27 +0000

You mentioned the Xserve as a possibility albeit and expensive one. Assuming cost is not an issue would this be a good way to go in 2009? I like the idea of a rack mountable computer (in a soundproofed cooled rack or machine room) and I am unwilling to work with PCs at this point. Also just seems cleaner somehow to have a couple of Xserves racked as opposed to multiple minis on your desk. I suppose 10 minis would give you more performance than 2 Xserves for about the same money. Thoughts?

I am curious if you know of any problem with running these music apps (logic. protools and vienna Ensemble 3) on an Xserve running OSX server. Or does one simply reformat the box to OS X client if this is even possible. What are the ramifications?

Thanks so much for your time and for this informative discussion.

By: Jerome

Jerome — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:08:15 +0000

The “Symphonic Cube” works both on Windows and Mac OS X. It is compatible with PowerPC as well as Intel Macs.

By: Harlan

Harlan — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:07:03 +0000

Jerome
Do you know if the Symphonic Cube is compatible with the newest G5 dual quads?

By: Jerome

Jerome — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:49:14 +0000

What do you mean?

By: Maximus

Maximus — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 08:37:40 +0000

I would like to see a continuation of the topic

By: Jerome

Jerome — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:49:55 +0000

Hi Thomas,

yes, RAM is more important than Ghz in our case, however if your budget allows, I would buy the fastest Mac Mini as possible. These 170Mhz might well give you the ability to load one or two more instances of VI.

Jerome

By: thomas

thomas — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 13:12:38 +0000

Hi Jerome,

I come across from vsl-forum to your site and its good looking and informative website you have here. We evaluate to go with minis as a vsl-farm.

Is there a big difference to note between a Intel Core 2 Duo 1,83 and 2.0 GHz, I think RAM is more important than GHz?

Thanks for your reply
Tom Hanke

By: Jerome

Jerome — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:32:52 +0000

Hi Dan,

Unfortunately, RAX has indeed been discontinued. It appears Plasq is in the process of selling it to another company. No one knows when development and/or distribution will resume.

My suggestion is to use Plogue Bidule as a host. I actually found it to be more powerful than RAX and very easy to use once you get the concept.

For audio routing, check out the following article: http://www.createfilmscores.net/?page_id=29

Jerome

By: Jerome

Jerome — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:26:26 +0000

Hi Dejan,

Yes, we are using one host on each Mac Mini (Plogue Bidule). Each host usually has about 10 instances of Vienna Instruments loaded (one per instrument, containing multiple articulations).

With DP, you control each “instance” with an actual midi out port, like any regular external midi gear; you will then switch between articulations with keyswitches or midi controllers.