Vienna Ensemble Pro!

[mazz]

For those of us doing orchestral music with potentially large templates set up they typically span at least one computer besides our DAW machine, Vienna Ensemble Pro is a Godsend!!

In a nutshell, the software hosts virtual instruments in VST, AU (Mac) and RTAS formats. That's pretty basic stuff, the beauty of it is that it sends and receives MIDI and audio over the composer's local Ethernet network!! There is no need for sound cards and the protocol is fast enough to stream literally dozens of audio channels from one computer to the other with incredibly low latency!!

Basically "audio hardware" now consists of a couple of Ethernet cables, a router or switch, a couple of computers and one sound card on the DAW machine and that's it! It will also run on the same computer as one's main DAW and stream audio back in and move MIDI as well, just like it does on an external computer. This allows one to bypass the limitations of a 32 bit DAW, for instance.

It comes in 32 and 64 bit flavors. I'm running 32 bit on my DAW and 64 bit on my Windows slaves and VEPro doesn't care, it automatically handles all of that "under the hood" stuff.

If a composer has a very large template set up, she can "preserve" the slave instances of VEPro such that it won't re-load the exact same samples into memory when the composer switches projects on their DAW machine. This saves a lot of time because large orchestral templates can take several minutes to load depending on the size of the template!!

The reality is that now we can fully conceptualize a computer as nothing more than a very powerful sample player and using VEP we can have it seamlessly integrate into a session as if it were on the desktop of the main DAW! All of this happens with a relatively shallow learning curve, it's cross platform and as neutral as it can be on it's end. Every DAW has it's quirks and some need a bit more work on the front end to get things up and running, but over all it's not as painful as it seems like it has the potential to be. They did a great job designing this!!

I can't say enough good things about this software. Not only does it save money and space on sound cards and cabling, it has the potential to save a ton of time, and when working on large scale orchestra projects with large amounts of samples (not to mention stiff deadlines!) every second counts!

I've barely scratched the surface of it at this point, needless to say incorporating things like LASS into it, but it can run Kontakt, Play and Vienna instruments all at the same time in the same interface! Any VI like Omnisphere can also run inside of it. Now it has the ability to sync to clock from the master so running libraries like Damage that have tempo sync'd loops works as expected. It has the ability to do surround sound panning in it's mixer and they have developed a virtual space software package called MIR that can be upgraded to run inside which opens a ton of possibilities when mixing and might be great for virtual orchestra. I haven't upgraded or dug into that quite yet.

The only slight downside is that it uses the Steingberg eLicenser (formerly Syncrosoft) dongle for copy protection. You get 3 licenses with it and need one dongle per computer licensed. A small price to pay, IMO, for such power and freedom. If there weren't people out there who try to steal intellectual property such as this, there would be no need for these dongles, but that's another discussion!

Woo Hoo!!

http://www.viennaensemblepro.com/

Mazz

[sethlit]

Habada Habada! Thanks for posting this Mazz. I am currently using PT 8 and have been thinking of ways to incorporate my VSTIs as 64 bit somehow. I've even gotten to the point of considering Cubase. But I just don't have the time for the learning curve. I've had a little smoother run with using Reaper as a VSTI host. But I'd much rather just have a separate computer for the job. Do you know of any diagrams/extra info anywhere in regard to setting up another PC as a VSTI host? I think I sorta get how to do it.

Using Ethernet is exciting! Time to bite the bullet and build another PC!

Seth

[cardell]

Wow, that sounds quite amazing and very efficient!!

Stuart

[mazz]

It's pretty straightforward once you have VEPro. You install it on the slave, install it on the DAW machine and authorize it. Then you open it up on the slave, load up Kontakt, etc. Instantiate it as a plugin in PT on the DAW machine and if both machines are connected to the network, they'll see each other. You point MIDI tracks to the slave and create audio input tracks in PT that are looking for audio from VEPro, and fire away.

Most folks get freaked out because the slave is a computer, but in reality, once you have your samples loaded up, you can turn the monitor off and pretend it's just simply a sample delivery device! It's really just a very powerful version of the old Akai or EMU hardware samplers we used to use.

Go for it!

Mazz

[guitaroboe]

I know what you mean!
In fact you were the one that originally alerted me to VEPro about a year ago!
The software itself is very straightforward and bug free. It installs in seconds and works
in the background so seamlessly that you almost always forget that it's on!
You have to spend a considerable time to build your template-that's the only time consuming aspect.
But then again, you'd do that regardless of whether you have VEPro or not! My orchestral template is
monstrous and it still keeps growing, but it's the kind of work that you do only once. I just add things to
it now as opposed to the one solid week it originally took me to set it up!
I agree that the authorization process for VEPro is a drag. Small price to pay for such a wonderful piece
of software code. Blame the file sharing pirates for that...
VEPro is a MUST for anyone doing mock ups of orchestral stuff. Let me go out on a limb here and say
this: Large templates that incorporate VEPro (or something similar), is what separates men from the boys. It's all about slaving
computers and hosting VI's-LOT'S of them! Stacking sounds, blending libraries, doubling, tripling, etc.
thanks John!
Adonis