Which Mac Pro for East West Play Editions?

[Waanyh]

Hi,

I am new here, so I hope I am right here.. I bought this software complete for making music:

http://www.soundsonline.com/Complete-Composers-Collection-PLAY-Edition-Customize-pr-EW-189C.html

This softwares are working with midi - reading huge sound libraries from HDD and playing them in real time when composing and so on.. I need your help: I decided to buy Mac Pro. But it's too expensive for me and I want to ask you (best when someone is making music with these sample libraries) which configuration is best to buy for this work? I have these tips:

Mac Pro 2.8 GHz 8-core (2 x 2.8 quad)
Mac Pro 2.93 GHz Quad-Core (2 x 2.93 dual)
Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Dual Core (2 x 2.26)
Mac Pro 3.0 GHz 8 Core (2 x 3.0 qaud)
Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad Core (2 x 2.66)

All macs will have 16 GB RAM and 2 TB storage (4 x 500 GB).. Sorry, I don't really know, which is the best option for my work.. For disc streaming, reading libraries and playing many tracks paralelly with many effects in REAL TIME!!!

Than you for ANY advice!!!

(I know that 99% answers are - faster is better, but I want to save my money with best configuration for me )

Danny

 

[Kilroyjw]

Hi,

I have the Play editions of Ministry of Rock, Symphonic Choirs, and Storm Drum 2.

I have a stock 2.28gHz 8-core with 6 gigs of ram. I did upgrade by adding two more hard drives, so I have the OS and apps on 1, my project files on another, and my sample libraries on yet another.

With this setup, I have run 14 Play tracks simultaneously, along with a bunch of AUs, VST, and bounced tracks at the same time.

I'm not sure what your budget is (not familiar with pricing on the setups you list), but the above is my experience with Play.

Also, you might want to think about getting 1TB drives instead of 500s. Your orchestra library by itself is going to be 200 gigs, and that is one of 7 libraries you are going to be getting.

Hi,

I am new here, so I hope I am right here.. I bought this software complete for making music:

http://www.soundsonline.com/Complete-Composers-Collection-PLAY-Edition-Customize-pr-EW-189C.html

This softwares are working with midi - reading huge sound libraries from HDD and playing them in real time when composing and so on.. I need your help: I decided to buy Mac Pro. But it's too expensive for me and I want to ask you (best when someone is making music with these sample libraries) which configuration is best to buy for this work? I have these tips:

Mac Pro 2.8 GHz 8-core (2 x 2.8 quad)
Mac Pro 2.93 GHz Quad-Core (2 x 2.93 dual)
Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Dual Core (2 x 2.26)
Mac Pro 3.0 GHz 8 Core (2 x 3.0 qaud)
Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad Core (2 x 2.66)

All macs will have 16 GB RAM and 2 TB storage (4 x 500 GB).. Sorry, I don't really know, which is the best option for my work.. For disc streaming, reading libraries and playing many tracks paralelly with many effects in REAL TIME!!!

Than you for ANY advice!!!

(I know that 99% answers are - faster is better, but I want to save my money with best configuration for me )

Danny

 

[Waanyh]

Really thanks for answer!

My libraries are 400 GB together.. But I am a music composer for film music and I need about 50+ tracks loaded.. Can you do a little job for me? If you are usin logic (or whatever)..

Can you run for me 20 track of every library? 20 of masters of rock, 20 of SD2 and 20 of Choirs? (so 60 tracks together) After Load to every track some different instrument and record something (f.e. 10 seconds) and play this.. So you will have loaded 60 different instruments and play 10 seconds of sound together.. And after tell me, what happend - if nothing, or logic go down, or Memory is getiing low or ....///

Try this for me ONLY IF you have a time for it and it is not out of your freetime.. Because I don't want to faze you, but it's really important for me in buying..

Thanks a lot for everything!

Danny

 

[Kilroyjw]

Sorry, I won't have time to setup and record a 60-track project for you.

For what it's worth, I don't know if there is a system out there that can handle 60 play tracks simultaneously. I might be wrong. You are going to have to do some bouncing at some point to go that big. E.g., do your strings and then bounce them before you do woodwinds, etc...

I recommend you go to the soundsonline forums and ask them what kind of horsepower and RAM it would take to run a project this size comprised entirely of Play Libraries. The processing might be able to be done by setting up multi-timbral instances of Play, but I would imagine you would get into some pretty serious latency after a while. I suspect you would have to slave together multiple machines and use Kontact if you were truly trying to do this all real time.

If I read you correctly above, you are buying a 400 gigabyte library and a 16 gigabyte Mac. If you try to run every Play at once, the laws of mathematics are going to intervene and have their way with you.

Really thanks for answer!

My libraries are 400 GB together.. But I am a music composer for film music and I need about 50+ tracks loaded.. Can you do a little job for me? If you are usin logic (or whatever)..

Can you run for me 20 track of every library? 20 of masters of rock, 20 of SD2 and 20 of Choirs? (so 60 tracks together) After Load to every track some different instrument and record something (f.e. 10 seconds) and play this.. So you will have loaded 60 different instruments and play 10 seconds of sound together.. And after tell me, what happend - if nothing, or logic go down, or Memory is getiing low or ....///

Try this for me ONLY IF you have a time for it and it is not out of your freetime.. Because I don't want to faze you, but it's really important for me in buying..

Thanks a lot for everything!

Danny

 

[Waanyh]

Really thanks for every answers and advices..

it's not that 400 GB of libraries are in ram only instruments used are in ram (approximately 12 GB in 60 diff. tracks..) I hope 16 GB of ram will be the best choice for every mac from 2.66 quad-core and higher.. I will ask there, thanks a lot for your time!

Danny

 

[Kilroyjw]

I hear what you are saying; I'm just not sure where you are getting the 12 gig number from. You are saying that you are going to get 60 EWQL instruments into 12 gig. That is 200 meg per instrument. I've never used an EWQL instrument that is less than a gig. They are all 1-1.5 gigs. *Per instrument*. If you have one EWQL instance for each instrument in your woodwinds, brass, and string sections, you are talking about 20+ instruments (we will leave percussion and keyboards out of the equation for now; I am making some broad assumptions here in light of your comment about film composition).

Really thanks for every answers and advices..

it's not that 400 GB of libraries are in ram only instruments used are in ram (approximately 12 GB in 60 diff. tracks..) I hope 16 GB of ram will be the best choice for every mac from 2.66 quad-core and higher.. I will ask there, thanks a lot for your time!

Danny

 

[pkoch1]

Most sample libraries use something called Disk Streaming. Basically it just loads the attacks of all the notes into RAM, and then grabs the rest of the sample from your hard drive. That way the entire sample doesn't have to be in RAM. It's a checkbox in the PLAY preferences.

That said, I usually run around 40 EWQLSO tracks with 2-3 StormDrum 2 tracks and even a fully loaded piano with no problem on a 2.26 with 8GB of RAM. It's not bad on my processor, but I could use a little more RAM.