Heya guys
Remember UAD Satellite?
I was thinking of using Audiogridder with a refurbished Thin Client.
Use case is a huge ass orchestral template in Reaper that I want to build, but I'd probably need a thin client to get it running so it's an idea for now which I want to work out. Best case scenario I'd outsource all the Kontakt libs to it like Vienna Ensemble, but I'd be okay for now to outsource all the demanding reverbs.
HOFA IQ Reverb would be a good start I'd figure.

I found this thing here after short googling:

https://itniederrheinshop.de/Fujits...er-J5005-32GB-Flash-4GB-DDR4--47272_1058.html
14nm 4 core 1.5Ghz Intel

Would you say it's enough for outsourcing reverbs, or maybe even Kontakt stuff? I could use an ADATA USB stick which is basically an SSD mounted into an USB stick for the huge libraries.

I'm located in Germany keep that in mind when recommending me stuff.

Thanks in advance for answering

 

It may work, but it may not be all that great for reverb plugins. Like you mentioned, they can be some of the most cpu demanding effects plugins. And then this machine has a 1.5 ghz processor to deal with them. You could probably make do with it, but I think you would want a faster processor. If you do not get a big improvement from a second machine, then really what is the point?. Remember it has to send the data back to your DAW, so you could be introducing latency.

Make sure the machine you end up getting has an ethernet port. I would avoid using a hub or usb->ethernet adapter. That's just another source of potential problems.

 

Last edited: Aug 9, 2024

"Huge ass orchestral template" with outsourced Kontakt on a machine with 4G of RAM is not happening.

4G RAM = "ass"
8G RAM = "template"
16G RAM = "orchestral template"
32G RAM = "huge orchestral template"
64G RAM = "huge ass orchestral template"

You can probably get a much better deal if you're willing to spend some time on eBay. Where better deal means bang-for-buck and not cheaper. Note that these thin clients (Fujitsu, HP, Dell) usually use the same product name (and number) year after year, but the hardware inside changes. So pay attention that you're getting a reasonably new system. I don't see much point in getting a Pentium for what you plan on doing. I'd go for an Intel Core i5 or i7, 6th generation or newer Fujitsu Esprimo for example - those are plentiful on eBay and reasonably cheap (~90€ - 200€).

 

definitely not. The overall idea is good, and lots of people do this. But this is not the machine to do it with.

 

no, you need a big ass server/workstation for that,
frankly this week I tried benchmarking Reaper's ReaStream plugin, limit (regardless of cpu, operating system etc..) seems to be 16 stereo channels of network streaming, totaling at around 55Mbit/s, and unlike Vienna or Gridder it's 100% "free" with Reaper and 100% reliable (oh and it does indeed work even via VPN, so you could literally have it kilometres away from your DAW rig - with low enough latency to play VSTi's "realtime" via attached MIDI keyboards...),
start looking at "cheap" user (former gaming, without graphics card) PCs with at least 64GB ram support and at least one M.2 NVME SSD slot, anything less is waste of money,
you totally don't want thin client, but you can segment/split workloads by running multiple virtual machines on something like Proxmox hypervisor when needed, more effectively splitting load and optimizing power consumption across multiple VST host instances

 

That is only important if I want to outsource Kontakt with Audiogridder. I mean it may introduce some latency but so does VSL then, no?

 

Why tho? for outsourcing fx you don't need that, do you?

 

I was thinking that since refurbished thin clients are so cheap it may be the most affordable option. I'd stock up on RAM and an SSD and I should be good to go since you don't need that much CPU power if u run Kontakt over Reaper

 

No. The signal flow using audiogridder is DAW->external machine->processing audio data in the plugins->DAW. It is like a send/return loop if you were using an external instrument or rack effects unit. It is just skipping any additional analog to digital conversions. The processing of the audio takes place on the second machine. "Lag" may be a better word than latency. It's more like network throughput.

 

really depends on scale, how many fx plugins, what underlying operating system (4GB ram isn't even enough for comfortable Windows operation itself), technically you wouldn't even need SSD if system was always on and plugins were not re-loading, but nowadays SSDs are cheap enough to justify skipping HDDs completely imo

once you start counting power draw, you end up with way high electricity usage compared to one bigger rig - one beefier system definitely makes more sense than bunch of weak thin clients (unless you specifically aim for multiple different operating systems due to specific plugin support - and even in such case I'd rather opt for virtual machines within one beefier system),

speaking of thin clients, really think about all the pros and cons and total value and potential upgrade options - when I check that site you linked, you want 1.5GHz Pentium with 4GB ram for 90€ ....while there's 6-core 3GHz i5-8600 with 8GB ram (and I'm pretty sure upgradeable to at least 32GB if not 64GB ram) for 150€ https://itniederrheinshop.de/Dell-O...D-8GB-DDR4-RAM-Windows-10-Pro--54553_243.html

 

if buying used thin clients on ebay, you can usually find one with 32gb of ram for same price as 16gb, just shop around. check the specs on the model - just google max ram and model number, you can find the OEM manual that will state max supported ram.

same on the cpu's they often come with i3, i5 and i7 , so watch the auctions i5 with good cache and cpu speed will only be 5-10% slower than i7, but may save you 100$ or more that you can spend on ram etc..

 

So you wanna go Zimmerman with 87 euros ? And you will load all those huge orchestral libs with 4 gb of ram. This is a bad idea mate as @tzzsmk said. Garamondo's proposal is more likely to get you close but still with compromises, as 32gbs of ram is enough to get you about 40-50 high end instruments. On Intel side you should look for i5 or i7. You could be better with Ryzen 5 or 7 as AMD's SMT (Hyperthreading) works much better but these are more rare, as Intel used to rule so the second hand market is flooded with Dell and HP i5/i7 clients.
Cheers

 

Last edited: Aug 9, 2024

No...

Look at least for something in line with i7-8700, 32GB of RAM, just don't overpay for that.

 

Yeah that's a good option. Cheap start with upgradable RAM, but I wonder, at that price point I might as well buy a well aged desktop PC, no?
I just wanna know if a thin client would be worth the purchase for this purpose.
https://www.ebay.de/itm/235599204099?_ul=DE&var=535839979380
This one looks okayish with 32Gb, but it only has 2 cores. I think you could load multiple instruments on a single Kontakt instance to counteract the lack of threads, no? (I don't need internal SSDs I have enough externals laying around)

So AMD has no problems with Kontakt or convolution reverbs? I heard it struggles a bit with getting UAD crap running. Regarding hyperthreading, I was thinking of one Kontakt instance per thread or maybe core and loading it up with multiple instruments, would that be the appropriate way of doing things?

And VSL doesn't have the same issue? You make it seem like outsourcing plugins via network cable is impossible but people have been doing it with Vienna for years

 

I did build a fast desktop machine for a studio here 8-9 months ago. Asus X670E Crosshair Hero - Ryzen9 7950X - 64gb DDR5 (2x32) - 4 Samsung 980Pro. The whole system was based on two UAD Apollo 8s and it is running like a breeze. I had no problem in setup with neither Thunderbolt on AMD nor the UADs. As i said on another thread, as much as it sounds absurd or unreal, TB on AMD is better than Intel because it runs off the cpu lanes whereas on Intel it runs from the chipset.
Just FYI and for whoever might read this, the only bitching thing was that the mobo in the beginning, kept training the ram over and over taking it 5 mins to boot each time and i couldn't find the setting within the motherboard's bios. Took me more than half an hour to realize that some idiot in Asus decided to give the particular setting a cryptic name and hide it in submenus, so i had to go through the whole manual. After i found it, all went smoothly. Very detailed bios this mobo and full of feats but Asus needs to step it up a notch in ease of use. That was unacceptable for such a high end mobo.

The aforementioned client runs 32 high end Kontakt instruments in discrete mixer channels and about 64 audio tracks on that AMD machine. I stayed in a couple of his sessions in the beginning just as a failsafe precaution if something went wrong as all gear was new to him and i never saw the cpu beyond 50%. His big sessions was running smoothly with latency set to 2 ms for rec and 5 ms for mixing. Needless to say he was very happy with his new machine. Most fx plugs though were coming from the dsp as he also had bought the ~1500 dlrs UAD plugs bundle avail at the time.
As for convo reverbs that machine didn't have any unless you count in Kontakt's own used in some sounds. But i did setup a more modest 8 core Ryzen 7 5800X a couple of years back and it ran a ton of Altiverb 7xx instances with no sweat. The client, a multi instrumentalist produces small classical pieces (24-32 audio tracks) by means of recording it all live himself and bringing a couple of musicians along.
Hope this info gives some insight as to what gives with AMD builds.
Cheers
PS: If someone in particular is having trouble with an AMD build they either lack the needed knowledge to build a machine and setup soft properly or they have some faulty hardware somewhere. In any case i 'd be glad to help, just drop me a pm.

 

Last edited: Aug 10, 2024

Not only VSL works, but also any claim they make is real. Tbh, i wish i could say this for someone else in software land. And i am talking really latency sensitive plugs like reverb/delay and really fast compression etc etc just work like they 're installed locally. Latency is practically between 1 ms to 0 given that you have at least 1gbit network and some medium to good network switch with quality cat5e cables. Some OS config is needed to avoid network packages loss, especially on Windows builds where there's too much outgoing traffic in Win10/11, but this is not more than 5-10 mins tops.
I have used VSL extensively in the near past as i cannot afford building a monster single workstation for myself. Some of my clients do too as they like to have both Mac and pc. If there's one thing i can say, VSL is worth all the money it sells for, what it brings to the table is just superb. Plus the team behind it, is one of the finest in the industry, they just don't mess around.
Cheers

 

Where did I say this? We can use a Windows machine inside Logic this way with Audiogridder. You may need a crossover cable instead of standard ethernet cable since you are not using a switch in between them. But the plugin is still offloaded to the second machine, and all processing through that plugin takes place on the Windows machine. We can also do this with Crossgridder on Mac, which is Crossover with an Audiogridder instance running inside the bottle; and allows users to run Windows plugins on Mac in Logic without even a second computer.

I am saying, like everyone else who has commented; that you do not want to go buy some super slow under-resourced machine so you can save 50 bucks. The first machine you linked does not even have an ethernet port.

 

Last edited: Aug 11, 2024

Thanks for all the infos, greatly appreciated
Can u use VSL with cracked plugins?

 

Last edited: Aug 12, 2024

Sure. I have enough poor clients that run pirate machines at home. A correction here. We 're talking about Vienna Ensemble Pro not VSL, that 's their main product. So VEP is on v. 7XX , in try before you buy version it's on v.6. Version 7 though is a significant upgrade i'd think about it.
Cheers

 

VEP 7 is "free" if you don't need saving