Is there a way to use multiple PCs simultaneously to distribute vst calculation?

 

something like VST over LAN

I don't know if it works but it's something to look at

 

That's what vienna ensemble pro does. You can do it with Reaper too.

 

VEP is the best option

 

You can try FX Teleport from FX-Max. I used it for years when the computers were not that powerful. Just connect your computers with a LAN crossover cable. It works great and simple. I used it for CPU heavy VST Synths. It's not VST3 compatible because it's an older application. No dongle or iLok protection. There's even a cracked version floating around on the web. O wait, I just found out it's free now!!!!

 

Last edited: Feb 11, 2020

way i see it , if you need such power it means you work big which means loadsa cash which means you can afford pricey computer so

 

Sure, you'll need Vienna Ensemble Pro and 1.21 Gigawatts of power!

 

Vienna Ensemble Pro 7 is the winner.
-Ethernet connection with near zero latency. Slave machine(s) don't even need to have a dedicated pro interface with ASIO or AU.
-Up to 3 comps with one license, one master two slaves machines.
-Cross platform connection: can be any mix of windows and/or macos computers. Any machine can be switched to be slave or master easily (but only one can be the master at anytime).
-Shows up as a VST plugin in your main comp where your DAW is.
-Can save huge sessions (instances) with multiple plugins open and use as templates for future projects.
-Detailed easy automation with Midi Learn and excellent plugin management with searchable plugin browser
-Up to 768 midi channels.

 

IMHO, another option is to flatten to Wav/aiff, freeze, bounce, bounce in place, what have you. Stop trying to keep everything 'live' and eating all your resources. Unless there's another reasoning for this? Orchestral mixing is the only thing I could think of...

 

Last edited: Feb 12, 2020

I tried Reaper Reamote, Vienna and this FX Teleport and managed to make work all of them but the latter. From what I gathered around the net it seems it worked like a charm a years ago but not anymore. Talking only about warez versions here.

 

i think Junkie XL did a video series on it
he bought cheap ex server gear and uses it for his film score production
like 200 per server (he has of course a dozen or so ;)

 

Yep, I just freeze tracks. But that doesn't help having 1000 effects on busses, at least not in Cakewalk. You can bounce the busses out to tracks but it all gets weird.

 

right on

 

1000 effects on busses = MUD

 

what about people trying to build a reel?

 

he has the same accent as the white sea studio guy

 

fl studio does not have track freezing like other daws but does render rather intelligent.
my problem is that I only get halfway thru my master bus rack because of acustica, and rendering it twice is a workflow killer.

 

With Reaper it is fairly easy to add computers with additional VST DSP power. It's true that VEP works great, but it costs a lot. For a free solution just install Reaper with Reamote on as many computers as you like, select "Dummy Audio" as audio card [yes, you don't even need an audio card on the slave computers], connect them all to a good quality 1 [or even 10 if you have 10GiB network cards] GiB switcher, install same plugins on all of them and you choose which one to use as a master. Others should boot and automatically start Reamote.

You don't even need a monitor for slave computers - just use RealVNC [https://www.realvnc.com/en/connect/download/viewer/] to see what's going on on the slave computers, and something like ShareMouse for keyboard and mouse [https://www.sharemouse.com/] sharing if you need it [you don't as VNC does it all].

Networking introduces a bit of latency, so it's better to record tracks on the master computer, and start using other computers during the mix, but it's nothing serious. I do away with 256 samples of ASIO buffer at all times nicely anyway. [using "direct monitoring" for recording tracks].

It's amazing what you can do with a couple of laptop slaves and a desktop master these days... for not much money, actually.

 

Last edited: Feb 13, 2020

You mean orchestral composing/producing probably and yep, that's the main purpose but not only.
Another usage is having all your "heavy duty" instruments and libs on a completely separate machine which in practice transforms a pc/mac to a "huge" Virtual Instrument that you can use on the road too with the appropriate gear. This has its perks, especially for pros where they can have separate machines and customize hardware, software and updates according to their needs, making dedicated "music" comps with exactly the specific hardware and software to meet specific demands and perform specific duties while also separating those tasks more efficiently.
You may also add in the factor that a cpu's real time performance in a DAW, is nowhere as efficient as with other soft like heavily optimized multi-threaded video apps as Blender is. Many would think that upgrading from a 4 core cpu system to an 8 core would give 'em about double the performance but sadly this is not the way things work with DAWs and/or cpus.
Example: In my bench tests with all major daws, the benefit of upgrading to a 9900k from a 7700K was about 50-60% max, 65% for the best case scenario with Reaper (smallest, most efficient "footprint" of all daws, and no i am not a Reaper user). So, cpu scaling is by far not the best with DAWs yet, 60% more performance (or even 70% if you like) may sound good as an upgrade, but it's far from double the performance.
On a side note, AMD's chiplet approach on multi-threaded apps includes the NUMA architecture and up to the second Ryzen gen this introduced unwanted latency for audio apps, especially in high core count cpus like Threadripper. This though, has been eliminated with the 3rd Ryzen and TR3 cpus because now all cores have instant simultaneous access to the memory controller. So if anyone's reluctant on going AMD because they 've heard "things", don't be, Ryzen3 and TR3 are solid cpus.
Cheers

 

Last edited: Apr 25, 2024