Might seem like a stupid question: I know some people (Especially film composers) have master and slave set ups with Mac as master and PC as the slave machine.

Im upgrading to a i7 4930k PC soon and I'm thinking if I should use my current system i5 2310 as a slave PC. So essentially it is a PC to PC master/slave set up.

Is it ok and common to have a PC to PC slave set up?

thinking of doing this becoz I read somewhere such set ups can help spread the CPU/RAM load of big projects (lotsa tracks) to the slave PC, thus increasing track count.

And since I already have the current PC might as well make full use of it after getting the 4930k PC

 

Yes it's a pretty easy thing to do and yes,it's a common thing to do via. pc to mac/ mac to pc/ pc to pc/ mac to mac/etc... Especially after you buy a new faster computer and still have your old working computer, which worked for you and audio work before you bought your new machine. The old saying is "Two heads are better then one", yes it will help you by splitting your cpu load between each machine.

To do it you will need to connect the midi out from the master to the midi in of the slave computer, so the master comp. can tell the slave comp. when to start and stop etc.. if you don't have any midi devices you can use, m-audio/ edirol have usb to midi converters which is pretty cheap and will do what you need them to do for your operation. Computers also can be networked together. However, I've never did run my pcs for audio through this method. Also you will need to send your audio signal from your slave to your master. I dunno what DAW your using, but you will have to then sync them with the programs midi clock etc. and then you should be good to go. I would tell your more about the networking way if was experienced in that area. But there's prob. some articles and web tutorials out there on the web to help your further. Fortunately, I think the nice people here on Audiosex shall be able to help you out even if I wasn't able to.

Goodluck!

 

Hey thanks man..I'm using Cubase 5 (Cubase 7 arriving soon) and also ableton live 9..this is the first time I'm doing this if I were to decide to go this route. I found out the software to allow for this platform : Vienna Emsemble Pro 5...and you connect the PCs via ethernet.

I also read usually you use the more powerful machine as slave..so does that mean I should use the i5 2310 as master..and i7 4930k as slave?. dont quite make sense to me :dancing:

Too bad there ain't no crack for VE Pro 5 lol....

 

My Mac is always a slave.

Man, what are you talking about? Digital clock? DAWs? MIDI?

I use my lappy as a slave when I need more DSP resources [use more plugins], but I use Reaper. I don't think there's any other DAW that works like that so easily. Just connect the network cards with a crossover cable and you're half way through. All the audio is coming nicely in your master DAW with a bit of latency but it's nothing bad for mixing. I can tell you that this lappy comes really handy at times and if I needed more I could connect my wife's Mac and use it for additional plugins. I could actually buy 10 400$ laptops and connect them all in a big DSP computing farm.

Not with any other DAW but Reaper, though.

 

I slaved mine using "ableton's midi sync "ext" clock." That was the clock I was meaning. But, I didn't know what software or hardware stuff, if any besides his pc's that he was trying to sync to "master and slave".

 

If MIDI is not enough, i.e. you want to share processing power for VST effects between machines, FX Teleport used to be a nice solution.
Also, check out Plasq Wormhole2. It's free now!
I wonder why nobody mentioned these here.

Others to watch out for: Steinberg System Link, Logic Node (if you have >1 Macs)

Best possible network latency can be achieved by connecting the two machines using a network crossover cable and setting up a little network manually.

 

Another thing I need to understand...say I'm using Cubase on my master PC...do I still need to install Cubase on the slave computer? or are we basically loading those vsti and fx from vienna ensemble pro 5?

 

You want the larger computer with storage capacity as your slave... since it will be hosting the bulk of your libraries. Then, the master computer can even be a laptop, since it will only be running your DAW(s). For that you want processing speed... but the slave needs to be fast (to process and stream the samples) AND large (storage capacity) to host all your libraries...

For the "master", I use a Macbook Pro (for portability on the road) w/16 GB memory, running Logic Pro 9 and for the "slave" it's my studio Mac Pro (32 GB memory) with four (2 TB) internal drives and four external (2 TB) drives hosting over 500 libraries... connected over Ethernet with VE Pro 5...

I compose for film, tv, advertising and video games.

 

Maybe this might help...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StoGpPXa3So&feature=em-uploademail

 

I use my second pc to host a copy of kontakt, so its just used like a hardware synth. Midi cable from the main machine connected to the kontakt machine, with the audio going back via sp/dif. I have my kontakt libraries on a large hard drive that slots into either machine into a bay in the front of the machine so i can use them in either machine as needed.

Works fine