EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

Cyril Blanc wrote:

>
> We will see, the guy in the shop proposed 2 x 3500 USD PC ! not 2 x 600 USD
> PC
>
> The VSL EXS is in the shop next week ! Follow VSL Conference !!!!!!!!!
>
> Also to use a PC for this seem VERY stupid, you do not need XP to run a
> Sampler ! you can throw 99 % of the window code to run a sampler.


PCs are a commodity -- a proprietary software/hardware solution to duplicate
the necessary functions for a sampler or DAW costs more. All kinds of expensive
scientific instruments contain a PC for exactly this reason. 

>
> Also you will have to pay me to buy a PC, I do not want that machine in my 
> studio !


Personally, you would have to pay me to press little buttons and squint at a
tiny display on a hardware sampler.

>
> I would prefer to buy a dedicated sampler ! that does not crash every 15
> minutes !


Great -- buy an orchestral library that will load into 128/256MB of RAM - no
streaming, no noisy drives seeking away.  

You do not seem to be that cluey about PC's Cyril. Win2000/XP doesn't crash
every 15 minutes.  For example,  I run Logic on a Win2000 Toshiba laptop and in
over 12 months it has never crashed. I am not exaggerating. 

>
> Supit8tracks did some test with it¹s 1.25 GHz MAC and manage to have 270
> simultaneous EXS voices, that is enough for an orchestra !


Lemme see now --  you are going to load 20 - 80 gigs of samples onto a drive
and set up an arrangement for a whole orchestra and then the heads are going to
hunt all over your drive and keep 270 voices streaming happily. Sorry -- I
think this is an unrealistic scheme at this stage of the technology. 

You seem to be dismissing everything that others are telling you about what is
currently required to achieve a full orchestral mockup with sample libraries --
it might involve some disappointment but I think that it is best to be
realistic. 

Stupid8track's demo was with samples from 4 pianos -- the samples are all large
files siting in close proximity on the disk (from his description) -- so in
general you have reasonably short seeks happening. He was also playing the same
few bars over and over. The highest voice counts he reported were with the
large multi disk 10K rpm SCSI system. Try pricing a suitable controller and 4
drives of that spec at your local dealer.

If you want an arrangement with strings, horns, woodwinds, percussion etc with
the samples necessarily spread out all over the drive(s) I think you will be
struggling to get anywhere near that number of voices on available hardware.
You will need to bounce/freeze tracks to complete your arrangement -- and
playing back bounced tracks will, of course, load your drives too. 

>
> By Monday I should have finish to convert one of my Virtuoso song to use
> only EXS 24 with the Akai library, we will see  how much CPU is left !


The limit on just about any fast system would be the hard disk not CPU. You
would get more EXS24 voices with streaming off -- you just wouldn't be able to
use the large libraries. 

Regards,
Murray