Right,

Im looking for some opinions here....i work under a film composer and we were toying with the idea of shifting the 7 Windows based audio PCs over to OSX86 to be used as Logic Nodes...

The PCs are being used for a fairly extensive VSL (Vienna Symphonic Library) Gigastudio rig (we have about 60-something virtual MIDI leads with 16 channels each being used via MIDIoverLAN at the moment), but with the VSL now being available as Audio Units it seems it may be an idea to buy the Audio Unit version and have everything running from the master mac, rather than having to mess around with MIDI patch names as we are having to now - its a shame they discontinued sound diver

Basically, before i go to the trouble of changing over 7 PCs, i was wondering what you guys thought.....any comments/suggestions?

Each PC's mobo is fine on the HCL, and runs a P4 3.4gig HT Processor with 2gigs of ram so there shouldnt be any issues with whether they will be able to handle running as a node....

The other issue is legality...as it is a commercial studio we're fine with paying for the versions of OSX, but how? Is it actually possible to buy any form of OSX86 License from apple, or would doing it be TOTALLY illegal?

To be honest, i havent really had much of a look at the legality of installing OSX86 for use in a commercial project, but the information i have found has been very, very hazy so i was wondering if anyone had an idea...

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

Cheers,

-JD-

You better stay in gigasampler. Audio Nodes doesn´t support audiounits plugins. You are tied to native logic plugins.

On the other hand, how do you get the final mix in such big setup?...7 pc´s, or is just you have a stereo pair from each one.

Ah cool. I haven't actually had the chance to read up on logic nodes yet

The master mac is running about 4 Pro Tools MIX cards with a full HD rig, and each PC has an RME Hammerfall card in, so were going into Logic (through the HD rig) via ADAT Lightpipe. Most of the PCs only have one (16 channel) Lightpipe, but depending on the situation they sometimes have two. We were toying with the idea a while ago of having a play with plasq's wormhole software and using the network to send audio back to the master mac, but decided against it as the network is only running at 100meg (obviously if Logic nodes were used this would have to be upgraded to gigabit anyway).

Cheers for the info though....any idea if future versions of the node app will have third party audio unit support?

Cheers,

-JD-

Wow... impressive setup
About logic node supporting third party audio units...probably it could be done, but there is no news about. And wormhole...I bought it, and believe me. Is not useful for serious stuff. I just wanted to transfer each output from Fxpansion´s BFD from my pc running logic 5.5.1 to my mac running logic 7.2 ..........results....each track had it´s own latency (using a direct cable between each computer and ethernet 1000), and the latency was different each time you clicked play. Probably audio applications had to be coded with network support in mind in order to that kind of audio routing to work properly.

What I still don´t understand is why tascam hadn´t yet introduced its own network solution...

Regards

I hear that! I mean, with the idea of gigastudio being to be used on "gigasampler" PCs youd have thought they'd have developed something.....ANYTHING....that means you dont have to go buggering about with third party apps...which noone seems to know anything about (have you ever tried to get support for MIDIoverLAN?!).

I guess wormhole's definately not the way to go...even though their site reckons you get close to no latency...hmm

Ah well...guess its time to have a rethink...

Cheers,

-JD-

I guess this post is kinda dead now, but there's an update on the VSL front with the Vienna Ensemble 3
http://vsl.co.at/en/68/375/381/243.vsl