Don't you just love that Moog Modular V?!?!?! Damn, that's a fine plugin. :) My favorite of Arturia's has to be the CS80V, though. Takes me right back in time to the best of Vangelis. The new versions have some minor improvements (worth it, if you ask me) but do have new copy protection, so you may want to avoid them for now. :(

Yeah, the iLok dongle certainly is part of the problem, but I had plenty of headaches before I installed iLok and PLAY. I can't fairly blame them for everything. Wish I could. :) Besides the lousy copy protection and mediocre PLAY plugin itself, EW delivers on the sound quality, though.

Yikes, I can't say that's a good plan or not... but the fact you're coming up with a plan is really, really good. Just a few observations...

Phase 1) Installing Win 7 32-bit seems like a waste of a step to me, especially if you are planning on upgrading your RAM to 8GB on a 32-bit system, since that won't do you any good. Unless you meant to install Win 7 x64, but then install all your apps and plugins as 32-bit. Now THAT would make more sense to me as a *progressive* path, then you can migrate towards full 64-bit when you're ready.

Phase 2) That sounds suspiciously like a new computer to me... or really, really close... what parts are really missing for you to create an entirely new build? If you are close enough to go for a new build, I'd do that, then save your prior, stable DAW as your backup. That's essentially what I did. My i7 machine is really still my test DAW. When I have troubles with it (unfortunately far too often), I fall back on my XP DAW. The i7 has received all the attention in my posts, but the truth is, I've had to fall back on the XP DAW quite a few times to get me through. If you're planning on so much new hardware in phase 2, why not take it all the way so you can have the luxury (and "insurance") of a working backup DAW? Just a thought. And BTW, SSD is the next step in hardware for me too. I'm with you 100% there. :)

Phase 3) As I've mentioned, I think the "purist" approach or "near-purist" approach is likely to get you the best results. Most of the people I know who have a successful Win 7 x64 DAW experience are mostly, if not entirely, in the x64 camp for their plugins as well. A decision I wish I could have made, but there are too many plugins I rely upon that are not 64-bit and are unlikely to be 64-bit for a while. :(

As for iLok, I want to be optimistic. It's probably a smart move to avoid them for now if you also already use synchrosoft/eLicensor (at least I know several of my most recent problems are likely related), but I just can't imagine that things won't get sorted out. I mean, it's EW, for crying out loud. Their sounds are gorgeous, I just can't imagine they won't tidy up their freshman efforts of programming for PLAY, and I can't imagine that iLok won't refine their driver as well. These are just growing pains. ....... Well, I want to think they are. :) 6 months sounds like a wise timeframe to check back on the situation. If I were doing this over, 6 months would be the minimum for me.

For my situation, I think I've indicated that I'd do things completely differently that I've done them, so I'm glad at least someone has profited from my up-and-down little journey. There is NO WAY I would submit myself to the torture of the mixed 32-bit + 64-bit Sonar + Cubase + eLicensor + iLok combo I've put together. Even though I have been meticulously careful in how I've done it, I would never do it this way again.

In fact, I'm on the verge of starting over again. Like I mentioned at the end of my response to John on the prior page, I'm looking into some alternatives like VE Pro, and MIDI/Audio over LAN, etc., so I can separate out the conflicting apps/plugins/drivers over more than one machine. My "backup" DAW is running beautifully, so I'm thinking that may become my main DAW again (a title it never really lost), and then this i7 will be relegated to running Kontakt, Omnisphere and maybe a couple others... Not sure yet, but I'm really looking into it. This new path may end up being just as painful, but the way I'm doing it now is really cramping my workflow at best, and is a frustrating migraine-inducing pain in the a$$ at worst. When I had my first crashes recently, I about threw my hands up in resignation. I guess I'm just asking this one computer to do too much. It has the raw power, but when I think of how many developers are involved in all of the apps, plugins, drivers, etc., and how many of them appear not to have even bothered testing my type of configuration, I guess this situation was bound to happen.

Good luck with you too! Sounds like you're doing things along the lines of what I should have done. LOL! :)

As for the spare parts situation, I know exactly what you're talking about. More than one of my machines in the back room is a Frankenstein's monster, and they work great. That's one reason that I'm considering this "DAW farm" idea -- I have enough machines to test things out on. I have always thought a farm would be good, and I tested FX Teleport way back when, looked into V-STack when I was only using Cubase, etc... followed early developments of audio over lan, etc... but then this multi-core technology came about, and then this x64 movement started to become mainstream, and I've been hitching my horses to having "everything in one box." Now I'm not so sure.

The problem I think I'll continue to run into is *stability*. It's no longer an issue of power or even RAM... just reliability. I think having everything carefully spread out in two or three boxes might be the way to go to maximize stability. Maybe. In the meantime it's headaches or... I need to distill my configurations down to the "purist" approach.

What happens with me when I try the "purist" way of thinking is that there's always *one more* exception I want to make for another 32-bit plugin I love, and before long, I'm loaded up to the brim with my favorite 32-bit plugins again. So if you are planning on dumping your 32-bit plugins, make sure you mean it. :) The latest cave-in for me has been this whole PLAY/iLok thing. Not an 32-bit issue per se, but similar psychological reasoning. I was convinced by a good friend that PLAY/iLok worked reasonably well with Sonar, so I thought it was time to start moving that direction. Well, my friend was right... it does work more or less fine with Sonar, as long as you don't have all the other stuff on the same machine. :) So I'm glad I got the PLAY stuff (it sounds great), but now I have a new series of issues to work through. But why should I expect otherwise? Sometimes I surprise myself how optimistic I am when I try something new. Invariably, I run into issues like this so I think I should adopt a more cynical approach to DAW software. :)

:-(

eratu >> I sometimes wonder if they leave in little targeted bugs just to cause one particular competing app/plugin/driver to fail? Nahhh, that's too cynical...

Is it really ?  It smells very much of a "self-sufficing" situation and helps call centers stay alive.  Now THAT is too cynical ... Nahhh ?

But seriously, this is again bad news (about the 64-bit issues).  So I'll be watching this thread even more closer now.  Also, if you get even a tiny farm together I hope you'll let us know how it goes (I don't expect otherwise, knowing you !)

SONARtist


... I hope you'll let us know how it goes (I don't expect otherwise, knowing you !)

Yeah, I'm verbose, guilty as charged! :)

But yes, I will probably be updating this thread periodically for quite a while, until I can say, "I am totally satisfied" or I am institutionalized. :)

Its always a pleasure to post in any of your threads because you "get it". I don't have to worry that I am not being explicit enough or that I'm not saying it quite right. You always understand what I am saying and more importantly understand what I mean. Thanks for being you Eratu.

LATEST UPDATE:

Round and round we go, where she ends up, no one can know!

I continue my foray into the wild and crazy wilderness of x64 and I have been researching a bunch of options for a DAW farm (MIDI over LAN, audio over LAN, VE Pro, buying another interface, etc.), and testing/tweaking the plugins and apps.

I'm nearly resigned to start from scratch on this machine, gut it and go the "purist x64" route with a DAW farm -- one main pure x64 machine, another machine for misbehaving plugins and maybe one more for 32-bit plugins.

I've pretty much had enough. I made the stupid mistake of starting the project on this DAW, as opposed to my "backup/main" DAW, and I just barely scraped through a project with some unpleasant instability. It was touch and go through the whole project, and I was constantly on pins and needles.

BUT WAIT! The drama continues!

So, since I'm all but resigned to start from scratch on this machine, I threw caution to the wind and decided to install a bunch of patches to see what would happen. The major ones include Kontakt 4.0.4 (just came out), JBridge 1.8 (just came out), the latest nVidia Quadro graphics drivers, and then a few other minor updates.

I fired up Sonar and Cubase, fully expecting another migraine with Kontakt and PLAY together in a test session with a couple of gigs of samples loaded, but lo and behold they seemed to behave okay with each other! Yes, could this be true???!!! This is *preliminary* and was a very short test, so I refuse to get my hopes up, but neither Sonar nor Cubase crashed, hiccuped, sputtered or gave me serious trouble so far, with a number of plugins running in x64 and via JBridge and BitBridge... with some of the very plugin combinations that normally give me trouble. :)

Of course, a quick Arturia plugin loaded up in Sonar gave me a surprising strangeness with Alchemy, but at least it didn't CRASH! :) 

My impression was that the whole system felt a little better. I dare not imagine more than that. I was too excited to continue working on it tonight, possibly for fear it would crash any second... and decided to post here before I call it quits tonight.

So, I admit, this is not exactly scientific, and it doesn't raise my hopes... but it did *feel* like something improved. Unfortunately, I did not test after each patch, so I don't know if any one in particular (or a combination) did the trick.

The jury is still out, I guess, and I'll be doing more testing this week before I make some decisions about the DAW farm. This bizarre journey continues.....

Hi James, thanks for the next instalment of this thrilling saga !  Looks like you're getting there (... somewhere ...).

OT: I got bad news today - SSL have no 64bit drivers yet for their MADi Xtreme, so that puts my 64bit plans on the backburner.  Seems I just can't get started.  Bah !!

Sorry for the hijack.

Big update on a quick test:

Just set up a basic, but dense MIDI VSTi/VST project with the following:

Sonar 8.5.2 x64

1 X Ultra Analog (under BitBridge)
2 X Alchemy (under BitBridge)
1 X FabFilter Twin (under BitBridge)
2 X Sylenth (under BitBridge)
3 X Omnisphere
3 X PLAY
4 X Kontakt 4 (loaded to the brim with samples/patches)
1 X Massive
1 X Addictive Drums
1 X Reaktor (under BitBridge)
2 X Battery
1 X CS-80V (under BitBridge)

(Mix of 64- and 32-bit plugins)

PLUS several VST plugins randomly distributed on several of the tracks (about 30 VST plugins, most of them hard-hitting CPU eaters, some running under JBridge)

Total plugins: VST + VSTi = 52ish heavy plugins, all playing back with a lot of MIDI

Total RAM used: 4.5 GB in Sonar, 700 MB in BitBridge instances = 5.2+ GB RAM used just by this project. Plenty of RAM left for more samples.

CPU hit was about 45-55% at 128 sample latency (about 3ms output latency), almost all plugins going at once in a fairly dense MIDI sequence on each track... I'd rarely (if ever) have all these plugins going at the exact same time with this much simultaneous MIDI information in a typical project, although I might have more TOTAL plugins actually loaded, and probably more RAM used.

Quick observations with this short test:

Session was pretty stable/consistent with some exceptions (see below). I didn't slam the windows around, but I had about 15 plugin windows open at a time, and they were all pretty responsive. Honestly, this was pretty smooth. It bodes well.

Notable Issues:

I had an issue with Alchemy in BitBridge -- a patch got garbled but I was able to interact with the plugin, change the patch and it sounded correct. Each time that patch played it became garbled again. It could have been isolated to Alchemy on that specific patch, since other Alchemy patches seemed to "stick" fine and sounded okay. Test was not comprehensive so I will have to look into this more.

Strange behavior with 4th instance of Kontakt. I had dense MIDI mapped into several patches in the fourth instance, and when I added a fourth RAM-hungry piano patch, the plugin muted itself, or sound became unpredictable and the Sonar engine went silent. I had to remove one piano patch (reducing the piano patches to 3 in that instance of Kontakt) and it worked again. No crashes, and it remained responsive, but it was not totally functional with all the expected patches loaded... Not sure why, will have to look into it. Could have just been that patch or combination of patches. Disappointing, but otherwise the plugin appeared to be stable.

Predictable minor strange behavior in PLAY. Yet again. I won't go into much detail, except to say that there were strange lagging issues with patches loading, a couple of screen glitches and a big blank spot in the interface that wouldn't go away unless I minimized the plugin and opened it up again.... this is not a very refined plugin, IMO. However, it did work once it got going, and it appeared to be stable during this brief test, working fine along side Kontakt 4.0.4 and Arturia CS80V (synchrosoft version). I think I prefer keeping this interface closed, and don't plan to tweaking it too much. Too delicate. :)

Addictive Drums and FabFilter Two did NOT reload the proper patches after a save-reload of the Sonar file. Have to look into this more, just noticed this now... it's possible that some other plugins did not properly reload patches/settings 100% perfectly, will have to watch this more closely in the next test. I just did a cursory check of the other VSTi, and those DID appear to reload correctly. Hmmmmmm..... I note that these two plugins were running under BitBridge... possible BitBridge issue with these plugins? Not sure yet. Will look into this later.

Surprise:

Arturia CS80V actually worked with the above combination of plugins. I expected a crash or conflict again, but surprisingly, it worked. I was able to instantly SOLO/UNSOLO CS80V over and over again and it sounded just right in a dense mix, absolutely no glitches. :) Even the interface was fine. Surprise surprise.

Final surprise:

That it basically worked. Whatever I installed the other day made a notable improvement (see prior posts). The issues were generally minor and annoying... no show-stoppers, although the botched patch reload issue might be big if I can't resolve it. But besides the above issues, I had plenty of plugin windows open, including graphics hogs like Arturia and Omnisphere, plus several multiband compressors, EQs, compressors, etc., and they all updated fluidly and consistently on two monitors. Frontier Alphatrack worked fine with frequent starts/stops/restarts, track changes... Sonar seemed pretty solid overall.

Basically, this is pretty good news. I can't vouch for STABILITY for a longer session yet, so the verdict is still out. This was a short test just to see if I could get it to crash or have major hiccups, which would have been easy last week. With the exceptions noted above, it was consistent and solid, and did not crash. This is much better than last week. I had plenty of CPU and RAM left over in this session, and I was running at a very decent 128 sample latency, which means I could play any of the VSTi above LIVE with no latency issues with the dense MIDI and mix going on.

The project also seemed to save and reload fine, with the above noted exceptions (and again, those are potentially big exceptions to be looked into later)...

On a scale of 1-10 with "10" being my other DAW (finely-tuned and rock-solid with 32-bit Win XP of course) and a "1" being my niece's laptop, this DAW would now maybe rate a 7.5... maybe an 8, assuming the patch reload problem can be solved easily (possibly with JBridge, who knows?).

That's pretty decent, considering where I was a few days ago. Clearly, the updates I installed recently had a profound impact.

What the heck does this mean? I have no idea. :) I feel half-happy and half-confused. :) I feel like I should be happy at the progress, but at the same time, it's still not there yet with way too many unanswered questions/issues. It's damn exhausting to keep doing this. I just want it to work.

Is this production-worthy? No, not really. But it's close. Much closer than before. If I can figure out the problems or find reliable workarounds, and then make sure it could handle a long session, then this DAW might be okay.

The next few steps will include testing all this with a video clip running (scoring to video), adding a lot of good old-fashioned audio tracks, resolving the above (and possibly more) issues, and seeing how long it can last before it goes belly-up on me. Then I have to do the same thing with Cubase. So maybe a 7.5 rating is too optimistic at this point... :)

Over and out for now.

(P.S. BTW: If you get through these posts of mine, congrats. These posts will hopefully be helpful to some people, but also to me... these are like journal entries or notes to help me remember what the heck I'm doing for future reference. :) They've already come in handy so please forgive the seeming indulgence of details sometimes. This place is as good as any to document some of what I'm doing. )

eratu:

I just read through this entire thread tonight. It has been a real journey for me. It's also been like an emotional rollacoster to read of your ups and downs. You helped me in a thread once with some needed advice, so I sympathize with your experience as you write about it in this thread.

I just got the new parts for an upgrade to a core i7 based DAW, and I'm hoping for much better performance than I have gotton with my old dual core system. I have purposed to try to stay mostly using X64 plug ins, but I have a few 32 bit ones I may use (such as the Dr-008). I plan to get Komplete soon, so I will mostly be using only SONAR's included plug ins, some other Cakewalk VSTI (Rapture), and NI software. Currently, I pursue this music production endeavor as a hobby, so I hope what I plan will suffice for my purposes.

I have come across some interesting reading in this thread, but it's also sparked some sadness because of your disappointment. I really hope we will be able to see and enjoy the time when a computer based DAW can run for many hours (with only minor issues) running projects such as those you throw at it.

From what I'm seeing, it appears if we are gonna see such performance at present, it will take some selective choices of plug ins and DAW software. And we will have to make the best of the tried tools (such as using the native X64 plug ins reported to work) to partake of the benefits of the supposedly better 64bit systems.

I will keep an eye on this thread. I wish you all the best in your continued venture into 64 Bit DAW land.

Sincerely, Thomas

thomasabarnes


eratu:

I just read through this entire thread tonight. It has been a real journey for me. It's also been like an emotional rollacoster to read of your ups and downs. You helped me in a thread once with some needed advice, so I sympathize with your experience as you write about it in this thread.

I just got the new parts for an upgrade to a core i7 based DAW, and I'm hoping for much better performance than I have gotton with my old dual core system. I have purposed to try to stay mostly using X64 plug ins, but I have a few 32 bit ones I may use (such as the Dr-008). I plan to get Komplete soon, so I will mostly be using only SONAR's included plug ins, some other Cakewalk VSTI (Rapture), and NI software. Currently, I pursue this music production endeavor as a hobby, so I hope what I plan will suffice for my purposes.

I have come across some interesting reading in this thread, but it's also sparked some sadness because of your disappointment. I really hope we will be able to see and enjoy the time when a computer based DAW can run for many hours (with only minor issues) running projects such as those you throw at it.

From what I'm seeing, it appears if we are gonna see such performance at present, it will take some selective choices of plug ins and DAW software. And we will have to make the best of the tried tools (such as using the native X64 plug ins reported to work) to partake of the benefits of the supposedly better 64bit systems.

I will keep an eye on this thread. I wish you all the best in your continued venture into 64 Bit DAW land.

Sincerely, Thomas

Thank you, Thomas! I feel better already! :) Yes, this has been quite a journey. I'm glad I've been documenting much of it since it's been a good resource for me, personally. :) The fact that it's helped another person even a little is a very nice bonus and makes me feel like the time has been worth it.

You're totally correct (in my humble opinion) that it depends entirely on the plugin combinations, etc... I think it has to do with the plugins + DAW apps + drivers + how we use the apps. I think it's very wise of you to head down the more "purist" x64 approach rather than try to have too many 32-bit plugins. I'm headed your direction. LOL!

The raw power is there on the i7, that I'm confident about. The plugins I ran in the last test, dense with MIDI and at a decent latency for live playback too (even the bridged 32-bit ones), show there's plenty of headroom for large projects. It's just getting that magic combination of apps, plugins, drivers that eludes me.

This last testing phase for me is really my last attempt at a mixed 64- and 32-bit system. I am surprised the updates I installed a couple of days ago helped this much, so that is encouraging. I was moments away from gutting this and going with a DAW farm as I mentioned before... with the main DAW focused on pure 64-bit plugins. In the end, I have a feeling that's what I'll still do. I also have a feeling that if I removed most or all the 32-bit plugins from the session above, and replaced them with more 64-bit plugins, things will go even better. In fact, maybe I'll do that next just to see what happens. :)

SONARtist


eratu, it's always a pleasure to read your progress reports.  You have a way of capturing your audience (I know you're a writer too !), and we're still holding our breath for that final "YEAH !!!!!!!".  Good luck !

Thanks, SONARtist, your positive vibe sent my direction is very much appreciated! I hope to be able to say one day soon, "YEAH!!!!!!!" That will be a great ending to this story.

It's amazing how Reaper handles things so well.  Justin is a genius, that's for sure.

By the way, I just found out that you can open the project I want to send you even though I use SO Gold Plus and you use SO Platinum Complete.  That's the good news at least.  The bad news is that it seems you'll have to search for each articulation loaded one by one, and there's over 100 articulations in this project (yikes!).  I'm not sure how willing you are to do this, but I can send you a copy of it with all tracks frozen so that you can do 'em at your pace (and save as you go).  I would love for you to have it only because I know this project could be a great test for CPU power (and because I'm curious to see if your computer can handle it).  It totally brings my computer to its knees, to the point where I have to freeze an entire section of the orchestra in order to play it somewhat OK (and that's setting my buffers to 1024 samples!).  The crazyness about it is that I use 16 bit samples, so this project will probably kill your computer if you try to play it without freezing :-P

Anyways, let me know if you still want me to send it to you.  Keep up the good work James!


Take care!

James,

Check your email :-)