Real life performance metrics for Receptor?

[astorian]

Hello. I was hoping to get some idea of real life Receptor performance. I am fairly new to VSTis For example, could a single Receptor with 2GB of Ram play back a complex piano arrangement (Ivory) with a driving BFD drum part? My typical arrangement might have a piano or wurly/rhodes, drums, demo string quartet (to be replaced), some pads, etc. Is there some type of industry wide standard or test used to understand the overhead of VSTIs? It might be nice to know, for example, that Receptor managed 8 tracks of instrument X playing a simple arpegio, and 16 tracks of instrument Y. Any help would be appreciated.

[MCal]

I would say that what you are asking will push a Rev C Receptor to it's limits realistically. Though it really does depend on how dense and taxing the piano piece is. Ivory works great on Receptor, but it is a huge streaming instrument... as is BFD. A number of my clients use Ivory, but in 'mission critical' situations they do dedicate a single receptor to Ivory. I would think that a Receptor Pro would handle it fine, and would say go for this to be assured you'll be fine.

Al.

[astorian]

Thanks for your help Al. For years I have lugged a Rhodes, Wurly, and keyboard to gigs. Back at the home studio I mostly demo songs. It is nice to get great piano sounds, but for the most part I replace these down the road. Because of this, I might want to go with a decent but not so taxing piano VST. Drums are another beast as sometimes I actually want to keep my sequenced drums. Live and Studio persent their own challenges ... but a good benchmarking system would be great to make these types of decisions.

[MCal]

Yes I agree. The problem we run into though is that there are many variables to take into account when testing plugin count abilities. What Protools users do is to use their (now quite dated) D-Verb plugin, and see how many they can run without getting an error message. The same type of thing would have to be done with Instrument counts I guess.. and it would have to be quite a large one, or else you'd easily run 16 on receptor before maxing out the cpu...
I think you've done the best thing by asking on here as there's lots of really experienced Receptor users on here who know exactly what it's capable of.

Al.

[astorian]

Thanks Al. Are your clients with dedicated Ivory receptors using them live? IOW, are they using a dedicated machine to have a piano sound on call without having to change banks / load samples, or are they using the dedicated machine in a studio setting where they want a rock solid piano track. I guess that is my challenge ... I'd like a single receptor for live use with great wurly/rhodes (Applied Accoustics?), strings, pads, synths, piano, etc. AND something solid for the studio (sequencing multiple parts, arranging, etc). Maybe this realistically can't be done with a single unit (Rec C), or I might want to focus on the Pro.

[MCal]

Yes most of the clients who are using Ivory and dedicating a single Receptor to it are using it live. So they have to be positive it will be there and be solid when they hit the keys. My studio clients are much less likely to dedicate a single unit to it as they can juggle resources between Receptor and there mac or PC..or even other Receptors. The Applied Acoustics stuff is great, and I would say isn't as CPU hungry as Ivory so you may get away with it. However you are going to be future proof for Longer with Receptor Pro as long as its within what you want to spend. There is a version of Pro with a 400 Gig HD which is a little cheaper too...

Al.