V-Machine

[mon8169]

YES,.. Full on Thread, probably should think of splitting it up shortly.
will have a dedicated one setup shortly.

yes, for this reason I created a yahoo group, so you have as many separate threats as you want.... and will receive the message in your inbox (to me far better that having to go a forum each day and search in 80+ pages...)

feel free to joint at:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Vm ... =259420486


Ramon

[gafaell]

I am sorry, I don't look at it this way at all,
83 pages are firstly not full of complains, mostly they are questions and suggestions, and the reason I work with users and the development team is to solve them and move forward, everyone knows, the hardware is ROCK SOLID and the firmware on the machine is super stable, not one issue as far as quality of the hardware goes, it is firmware based and constantly being worked on. As a platform you CAN do so much with it, sure you will always get plugins or requests which we can't achieve immediatly. If we had no one say anything I would really worry but the amount of users now is growing dramatically as we get more and more plugs running on the VFX platform and the support we are getting from vendros realising what we have here is also growing.

What ?!!

Hardware ROCK SOLID ? Yesterday my VM began to smell like burnt. A buzz noise started and I discovered that the headphones out does not work anymore.

Super stable firmware ? I have never been able to run Sampletank on VM. Also, this constant hung up and crash situation on many moments, working with PC.

Most wizard files do not work on my PC, as I have to edit them -into Spanish-. (Sorry, I have no more time for this.) I play live and I do not connect my VM to a computer usually.

After 3 months, still waiting to have a new firmware that lets you SAVE changes on your VM and not losing them everytime you turn it off !

Congratulations to SM PRO for this wonderful product !

Please produce a new "stable" firmware before the Musik Messe or admit the final solution is still far, far away.

Good luck !!

[ptsound]

Several great pianos out there which run well, and if you use external HDD even better

It'd be interesting to understand what u mean for several great piano; I think about The Grand, Ivory, NI AKOUSTIC PIANO, etc...but I don't wanna make an argument about that.

In my opinion 83 pages of thread

YES,.. Full on Thread, probably should think of splitting it up shortly.
will have a dedicated one setup shortly.

In regards to Piano sure, it is personally, TruePianos? what about a Kontact library one running in sample lord, several versions are being done specifically for the V at the moment as well.

Hi,
Am i understanding this correctly?
Are you saying that Truepianos does work Properly without choking?
Has it been tested by someone who plays piano.. with sustain..
Maybe I'm doing something wrong..
I've tried loading truepianos onto a usb2 (yes usb2) stick and loading it to the internal v-machine.
it chokes.. i've tried it on gigs even on the 512 setting and with the
sustain pedal down and a few big chord voicings or fast runs with sustain and yes it chokes. I don't like getting looks from the other musicians that say
"Is that horrible cracking noise you?? what's wrong with your gear?, you need to get that sorted"
If you're seriously telling me that an external hard drive is the answer I will try it, even though carrying an extra box starts to defeat the purpose.
Still, i'm willing to do this,especially if it's a temporary thing.. say until the CPU upgrade is available.
Like I said maybe I'm missing something in my settings as I can't get Ziokiller's Ray73 to work without the same problem as truepianos... only thing is it's worse. As soon as I hold down the pedal and play a run of notes
it.... yes, you guessed it CHOKES!
Sorry guys, I'm very frustated having put hours and hours into this thing. I've had the v-machine since Dec. and it's so close to being a great live
tool. In my opinion, it's clearly underpowered, needs a CPU UPGRADE
if it's going to have any chance of being part of my gear.
Thanks.
P.T

[delafuerte]

Hi,
Am i understanding this correctly?
Are you saying that Truepianos does work Properly without choking?
Has it been tested by someone who plays piano.. with sustain..
Maybe I'm doing something wrong..
I've tried loading truepianos onto a usb2 (yes usb2) stick and loading it to the internal v-machine.
it chokes.. i've tried it on gigs even on the 512 setting and with the
sustain pedal down and a few big chord voicings or fast runs with sustain and yes it chokes. I don't like getting looks from the other musicians that say
"Is that horrible cracking noise you?? what's wrong with your gear?, you need to get that sorted"
If you're seriously telling me that an external hard drive is the answer I will try it, even though carrying an extra box starts to defeat the purpose.
Still, i'm willing to do this,especially if it's a temporary thing.. say until the CPU upgrade is available.
Like I said maybe I'm missing something in my settings as I can't get Ziokiller's Ray73 to work without the same problem as truepianos... only thing is it's worse. As soon as I hold down the pedal and play a run of notes
it.... yes, you guessed it CHOKES!
Sorry guys, I'm very frustated having put hours and hours into this thing. I've had the v-machine since Dec. and it's so close to being a great live
tool. In my opinion, it's clearly underpowered, needs a CPU UPGRADE
if it's going to have any chance of being part of my gear.
Thanks.
P.T

That's exactly what I've experienced and wrote here before.

Like Ziokiller well said, truepianos really runs but you can't actually play it.

Moreover, I've allready ugraded ram to 1gb, and I can assure u the situation is the same!

Much worse if u think to load another VST in the same bank; I made a bank with Sample Tank piano and VB3 (ziokiller's must) on two different channels and even playing this piano alone results in CHOKES!

I'm really disappointed, but reading the answer of SMPROAUDIO seems that everything is ok.

For sure if something won't change, it'll pass years before I'll trust another SMPROAUDIO product.

[delafuerte]

And now... a bit of selfish spam: anyone had a chance to try Key Performer on their V-Machines? Maybe the piano sound isn't as good as TruePianos, but you can safely play up to 56 notes without worrying about latency, cpu glitches, and audio clips.

Sorry Zio, I forgot to reply your post.

I've tried Key Performer in the V-Machine but also with your new "son" playing piano sound (I've also tried your german upright) for me results in cpu glitches and audio clips.

The other sounds seem to be ok, also if I can't ear (dont know why) the hammond and the synth module.

Instead your VB3 itself works great on the machine; the problems begin if u think to put another VST in the same bank.

Obviously, I dont think its your fault

[ZioKiller]

I've tried Key Performer in the V-Machine but also with your new "son" playing piano sound (I've also tried your german upright) for me results in cpu glitches and audio clips.

Ok, thanks for trying it out
As I stated elsewhere on this forum AND in the plugin's manual, the optimal polyphony for the V-Machine is 56 voices. So, set it to 56 voices before running it in the V- and you'll be able to play everything without glitches.

Quality speaking, this is not as good as TruePianos or Pianoteq or other high-end piano plugins, but it's a piano sound that you can play live with an acceptable polyphony.
Next week I'll release two new piano soundsets.

The other sounds seem to be ok, also if I can't ear (dont know why) the hammond and the synth module.

I know, you didn't read the manual and the website information... if you don't create your sounds, you won't hear any sound coming from the synth and the Hammond sections!
For the Hammond, you'll have to pull down a few drawbars, and for the synth you'll have at least to adjust the sustain level and the fiter cutoff.

But also the holy RTFM rule is very helpful in such cases

[VFXAU]

Yesterday my VM began to smell like burnt. A buzz noise started and I discovered that the headphones out does not work anymore.

I have not seen any support ticket for this on the support website, I would have thought that is the first thing you would do!!!!

Super stable firmware ? I have never been able to run Sampletank on VM. Also, this constant hung up and crash situation on many moments, working with PC.

Sampletank, both the included SE and full version runs very well on the VM, I think you need to get some support to show you how to run it properly

Most wizard files do not work on my PC, as I have to edit them -into Spanish-. (Sorry, I have no more time for this.) I play live and I do not connect my VM to a computer usually.

OK, now we are getting somewhere, if it is a language issue then that is a different thing all together, I can understand that you may have some issues with directory names etc. Sure the whole idea is not to connect the VM to the computer once it is setup.

After 3 months, still waiting to have a new firmware that lets you SAVE changes on your VM and not losing them everytime you turn it off !

need to wait a few more days for this, I think by the end of this week.

If you have issues, then why not report them so we can assist you if possible, if you don't get help let me know. That is why I am here.

Please produce a new "stable" firmware before the Musik Messe or admit the final solution is still far, far away.

Good luck !!

Sorry to disagree with you, too many people are using it live now to say it is NOT stable... it is very stable.

[SoftPlayer]

I'm really disappointed, but reading the answer of SMPROAUDIO seems that everything is ok.

For sure if something won't change, it'll pass years before I'll trust another SMPROAUDIO product.

I personally think that a processor upgrade would solve a lot of the proplems described here. You simply can't do magic. I remember a spokesman of sm-pro audio saying a good while ago that this 1ghz processor will have a performance of 2ghz with the slim linux, and latencies will be around 1ms. I remember thinking: hmm, would be a great surprise if that really was true. But it obviously wasn't.

A 1ghz processor is a 1ghz processor, it has a limited amount of calculation cycles per time - period. I remember apple saying the same, that their processor can do double performance at the same speed as an intel processor - which simply was not true as we all know today. What else should they have said? Plus I don't think that a windows system takes a lot of cpu by itself, maybe a bit of ram, but ram is that cheap nowadays that this does not depend at all.

So why not a cpu upgrade? The old pentium 4 cpus got too hot for small systems, but the new core 2 duo generation is totally different, it's an incredible difference, extremely cool and low energy.

As I've seen on sonicstate the v-machine soon will get stiff concurrency by the muse box, which will be priced too sub $1000 and will have a core duo inside, plus proven software technology. But it seems to be bigger and heavier and does not look very nice (at least the prototype shown at sonicstate). The V-Machine really looks very nice, and has exactly the right size and weight imho. So it COULD be perfect if only...

I think both SM-PRO and Muse should have a close look at the apple mac mini, which has an amazing performance at its size - it's maybe a tad bit bigger than the v-machine (but not so much, more square), but has a core2 duo 2ghz and 2 gigs ram inside, plus a 120gig harddrive, usb, firewire and analog&digital audio i/o - and runs VERY quiet! As far as I know there are laptop components inside, probably a custom mainboard? If the V-Machine would work with the same hardware it was perfect!

So let's hope the V-Machine will develop to what we've all expected from it - it would be a dream

[MatthewSkinner]

Truepianos runs perfectly (yes even with sustain) on my setup with a 7200rpm external 2.5" HDD. Using a flash memory stick does not give anywhere near the same performance, as most flash can not sustain the same speed as a 7200rpm drive. If you use a 2.5" latop drive in a usb2 enclosure then you do not need a power point for the hard drive as the drive can be powered from the usb connection, these drives are physically smaller than the vmachine.

The drive must be formatted as FAT32 for best performance.

By using a large and fast external HDD the cpu load comes down on some plugins as the plugin is no longer having to wait for files.

[EvilDragon]

Using a flash memory stick does not give anywhere near the same performance, as most flash can not sustain the same speed as a 7200rpm drive.

But using solid-state drives easily outperforms HDDs because there's no spinup time. Granted, they are more expensive, but to get topnotch performance, SSD is a very viable solution. Because on V-Machine there's no need to write as much (or nothing in fact!) to the drive while reading, this is EXCELLENT for playing VSTs and sample libraries - install once and forget about it, you can read it 130 MB/s and more SUSTAINED through the whole drive (that is not the case with regular HDDs).

I'm really waiting for the prices of SSDs to come down. Seems like this and the next year is a turning point for that, because Windows 7 will offer far greater support for those.

[ZioKiller]

Truepianos runs perfectly (yes even with sustain) on my setup with a 7200rpm external 2.5" HDD.

I'm a bit confused... as far as I know, TruePiano does not stream samples from disk, it pre-loads the whole soundset into memory and doesn't need to read anything else from disk during playback. At least, so does the version 1.4 that I'm running on my PC.

[mon8169]

How do I transpose on the V-Machine?

Ramon

I will set one up in the next day or so to show you.

Danny, I'm still waiting....

Ramon

Danny, I'm still waiting.... since January?

I thought it was soooo easy that I would feel some kind of stupid hearing the answer.... at least someone told me so....

anyway, has this funtion been already implemented or is it so difficult to explain how it works that you just think you'll do it tomorrow??

best regards from a very patient user

Ramon

[delafuerte]

I personally think that a processor upgrade would solve a lot of the proplems described here. You simply can't do magic. I remember a spokesman of sm-pro audio saying a good while ago that this 1ghz processor will have a performance of 2ghz with the slim linux, and latencies will be around 1ms. I remember thinking: hmm, would be a great surprise if that really was true. But it obviously wasn't.

Really...obviuosly no

A 1ghz processor is a 1ghz processor, it has a limited amount of calculation cycles per time - period. I remember apple saying the same, that their processor can do double performance at the same speed as an intel processor - which simply was not true as we all know today. What else should they have said? Plus I don't think that a windows system takes a lot of cpu by itself, maybe a bit of ram, but ram is that cheap nowadays that this does not depend at all.
So why not a cpu upgrade?

I've been waiting just for this
I've spent 500 euro for the V-machine, 80 euro for ram and HDD upgrade, 130 euro for the external HDD (just ordered today) for a total amount of 710 euro!!!
I'd say that I'm already "pot-committed" (if u like texas hold'em, u know what i mean).
If I think that with other 300 euro I could buy a used receptor (with totally different performance!!!), this really drives me crazy!!

As I've seen on sonicstate the v-machine soon will get stiff concurrency by the muse box, which will be priced too sub $1000 and will have a core duo inside, plus proven software technology. But it seems to be bigger and heavier and does not look very nice (at least the prototype shown at sonicstate). The V-Machine really looks very nice, and has exactly the right size and weight imho. So it COULD be perfect if only...

I dont think nobody really cares if it's nice or not, I care could be really playable.

I think both SM-PRO and Muse should have a close look at the apple mac mini, which has an amazing performance at its size - it's maybe a tad bit bigger than the v-machine (but not so much, more square), but has a core2 duo 2ghz and 2 gigs ram inside, plus a 120gig harddrive, usb, firewire and analog&digital audio i/o - and runs VERY quiet! As far as I know there are laptop components inside, probably a custom mainboard? If the V-Machine would work with the same hardware it was perfect!

So let's hope the V-Machine will develop to what we've all expected from it - it would be a dream

Let's hope...in my opinion with a 2ghz CPU this could became the definitive tool, considering the fact that u can also upgrade ram (I know that maybe more than 1 gb will be possible), u can connect external drive, I dont see any limit.

But nowadays the limits are big; I think the development of the V-Machine and its future it's only up to SMPROAUDIO

[xtompe]

Truepianos runs perfectly (yes even with sustain) on my setup with a 7200rpm external 2.5" HDD.

I'm a bit confused... as far as I know, TruePiano does not stream samples from disk, it pre-loads the whole soundset into memory and doesn't need to read anything else from disk during playback. At least, so does the version 1.4 that I'm running on my PC.

Yes, that seems logical, since it takes a long time (somewhere between 5-10 seconds) to load a preset (the first one in the TruePianos bank).

But, the it also uses application logic to simulate certain things (reverb, sympathetic resonance if it's activated, and god knows what else ), so my GUESS is that the internal memory (512 or even 1024 if U made a memory upgrade) gets full (OS + application logic + loaded sample file) and the V-machine needs to swap (linux-based right?) to the internal flashcard-disk (which is alot slower than a regular HDD), again giving it to low performance to keep up with TruePianos. Alternatively instead of swapping to internal flashcard, the info (sample data) is re-read from the source, so a quicker disk (than the internal flashdisk) -> no problem

With a faster external HDD (7200rpm) or perhaps a SDD (Solid State) it seems to work well according to at least 2 people (MatthewSkinner & VFXAU).

It would be nice to upgrade the internal flashcard with a SDD. Should speed up the startup and swapping (if it's used).

Can someone from SM Pro Audio confirm the following:
1. If there is swapping used when memory gets full?
2. What is the maximum possible memory upgrade in the current V-machine.
3. What interface is used for the internal flashcard drive? (EIDE or SATA?)

/Tommy

[delafuerte]

2. What is the maximum possible memory upgrade in the current V-machine.

/Tommy

I can reply since I got a ticket from the support; actually you can upgrade max to 1gb of ram.
Maybe in the future will be possible to add more Ram (they told me so, dont know if its a problem of firmware or whatelse).

I've already upgraded the ram (impossible to explain how difficult is to open the machine ).