Help with PC purchase for Adam Szabo Viper synth

[THE INTRANCER]

In the land of the PC world, you get what you pay for. You can be a cheap *****, but don't expect much from it into the future when you go beyond the bog standard and need to upgrade again, which will cost you more in the long run.

[joniqwest]

Thanks !

1) For max performance, always favor desktop over laptop

2) Favor the highest single core performance.
You can get a rough idea on that by checking things like Geekbench and Cinebench for scores.

3) Get the highest tier processor, from the most recent generation you can get, with the highest clock speed your current budget can allow.

4) 8GB RAM is sufficient enough for 95% of audio hobbyists

5) SSD is very nice to have for overall performance, but will not affect the performance of your synth vst

[joniqwest]

You know I thought about it but I think a dedicated "box" for Viper cuts down on a lot of potential tech issues

As a longtime Mac user you might have an old Mac system lying around. If that‘s the case give it new life by installing Windows on it.

[joniqwest]

Wow LOL I remember the Pentium days ! ( at one point I did try PC but it just wasn't for me, not better or worse than mac just no my thing )

. On average, the changeover cost was in the area of $250-$350, which is f**k-all to stay up to date with the latest specs, don't you think?

so you lose money every year just to "stay up to date"

buy a decent pc to start with and you don't need to update for years (mine is over 10 yrs old, no probs here)

Easier said than done.... with the PC's I usually buy (typically in the 1.000 € range), it's a mere 7 or 8 years (max) until they're so dated that I need a new one, mainly for games which begin to lag.

Admittedly, if you rather buy in the 2.000 € range, it will take a bit longer until they get dated. But, not much longer really.

I still remember the times when I had a 266 MHz for 10 years, and it wasn't outdated, haha.

[joniqwest]

That applies to Macs too.. my reason for staying on a budget is if I go higher in cost I might as well by a virus ... BUT ... with what appears to be Access/Kemper focusing on their guitar amps and Virussoftware with no further developments on the horizon and not compatible with current mac os, i don't want to purchase something that is for lack of a better word "dead"

In the land of the PC world, you get what you pay for. You can be a cheap *****, but don't expect much from it into the future when you go beyond the bog standard and need to upgrade again, which will cost you more in the long run.

[joniqwest]

Thank you !!!!

If you can would love to hear how many instances with voices before you max out the system

As I promised, did little test, Viper x64 Demo with PD Monster Pad AS from Viper Factory 1 bank using 4 notes chord progression, Bitwig 3, Mbox 2 Mini 512 buffer, Windows 8.1 PC with i7 3770, I could get 5, barely 6 instances.

Gonna leave MIDI file of the progression, if anyone wants to test on their machine.

[joniqwest]

Thank you !!!!

Anyone care to share their PC setups and what performance they are getting with multiple instances of Viper.
Would an Intel i3 with 8gb RAM and 128GB SSD be robust enough ? I am trying to stay under $500.00.

No, it probably wouldn't. My advice is to do what I have done and buy an ex-lease Surface Pro 4 on eBay. I got one with a Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD for Au$550, which was about US$400 at the time. It's a 6th gen CPU, so not incredibly fast, but it does a good job for us - we'll be using it from now on when we play live, so it will be doing all our backing.

Here's the kind of thing I'd be looking at - https://www.ebay.com/itm/184836532940?h ... SwXV9gnWeh

I just tested mine with Studio One and I got to 8 instances of Viper, playing the same four note chord with each playing a different PAD preset. The 9th instance started to play up a bit, so 8 seems to be the limit.

This is barely enough to run the operating system and a DAW.

He won't be running a DAW, just a barebones VST host. 8GB will be plenty.

[BONES]

You are more than welcome. Sometimes it's hard to cut through the BS around here and I thought you may already have bought something less useful. Those NUCs are a good idea but they are not exactly cheap for what you get. I looked into getting one of the gaming NUCs but it worked out cheaper to buy a good laptop.

[jasonekratz]

Hey at least he didn’t tell you the Moog ladder filter sucks…

[Passing Bye]

In this instance, hosting AudioGridder server, buying an laptop for server duties is maybe not that good idea, opposed to desktop machine, I posted a test few pages back, would be interested if more people tried that on their machines, especially on that Surface Pro, so we can compare what kind of performance one can expect from different machines.

Link to that post
viewtopic.php?p=8136692#p8136692

[jasonekratz]

Don’t want to hijack the thread but just curious, is Viper that good? I listened to some of the demo videos on the website and it sounds great, but it doesn’t sound like anything much different than Dune or the like. So what would the selling point be to buy a PC dedicated to it?

[chk071]

Demo'd Viper. Thought that Spire sounds better. Passed on it.

I was quite interested in it when I heard that it emulates the Virus, but, I was a bit disappointed, TBH.

By alle means, demo it yourself though. Just my opinion on it.

[twal]

Sounds good to me, sounds different. I think it sounds nothing like Dune. It has different character as Spire. I think it is impressive. I like it quite a bit.

[jasonekratz]

Demo'd Viper. Thought that Spire sounds better. Passed on it.

I was quite interested in it when I heard that it emulates the Virus, but, I was a bit disappointed, TBH.

By alle means, demo it yourself though. Just my opinion on it.

I'd have to run a PC for it as well as I'm on a Mac like the OP. Which is kinda why I'm asking because to me I didn't hear anything that Dune or Spire couldn't do. It seems like a lot of work so genuinely curious why the effort and $$ to dedicate a machine totally to this one VST.

[BONES]

Don’t want to hijack the thread but just curious, is Viper that good? I listened to some of the demo videos on the website and it sounds great, but it doesn’t sound like anything much different than Dune or the like. So what would the selling point be to buy a PC dedicated to it?

I think it's the Virus connection. Adam is trying to get it to be able to load Virus patches which, as you can imagine, would interest a lot of people. The other thing is that it is half the price of DUNE or most of those "other" things. Of course, that is somewhat negated by the need to buy a whole computer to run it from. I bought it because it sounds quite nice, is easy to use and it's cheap. But I bought JP6K at the same time and I use that 10 times more than I use Viper. I'll get to Viper eventually, though, I'm sure.

Demo'd Viper. Thought that Spire sounds better. Passed on it.

Spire would want to sound a helluva lot better, it costs twice as much.