multi station daw tut

 

 I've noticed some new folks getting into setting up their own home DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) and I figured this could be a good resource for people interested in taking the leap to a Master/Slave system.  No, no, I don't mean I'm going to be ordering you around with a whip, ha ha, no, please no.  What I am talking about is distributing the burden of a sample based production DAW to multiple computers.

 Why would this be necessary?

 Well, it's not necessarily necessary, ;), especially with the advent of the "64-bit era" but it is something that is important for people who wish to increase performance across multiple CPUs or perhaps who can't afford 32GB of RAM just yet!

 As in life, there is more than one way to skin this problem, and while I AM out of work at the moment, I won't be going into all of them.  I will, instead, be focusing on two straight forward methods for setting up a multiple computer workstation.

To begin with, however, let's look at a flow-chart for a single computer system:

 

Isn't that nice?  Look at all that computer has to do.

Basically, I've mapped the flow of musical information from your hands through the workstation to your speakers.  There are many different conversions of information during the process.  Musical data goes into the computer from your piano keyboard or your mouse or whatever into either a MIDI port, a 16 Pin Controller Port, a USB, or PS/2 device connection.  You're like: Whoa, that's a lot of crazy computer talk, but for now, if you don't dig, you can gloss over the techie crap.  What's important is that this information gets put into your Software based DAW program.  That might be something like Logic, SONAR, Cubase, Digital Performer, etc.

With a single computer system, you will load your Virtual Instruments as VSTs right into your DAW program.  These VSTs will convert MIDI data into Audio right inside the DAW.  Sometimes you might have a VST running alongside the DAW externally.  If you want to do this, you will need some way of having your DAW communicate with the VST.  You might need virtual MIDI ports or virtual Audio ports to facilitate communication between two programs inside your computer.

Often times people will need a program outside of their DAW because 32bit operating systems allocate RAM in limited quantities to all applications running.  Which means, if you want more than what the operating system will give you, you will need to run them as two separate programs instead of one inside the other.

There are other programs you might want to load externally, such as in my example, East West's Wordbuilder program.  In this case, I am using Maple MIDI tools to facilitate MIDI communication between wordbuilder and the DAW.

 

In comparison, a two computer system, not unlike my own, will look like this:

Now, in a way, this might seem more complex, but really, what it's doing is sorting out the original complexity of the single computer system.  In this example, MIDI information goes from the DAW to a MIDI networking protocol tool, in this case MOL or MIDIOverLAN.  We're still using Maple MIDI Tools to facilitate communication from the DAW to Wordbuilder or any other external VST we might want to run, and we can still, if we like, load VSTs right into the DAW. 

However, to free up our CPU and RAM, we have sent the VSTs to another computer, where they will run in standalone, in isolation, IN EXILE!

 In this case we use MOL to send MIDI from one computer to another through(Network Interface Cards) a small network, on the slave computer, the VSTs convert the MIDI into Audio and it is sent back to the master computer over a short audio connection (ideally, a digital connection--I use Sony/Phillips Digital InterFace or S/PDIF).  Then it is recorded back to your DAW.  This process more closely resembles the actual recording process.  For example, you might've replaced the slave computer with a real band or orchestra and the audio would come back to you approx. the same.

 

However, if you don't like the live recording aspect of that setup, and you want a multi-computer setup that more closely resembles a single computer setup with simply MORE POWER! then you should take a look at this modified 2 computer diagram:

 

 

In this instance, we kept almost everything the same EXCEPT we use a program called FXTeleport instead of MIDIOverLAN.  FXTeleport is designed to be as much like the original VST-inside-the-DAW process as it can, and so you load VSTs inside your DAW like you would any other single-computer time, except that FXTeleport connects to a remote computer and loads that VST up there instead on your master computer.

What's the difference?

Well, FXTeleport is nice because it's simpler and cheaper.  You don't have to have an audio card on your slave computer, you don't even need a monitor on your slave computer, and it's going to be the easiest transition from a single-computer based setup.

BUT, FXTeleport gets worse latency than compared with the MOL setup which means there's more delay because you're burdening your network with not just MIDI (which is hardly a burden) but with high quality audio as well.

Both setups are scalable:

 

 

Except in the MOL solution, you have to also have a MIXER in order to receive multiple audio sources--but as said earlier, this is no different than say... recording your band.

 Well, maybe a little different ;)

 

I hope this has been informitive, and please, feel free to expound with questions.