EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

> > Actually his machines are pretty reasonable, and what he's doing is 
> > very clever. He has Giga coming up as a screen on the Mac, 
> with MIDI 
> > distributed over ethernet. Plus he has the system streamlined for 
> > efficiency - i.e. it's more than the hardware that he's selling.
> > 


Kinda interesting I agree.  I use PC's myself in conjunction with my mac and
I think there is nothing wrong with that...not trying to instigate a flame
war there...

Anyway, the thing about that guy's website that makes me a little nervous is
in fact the software.  It's a cool idea, he's not the only one doing it.
But who writes and maintains the software he's packaging up?  How standard
is it?  How reliable?  In theory it might be cool to have a remote desktop
session of the PC...but how much CPU does it hog on either machine?(he says
1% but I'll believe it when I see it).  Right now you can use MS remote
desktop and do pretty much the same thing between OSX and WinXP.  

There are other "cluster" arrangements starting to surface and I do think
this will become more and more common..  For example, one company I've heard
of actually has a product that allows you to run VST plugins remotely.  But
the GUI for the plugin appears in your Mac...even though the DSP processing
is happening remotely.  It sends some kind of VST info back and forth over
the network to the other machine.  Again..in theory..neat idea..even more
streamlined than what this guy is selling...but I have to ask, what about
network latency, etc...

It will be interesting to see these kinds of ideas come out, and be improved
upon...but in my mind..I wouldn't run out and buy one of those PC's today
because of some cool screen shots showing PC windows on a mac desktop and
supposed midi over the network.

For my money, at this time, if I had to network 5 giga PC's together with a
mac running logic...I would just get a video switchbox and run them all
through the switchbox and switch my keyboard/mouse/monitor between which
computer I want to see.  That is more reliable and absolutely performant
than some crazy custom software that is extremely unknown.