hello all, has anyone ever used logic's distributed audio feature. i have the powermac g5 2.3 dual and i constantly push it to the point where it just maxes out.... and it is curbing my productivity anyhow, i did some reading and apparently it all hooks up via ethernet and you just have to run the logic node program so here's my question: my powermac has 2 ethernet ports... do i hook up the second mac to that second port or do i connect my powermac and the second computer to a router?

ok forget the question i just asked... my sister dropped by and she has the new mac book pro so i tried it out. here is my brief review of distributed audio It definitely DOES make some difference, it probably could have been better if i was using something like a mac pro tower as the node machine. Apparently there is no limit to how many machines you can add and that seems to be a great advantage for projects of considerable magnitude. Here is the main problem with this technology... and it is a big one: DISTRIBUTED AUDIO TECHNOLOGY ONLY DISTRIBUTES LOGIC'S PLUG-IN DATA EXCLUSIVELY (i read the logic manual and i cannot recall them mentioning this......) what i mean by this is that if you use any third party plug ins (which im sure most of you do), they are all processed on the host cpu even in distributed audio mode.... as i said... only the logic plug in processing gets distributed for example, i loaded up a synths from the korg legacy collection and it was not being processed on the node machine (the node button wasn't glowing) i added a stack of 3rd party fx plugs onto the same channel.... still not being distributed (no glowing blue light).... until i added a single plugin from logic.... then the channel was being distributed.... BUT... only the single logic plugin was being distributed.... NOT the massive stack of third party plug ins within the same channel. how do i know this? I had the "activity monitor" program open on the node computer which was monitoring the consumption of cpu by the "logic node" program ... and when the stacked "third party plugin channel with one logic plugin" was being "distributed"... the cpu consumption went up by like 1 percent... when it ought to have gone up by like near 10 percent considering how stacked the channel was... also.... the logic node program on the node computer crashed like 10 times.... remember im using two reasonably powerful macs with decent ram... (both of them bought within the last 8 months brand new) and they run flawlessly in general like macs should verdict: if you use logic's fx plugins and synths alot...then distributed is probably for you... i would recommend using the exact same computer for the node and host because in this case i was using an intel mac book pro with a powermac g5... this shouldn't make a difference... but it very well may have (due to the constant crashing).....but it also is possible that the logic distributed audio is still a shaky technology...who knows? it simply wasn't close to being 99% stable by any means if you use third party plugins heavily in logic then you will need to have either alot of cpu power or be running your plugs off of those dsp cards like tc electronic or the digidesign tdm hd systems but on those platforms i believe you need special plugins that run on them like the "waves tdm" plugin variety hopefully my review of DA will help you people out there make a more informed decision in the search for higher levels of plugin processing distributed audio is NOT for me because i am an big user of third party plug ins.

Hmmm, that's interesting ... I seem to recal the last time I tried it the node computers had to be powermacs, so laptops wouldn't work. Perhaps that's part of the issue? Having said that, I think QMaster now runs across any any computer on your network, which is also new ... I guess now that computers are getting faster, it's less of a concern ... Wouldn't surprise me though, as Logic has no real control over the arcitacture of 3rd party plugz, so perhaps that's why the korg stuff is not distributed?!?

it is still kind of a wonder why the 3rd party plugs aren't processed... because isn't it all just a bunch of 1's and 0's?