Topic: Pianoteq on Mac mini

I can buy a mac mini with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz processor and Mac OS X snow leopard. Would this be OK to run pianoteq comfortably?

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

I would think that would run PTQ quite well, I don't know what the soundcard is like in them though. Most Macs come with a very good soundcard but the Mac Mini is their budget option, be prepared that you might have to add an external soundcard.

For comparison I'm running PTQ on a four core 2.66 GHz Mac Pro but if I turn off multicore rendering it still runs perfectly well and that's using less horsepower than you have on tap in the Mac Mini, at least without taking into account frontside bus size and other technical stuff I don't really understand!

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

Please define "comfortably" -- how many voices, how many instances you may want to run at once, sample rate, etc.  ;^)

I would _not_ go with the Mac mini, especially with such a comparatively-slow processor, because you're going to be handicapping yourself right out of the gate.  My iMac (see below) gets great performance, but I'm just itchin' to get a Mac Pro as soon as possible (I'm a-waitin' for the new crop, expected sometime soon!) -- though my designs for using the program are waaaay crazy.  %^)

(And I want the Pro for some graphics apps, too!)

Baz' quad-core processor would whoop that mini into the ground - and it's the mid-range speed!  I would be wary of the sound-card quality, too, though I don't actually _know_ what's in there...

I'm not saying you can't run Pianoteq "comfortably," but you'd hit the glass ceiling pretty quickly, especially if you start adding effects and other inputs or virtual instruments. 

:-)

"Our developers, who art in Toulouse, hallowed be thy physical-models.
Thy version 4 come, thy new instruments be done, in the computer as it is in the wood!"

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

I also use a Mac mini. Pianoteq seems to run smoothly. I can set the settings to 96Khz sample rate and 128 samples without crackles. The performance index is 28. And even though the polyphony is set to 256 the current polyphony doesn't seem to come close to that setting.

So my conclusion is: Yes, it runs "comfortably" on a Mac mini. No need for a Mac Pro. Except if you start to use too many other VSTs at the same time.

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

I have been planning to get a dedicated small sized, silent and energy efficient computer just for running Pianoteq, that could be easily hidden behind the piano keyboard.

Do you think an old Mac Mini 2007 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 3 GB of memory would run Pianoteq 5 smoothly?

I was also planning to use the Mac Mini without any display and use an iPad with a remote display VNC client.

Do you think it would be a feasible solution?

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

vpkmnk wrote:

I have been planning to get a dedicated small sized, silent and energy efficient computer just for running Pianoteq, that could be easily hidden behind the piano keyboard.

Do you think an old Mac Mini 2007 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 3 GB of memory would run Pianoteq 5 smoothly?

I was also planning to use the Mac Mini without any display and use an iPad with a remote display VNC client.

Do you think it would be a feasible solution?

It's a great idea.  There are a lot of other small computers coming out now that could run Linux and do the same thing:

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-BOXD54250WY...l+computer

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Barebone...i+computer

Last edited by GRB (01-08-2015 13:50)
Pianoteq Pro 7.x - Kubuntu Linux 19.10 - Plasma Desktop - Hamburg Steinway

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

GRB wrote:

It's a great idea.

... and not the newest ;-)  --> http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/viewtopic...95#p935695

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

Core 2 Duos can run Pianoteq smoothly at certain settings.

The first laptop I redeployed for Pianoteq was a 1.4ghz Core 2 Duo.  The best I could do was 11khz internal/22khz exernal @ 64 polyphony without periodic note drops.  1.83ghz has a 30% higher clock rate than 1.4ghz -- but actual performance usually scales at about 60% of the clock.  So a rough estimate of 20% faster means that CPU could do 80 polyphony @ 11/22khz sampling rates.  The first post mentions a 2.26ghz Core 2 Duo.  60% clock rate compared to 1.4ghz -- 40% faster performance would be about 100 polyphony at 11/22khz.

If that seems a bit disappointing, a Core 2 Duo is seriously much slower clock-to-clock than today's Celeron/Pentium/i3/i5/i7s.  There's been 5 new iterations of the "core" CPUs: Nehalem -> Sandy Bridge -> Ivy Bridge -> Haswell -> Broadwell.  If we CONSERVATIVELY pegged each generation at about 10% improvement, a 2.26ghz Core 2 Duo is about the speed of today's 1.4ghz Celeron.  It's actually worse than that because the Core 2 Duos get little boost running 64-bit software so there is a huge performance gap if you use 64-bit Windows/Linux/MacOS.

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

Thanks a lot for good links (GRB & groovy) and the very detailed analysis of the Core2 Duo performance (Mossy). As Apple is no more offering security updates for the old Mac Minis, I think I will skip that idea. The Ubuntu open-source alternative in mini-ITX form factor looks like much better and more future-proof solution.

Maybe this could be a good starting point for building such a system:

http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=...-ITX10-A1B

Do you have recommendations for a suitable thin mini-ITX motherboards e.g. with Core i3/i5 or Celeron CPUs?

I also tried out the x11vnc running on a Xubuntu 10.04 laptop.
The Pianoteq user interface works perfectly on a iPad Mini tablet running free version of Mocha VNC client!

Last edited by vpkmnk (02-08-2015 19:11)

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

Again looks interesting what about the audio out port?  The Intel units running core i5 & i7 have fans.  I was wondering if it might be possible to address the unit wirelessly with a Smart Phone.  It looks like the Pianoteq physical piano is not too far off.  I have a recent Celeron Laptop, and do not recommend that processor.  It's very gutless.

Last edited by GRB (02-08-2015 21:58)
Pianoteq Pro 7.x - Kubuntu Linux 19.10 - Plasma Desktop - Hamburg Steinway

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

GRB wrote:

The Intel units running core i5 & i7 have fans.

I have a Core 2 Duo (CPU T7300 @2 GHz) in an old Lenovo Thinkpad T61 (Debian Wheezy rt-kernel), and maybe I would use it with Pianoteq until today, if not one thing would distract me: Fan- and HDD-noise! Core 2 Duos produce a lot of heat and the fan is busy all the time in my T61. The laptop stands near to me and that noise sucks!! Performancewise I had never a problem with that CPU, but since fanless systems are available, I will never look back. Silence is golden ...

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

vpkmnk wrote:

Do you have recommendations for a suitable thin mini-ITX motherboards e.g. with Core i3/i5 or Celeron CPUs?

Groovy's use of a quad-core Bay Trail (see above links) is the best track for a dedicated Pianoteq box.  Cheap, sips power, can be passively cooled, can be placed in a tiny box.  No, not fast enough to run any computer games and probably not fast enough to run a 50GB sample-based VST ... but pretty good for Pianoteq.

This is probably the fastest Bay Trail D you can get:
* http://www.amazon.com/ASRock-Q2900-ITX-...B00NII8CV0
* 2.4ghz/2.66ghz burst (compared to the 2/2.4 for J1900)

Yeah, Haswell/Broadwell is faster .. and they do theoretically have 15W versions run quite better than Bay Trails.  But it's almost impossible to buy these chips as they are allocated 100% to laptop manufacturers.  The fastest Haswell I've see available in socketed version available for retail consumers is 35W.  Possible to cool passively in a regular computer case but forget about that in a small slim-line case.

That's the other option of course.  Just get a 15W 1.5ghz Broadwell laptop w/ a touchscreen.  More expensive but everything is already put together for you.

Last edited by Mossy (03-08-2015 07:27)

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

What about this one?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a...-_-Product

Pianoteq Pro 7.x - Kubuntu Linux 19.10 - Plasma Desktop - Hamburg Steinway

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

Intel NUCs are a great solution.  They're just not fanless (except for the single-core Bay Trail model which will be slow).   Only you can decide whether some fan noise is ok or you need an absolutely silent system.  Probably should look up reviews that talk about fan noise.

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

Mossy wrote:

Intel NUCs are a great solution.  They're just not fanless (except for the single-core Bay Trail model which will be slow).   Only you can decide whether some fan noise is ok or you need an absolutely silent system.  Probably should look up reviews that talk about fan noise.

I essentially have these components in my new Dell "ultrabook."  There is a fan inside, but it certainly doesn't come on often.  The noise is not something I notice; as at this house, I hear the refrigerator motor all the time, and traffic noise outside is significant.  The sound of the piano would mask any fan noise as well.  Now it might be that these little units run hotter than the laptop, so it's possible the fan would run more continuously.

Pianoteq Pro 7.x - Kubuntu Linux 19.10 - Plasma Desktop - Hamburg Steinway

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

This looks also an interesting alternative:

http://www.asrock.com/microsite/Beebox/

It is available with Braswell N3150 CPU.
It is not fanless, but they are advertising very low noise levels below 20 dB.

By the way, what would be a recommended Linux distribution for running Pianoteq?

Is using the Jack Audio interface recommended to get a low latency system?

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

Using the direct ALSA hardware device would have the least latency.   This option is similar to Windows ASIO where it locks out all other programs from the sound hardware.

JACK will involve some extra latency but it would be a consistent number.  You would use JACK if you have other programs besides Pianoteq that needs access to sound hardware (and also has JACK support).  You'd also need to hack together some scripts together to restart JACK after resuming from suspend.
...

The Beebox's N3150 CPU seems slightly on the slow side.   1.6GHz is pretty close to various Windows tablets tested at 1.3ghz that weren't fast enough but I think those were dual cores.  4-cores @ 1.6ghz might be enough -- dunno.

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

vpkmnk wrote:

By the way, what would be a recommended Linux distribution for running Pianoteq?

It would be the Linux distribution that can identify your particular hardware.  You might try some of the light weight ones running XFCE or LXDE.  You could start with:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/relea...4/release/

or

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/relea...4/release/

I run http://linuxmint.com/rel_rafaela_mate_whatsnew.php

It's a full-on user friendly Linux distribution using the "Mate" desktop which is a fork of Gnome 2, which was the standard for years.  Simple, but full featured.  The previous two listed are lighter and faster, but have less features.  You might even be able to use Puppy Linux or Tiny Core Linux if they are still around.

http://distrowatch.com/

http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/

The "Beebox" looks good to me. How much does it cost? Keep in mind Mossy's horsepower concerns.

Last edited by GRB (05-08-2015 22:27)
Pianoteq Pro 7.x - Kubuntu Linux 19.10 - Plasma Desktop - Hamburg Steinway

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

The price for the Asrock N3150 Beebox is roughly 200€ (or less than $200 in the US).
It seems to be available at some German shops right now.

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a...lsrc=aw.ds

$130 in the U.S. -- add 8% tax if you live in a state with sales tax.  200E is quite the extra premium.

Hmmm, I might pick up something similar to replace my old Pianoteq laptop.  Using a 6W-10W box would be nice energy savings.  By comparison, my i5 laptop uses 27W at idle.

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

Just my contribution,

To use these small pc or barebones... I discovered "Teamviewer", it is an application to install on a tablet and on the pc and that allows to use the tablet as a real touchscreen monitor.
This may be helpfull for those who want to use a pc without a screen to run pianoteq but want also to have some kind of control when needed.

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

stamkorg wrote:

Just my contribution,

To use these small pc or barebones... I discovered "Teamviewer", it is an application to install on a tablet and on the pc and that allows to use the tablet as a real touchscreen monitor.
This may be helpfull for those who want to use a pc without a screen to run pianoteq but want also to have some kind of control when needed.

Is that a Linux or WinDO$ program?

Pianoteq Pro 7.x - Kubuntu Linux 19.10 - Plasma Desktop - Hamburg Steinway

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

I use it with succes with Tango studio and KX Studio. There is a native debian version, so no problem with the debian derived linux distributions.
It runs with the 3 great os families

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

As far as I know "teamviewer" is closed-source and in its standard use-case it routes/relays your privat traffic through third-party servers on the internet. Does it have also a peer-to-peer modus, meaning direct connection  between PC and Tablet (*without* internet-connection)?

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

stamkorg wrote:

I use it with succes with Tango studio and KX Studio. There is a native debian version, so no problem with the debian derived linux distributions.
It runs with the 3 great os families

I'm afraid to install it as it may add remote access to my computer by an outside party.  Untested,  Not a part of the Debian Library.  Unsafe in my opinion.  What needs to happen is that Pianoteq figure out how to add such an option as an upgrade or in the next release.

Last edited by GRB (09-08-2015 23:13)
Pianoteq Pro 7.x - Kubuntu Linux 19.10 - Plasma Desktop - Hamburg Steinway

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

groovy wrote:

As far as I know "teamviewer" is closed-source and in its standard use-case it routes/relays your privat traffic through third-party servers on the internet. Does it have also a peer-to-peer modus, meaning direct connection  between PC and Tablet (*without* internet-connection)?

Yeah, as a long time Linux user without problems I'm not eager to install a back door.

Last edited by GRB (09-08-2015 23:14)
Pianoteq Pro 7.x - Kubuntu Linux 19.10 - Plasma Desktop - Hamburg Steinway

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

Teamviewer is quite secure, there are no backdoors AFAIK (you create a link between two computers via a connection ID and a password for it). It can be installed as a portable app, so no registry/plist entries either. It doesn't use any kind of service so it isn't ran in the background after you close it. When you close it, it's closed for good. After all, it's been used by millions, so of course they will value security for their users.

https://www.teamviewer.com/en/help/14-H...TeamViewer


Also:

TeamViewer provides various features to prevent unauthorized access and to ensure your privacy and security:

    Access to a device is only possible with both its TeamViewer ID and password.
    For data protection reasons, it is not possible to invisibly control a computer. A small dialog is displayed in the bottom right corner of your desktop after you grant access to your device.
    One-time-only passwords for TeamViewer connections. A new password is generated with every software start. Therefore, repeated access is impossible if you shut down TeamViewer after a session ends.
    Additional confirmation is required for security-relevant functions like file transfer. It is impossible to transfer files to your device without your knowledge.
    Highly encrypted sessions (using the same standards as HTTPS or SSL). TeamViewer is considered completely safe by today's standards and is used by financial institutions and government facilities.
    Two-factor authentication for your TeamViewer account. Protect your account credentials with an optional factor in addition to name and password.

groovy wrote:

Does it have also a peer-to-peer modus, meaning direct connection  between PC and Tablet (*without* internet-connection)?

Yes, you can make it work over LAN (LINK), so WAN counts, too.

Last edited by EvilDragon (09-08-2015 23:48)
Hard work and guts!

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

Why do you need teamviewer anyway? If there's a X11 protocol (ie. XQuartz) available for the tablet, have you tested using that directly?

http://soundcloud.com/delt01
Pianoteq 5 STD+blüthner, Renoise 3 • Roland FP-4F + M-Audio Keystation 88es
Intel i5@3.4GHz, 16GB • Linux Mint xfce 64bit

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

I'm sure TeamViewer has plenty of verbiage on their website about how secure they are.  But fact is companies ROUTINELY get hacked into.   If you don't need to involve a third party, then you should not.

And in this case, you don't need to.  Windows/Mac/Linux all include remote desktop servers.  All you need is either a RDP viewer (Windows) or VNC viewer (Linux/Mac) on the tablet.

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

EvilDragon wrote:

Teamviewer is quite secure, there are no backdoors AFAIK [...]

As a "remote-control" tool it is a backdoor ;-). In fact I don't know. But keep in mind the basic function principle of tools like "teamviewer" is to connect two client-computers via a "relay-server" in the internet, that is owned by that organisation. *Me* it reminds to a man-in-the-middle attack. 

groovy wrote:

Does it have also a peer-to-peer modus, meaning direct connection  between PC and Tablet (*without* internet-connection)?

EvilDragon wrote:

Yes, you can make it work over LAN (LINK), so WAN counts, too.

Thank you.

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

Yeah but it's a securely encrypted connection. You do know how long it would take to break 256-bit encryption keys, yes?

Mossy wrote:

But fact is companies ROUTINELY get hacked into.

Sure, but very likely it would be not using Teamviewer, but some other means of hacking (like breaking down the firewall etc.).

Last edited by EvilDragon (10-08-2015 09:06)
Hard work and guts!

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

EvilDragon wrote:

Yeah but it's a securely encrypted connection.

It is irrelevant, if the man-in-the-middle server connects to my two desktops encrypted or unencrypted.

More than pseudo-security can only be achieved by real, uninterrupted end-to-end encryption between two PCs. To remote-control a Pianoteq-barebone with an android-tablet directly-connected I like x11vnc.

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

groovy wrote:

To remote-control a Pianoteq-barebone with an android-tablet directly-connected I like x11vnc.


Wow,
I just tried and it works perfectly...
Can you just give me some informations?

The code you posted to open x11vnc gives (in the terminal) a Warning message: "you use x11vnc without a password"... is it a problem?
In fact, what is the main difference with a system like teamviewer in security point of view?

Thanks in advance


SK

Re: Pianoteq on Mac mini

stamkorg wrote:
groovy wrote:

To remote-control a Pianoteq-barebone with an android-tablet directly-connected I like x11vnc.

Wow,
I just tried and it works perfectly...
Can you just give me some informations?

The code you posted to open x11vnc gives (in the terminal) a Warning message: "you use x11vnc without a password"... is it a problem?

It is no problem, if nobody else has access to your network. But you can protect your remote access with a password to avoid the message, see  http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/viewtopic...16#p936416
Here it is getting a bit offtopic.

stamkorg wrote:

In fact, what is the main difference with a system like teamviewer in security point of view?

... if the hints in this thread are not enough, then it is not important for you, don't worry. Take whatever works for you.

Thanks