Interesting! But I thought Avid didn’t support AMD, officially? (It’s not really an option for me as all my plugs / synth software are VST, not planning on converting them all.)
Do you still need to turn off SMT to get PT to work properly on AMD? (at least this was the case in earlier versions?) That would lock things to 1 thread per core…
I also have the Dune Pro case coming my way for a 3970X build that I’m putting together for video editing. but if you went with a different case, you could split those pcie 4.0 x16 slots into two pcie 4.0 x8 slots for the extra slots you need. PCIE 4.0 x8 is still quite fast. I’ve never split PCIE slots as I’ve never had to, but sooner or later the gear will be out there to do if it isn’t already. Crypto miners have been doing it for ages.
Oh cool! We should trade notes 
I’m not sure what you mean by splitting the lanes - how would a different case help? I think the ROMED8-2T motherboard ought to serve my needs, as with that one I won’t have to sacrifice a slot for an internal USB 3.2 header AIC for the Dune case ports. With seven x16 slots that should cover:
Plus the option to add extra SATA HDs behind the mobo, likely won’t run out of storage for a while…
Note, the deal with UAD cards is that their Octo (8 DSP chips) card has a different PCIe chip than the Quad, Duo and Solo ones - those for some reason don’t play well with AMD chipsets. Their USB and Firewire external Satellite DSP boxes work fine though.
pcie bifurcation … assuming the motherboard permits it (an Epyc server board certainly should!), you can divide the lanes from one slot across multiple expansion slots.
passive bifurcation is usually x16 to x8 x8, or x8 to x4 x4. Some motherboards offer x16 to x8 x4 x4, or other weird combinations.
active bifurcation is more interesting. a special “switch” chip could take the pcie 4.0 x16 bandwidth and provide two 3.0 x16 slots, or four 3.0 x8 slots, for example. I don’t know if these exist, outside of stuff custom made for enterprise systems. they’d be very expensive also
either way, you’d need a case with enough room in it, and physical mounting ability to take advantage. usually these are BIG cases with one or more “vertical GPU” bays that support double or triple width graphics cards.
AFAIK at this point in time, more channels usually mean more threads. Of course more than one channel process can occupy a single thread depending on the overhead of each channel. More cores == more threads == can’t go wrong there unless budget begins telling you otherwise.
Where single core performance comes in is when you start applying multiple VSTs to a single channel. While more modern VSTs themselves are being designed to make use of more threads, the channel itself will also need higher single core/thread performance. I do not know if EPYC is a strong player in this area or not. But it has to be considered.
That should get you a rudimentary idea based on your own composing/creating habits in your DAW of choice.
Keep in mind that some of the most intricate and best sound tracks we’ve heard in cinema or album release have been accomplished on far more modest set-ups than what you have planned.
My own DAW that I built a number of years ago is a 4790K based system with 32GB. 4 core, 8 thread and I am able to work with up to 64 stereo channels (and more but my work doesn’t usually require more than that) with plenty of effects and nearly all of my instruments being either soft synth or a combo of that and external midi instruments similarly to what you have described. I do not have to bother bouncing audio for playback until I start the mixing process (I still don’t have to but it is habit). So everything is being rendered in real time with no noticeable or game stopping latency on a somewhat ancient by today’s standards system.
Imagine what you can do with your proposed build. I’ve just started purchasing an x570/3950X based system for my next workstattion. ASRock, as I do require at least a TB header and use of a Titan Ridge AIC from Gigabyte for some of my gear.
I do not use either of these DAWs but it’s generally known that Bitwig and Reaper have been focusing heavily in multi/hyper threaded performance. Outpacing Live and Pro Tools even in this area.
This is a very long response and I’m sorry. I tend not to be as articulate as I and everyone else would like me to be. 8)
But one last thing. Creating audio, while similar in many ways, is a bit different than say video editing is. Similar in workflow and execution but very different as far as the sheer amount of data being worked with. It is far more intensive working with video than it is with audio.
This is why I can still achieve great things with such an old system but cannot do a darn thing video wise with it.
This is only my own opinion and I urge you to do more research but yes, I think an EPYC based system is probably overkill for most professional needs concerning the creation of music. I would also look into PCIe3 vs 4 a little more as well. While NVMe does take advantage of extra bandwidth, the initial load times of your project itself will benefit the most over anything else. Even at PCIe3 speeds, once your project is loaded and you decide to load an instrument from your 36GB library, you can finish loading the entire library (let alone one single instrument from it) before you can sweep your mouse pointer back over to the sequencer and draw in your first note or adjust the gain on a channel strip.
DSPs or PCIe audio interfaces of today and yesterday will really see no benefit of running on version 4 over 3. The same is true regarding video cards. Even the new and upcoming cards that will be PCIe4 will still work just fine on PCIe3.
You just need to settle on a CPU/Mobo combo that will give you the processing and slots you need. There are always break out boxes to consider as well.
But again, that is just my opinion and if you do build this system, I would hope you take pics and share with us.
Good luck and Cheers!
Right. I don’t think I’d need that level of expansion - it’d be nice to see Thunderbolt / USB-4 support, though, then I could hook up an external expansion chassis if I ever needed it (presuming there are still lanes free)
Thanks very much for your insight, that is really helpful, and confirms some of what I’ve been researching.
To clarify, it’s not the library that is 36GB, it’s a single instrument that takes up 36GB. We’re talking very large hi-res samples with multiple velocity layers and alternate articulations.
Vienna setups usually involve a DAW on one computer and a hosting app with the libraries on another, and they’re connected via gigabit ethernet - like a mini cluster.
An EPYC system would be overkill for normal MIDI/audio for sure, but if you wanted to run the DAW and Vienna libraries on the same machine you start to see the need for all that extra pcie / memory headroom.
On the CPU tip, EPYCs can hit a more consistent boost frequency across all cores vs only 1 or 2 cores. Granted, it’s a lower top boost speed than overclocking a Ryzen, but I think I’d prefer well balanced cores to run multitrack audio.
All that said - coming from a 2010 Mac Pro (dual 6-core Westmere Xeons), this system would easily be 10x as powerful as my old one to start, so I see it as serving my needs for at least 5-7 years before I’d feel the need to upgrade.
OK, I understand the bandwidth constraints from a legacy system standpoint. Gigabit ethernet at best is equivalent to PCIe 3.0 x1 which is 1000mb/s. A single x16 PCIe 3.0 is 32GB/s and it is common for motherboards to have two or more of those with a few x4’s or x1’s. I would think that hosting instruments over even dual GB nics would still be a bottleneck over last gen typical PCIe 3.0 slot layouts.
I might be missing the buffering aspect as well on older systems. Ram capacity just a short while ago is massive compared to only a few short years ago as well and PCIe data rates wouldn’t matter as much if buffering couldn’t keep up anyway. Massive latency. So hosting libraries over ethernet could combat that to a great degree by sharing the load across two systems. I’m just thinking outloud here.
PCIe 4.0 is in the GT/s so ya, no issue at all there! 8)
I’m not disagreeing with you at all by any means. I clearly must be missing something as I’m not familiar with this specific setup. I’m very interested though and will do some reading on it.
Overspec’ing to increase lifetime usage is always nice to achieve. We both have systems that can attest to that.
Thank you for explaining further!
Cheers!
Hey! Thanks for the stats.
Just to clarify how Vienna Ensemble Pro (the hosting app) works, it’s not that it serves the samples over the network to the host DAW computer, it’s that it plays them on the secondary computer, then pipes multichannel audio back to the host over the network - so in theory gigabit E would be fine for that. Very similar in concept to Apple’s Mainstage or other VST-hosting apps.
They came up with it, basically because it was simply too CPU and memory intensive to run a DAW and load massive symphonic samples all on the same computer. I’m hoping with a system like this, you can. 
It worked pretty well under Linux (all I care about). Had to update BIOS once for new microcode. That’s about it. I figured I can always swap the motherboard down the line if I need Gen4 PCIe. Gen3x16 is plenty for my needs. IOMMU groups are perfect in case you wanna run VMs with pass-through.
Their support is very responsive, so far impressed.
Ingenious. I was just finally doing the reading and came back here. It all makes sense to me now and it’s rather cool!
I’m thinking Epyc is still excessive but it isn’t always about affordability. That system would last you a long while before anything shows it’s age. PCIe 4.0 is definitely a boon for your work scenario for sure. Possibly one of the few scenarios where it really does offer a benefit based on actual needs over theoretical ones.
Thanks and do follow up here when you finish.
Cheers!
Thanks! VMs are not really my thing but yeah, that is sort of what EPYC was built for.
How did you know there was new code to update the BIOS, btw? Do they send out email updates or is there software that automatically checks for updates, etc?
I’m a kernel dev and usually run latest Linux mainline. At one point it stopped working so I pinged their support since I suspected microcode updates that were part of newer linux-firmware. They sent me a beta BIOS with new microcode the same day. Pretty awesome support, imho.
I know nothing of this; some quick searching shows people running big sessions on ryzen 1st gen with no problems, but I dunno 
again, going by this rando video, everything looks kosher
It’s not the best solution, but you can wrap them to AAX with bluecat patchwork (i use it semi frequently and it works fine). If you have a ton of specific VSTs you need, I’d probably just go with Nuendo instead. Reaper is great, too. I use reaper for
I have much love for reaper
I would just make sure the RAM is on the QVL on the motherboard manufacturers website. Their are some timings that are set under the hood. Bad timings can cause surprisingly bad performance.
I used 8 x CT16G4RFD8293 for RAM and they work fine. Didn’t have a QVL entry back then. IIRC Bios let’s you set some of the timings by hand if you feel adventurous.
I know I tune all of my RAM. Their are secondary and turciary timings as well other stuff baked into the BIOS. GamersNexus tested multiple kids of non QVL good RAM across multiple boards on Ryzen. They even contacted the manufacturer of the RAM to get the stock profiles. I have had similar experiences in the past across multiple platforms.
Everything you need to know is in the first minute of the video but their is also supporting data if you keep watching. Its a very well put together video.
In any case Im glad to hear it was not a problem for you but I recomend being selective with RAM. You could end up wasting your time and money.
You also need to get lucky with FCLK silicon lottery. You need as high FCLK as possible with the ratios at 1:1:1.
Oh neat! As a regular user, though, how do people get updates? Do we even have to worry about it?
Thanks! That’s really informative. Yeah, I have licenses for Live and Reaper (and, I think, Waveform?) so I will test out a few and see which works best. In that respect it’s all about workflow for me.