Even putting aside processor requirements, orchestral libraries tend to be rather demanding on memory and one computer often struggles. These plug‑ins enabled musicians to employ VSL's instruments directly in their sequencer of choice, but also placed the entire burden of running the instruments on the sequencing computer. VSL originally made their libraries for other samplers, but later created a custom playback engine and released the Vienna Instruments plug‑ins. Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL) are well known for their sampled orchestral instruments.
But it's often hard to find a host application that does everything you want, and even harder to figure out the complexity of routing audio and MIDI between your extra systems. A common approach is to use an application specifically designed for hosting plug‑ins on your additional machines, since running a fully featured sequencer brings to mind sledgehammers and nuts. And while the answer of adding another computer to your rig may seem obvious, it is often anything but simple. One of the biggest problems when working with software instruments, in my experience, is that one computer is never enough.
Ensemble Pro opens up VSL's hosting technology to third‑party instruments and allows 32‑bit and 64‑bit Mac and Windows systems to communicate over a network, spreading the software instrument load.
