It took me a long time to decide to put this post together. I thought maybe it was me, but the more I talked to people, the more encouragement I received to bring this up for discussion.
I know it’s popular to use the term “slave” when referring to a vepro server or transport synch’d pro tools rig, but we as a group of enlightened people should challenge ourselves to be more aware of what we say, how it impacts people and be more technically accurate. I don’t have to describe the historical baggage the word “slave” has and in 2017 there is no context in which that word should be used in a positive or practical setting.
Cultural sensitivity aside, it’s in accurate when describing the relationship between a digital audio workstation and a secondary process or machine. The model that we are employing is known as client server, where a client sends a request and the server provides the answer to that request. In a vepro context your daw is sending a bunch of midi data and the vepro process/machine is serving up a response of an audio stream. It’s the same paradigm that is used when your web browser requests web pages from CineSamples for example. We don’t call it a web slave, but a web server.
If the computing world has evolved their terminology, I think we should follow suit and do the same. Not only would it be more technically accurate, but also more historically and culturally sensitive. Let’s call them vepro servers or hosts and synch’d pro tools print rigs. Thoughts?
