If using the I/O plug-in on each of, say, four Logic instances takes up too much CPU, then maybe the workaround is to record MIDI into each instance - but to set up a screenset with four horizontal quarter-screen Arrange windows. In other words, you have four panels laid out one on top of each other like four bricks piled up. Only one will be active at a time, but you can see the other three.

This still seems like a giant PITA, unfortunately.

Evan,
I found the IAC to be useless in this situation. It will not act like a real virtual port, but is more like a copy of your physical interfaces. For instance, if your midi controller is connected to your midi interface port one, then no matter how you patch or how many IAC busses you create, none of them but the buss that corresponds to the physical input connected to the controller can receive that signal. It looks like I am going to have to use IAC to sync PT and LOGIC to chase one another, but to set up a looped playback Logic IAC was not helpful. To add to s8t’s point, you must keep midi patch bay open for the ports to be active.

Stupid8Track,
I have an RME DSP 9652 on the 2nd G5. It has three adat outs, but the problem is the Digi 192 i/o only offers two adat ins for a total of 16 digital channels at once. Well, I guess 16 inputs is not THAT much of a problem  Keep in mind that I configured this thing based on what one logic could do. That means I only have 4 midi i/o (because 64 would have been plenty the other way), and I was planning on using all 16 digital ins for one Logic. Now I’m thinking more in terms of 8 stereo busses split among 4 or more logics. Still not bad, but now I wish I had more midi channels.

About the i/o plug in, yes it is necessary on all the logics. What Christian posted about the selected track having audio priority makes it all clear. That’s why the i/o plug seems to not matter when the track is selected, but in a loop the difference is obvious. I’ve not noticed the environment causing latency issues. The latency seems to be a byproduct of the audio engine and not midi related. I’ve also not noticed a huge boost in cpu usage, but as I push this setup harder I will check that as well.

Aubrey

ok. I'll see if this helps me any. Thanks.

But still I am pretty sure for some reason I cannot figure out how to go OUT of a virtual port from Logic. Can you explain that to me?

Thanks,
Evan Evans

evan

in midi patchbay, select 'add a patch' in the window, then at the top right of the screen where it says MIDI Input: select "Edit Virtual Inputs".

in that window, create a new input and name it "VIRTUAL 1 in". then select the Outputs window and create a new output called "VIRTUAL 1 out".

now, back in the main Midi Patchbay window, select the patch you added before and in the MIDI Input select VIRTUAL 1 in. then in the MIDI Output select "VIRTUAL 1 out".

leave midi patchbay open and go to logic. in your environment, create a multi-instrument and select each of the channels to enable them (the channels in the multi instrument icon box). then in the side bar on the left of the screen, in the Port setting for the MultiInstrument, select "Virtual 1 in". go to your arrange page and select a track and make the MultiInstrument channel 1 active on that channel and leave that channel selected.

then in the second logic in the environment, go to the Clicks and ports layer and disconnect the Sum cable from the Physical Input by selecting the cable and hitting delete (make sure that cables are selected in the environment/view window so you can see the cable to disconnect it).

then go to your layer with your AI channels on it and add a Physical Input to it (environment/new menu) and then add a channel splitter. now here is where it gets a bit clumsy. you have to cable the specific input port which corresponds with Virtual 1 Out to the channel splitter. most likely, this is the first port after the end of your physical ports. i, for example, have a unitor8 hooked up to my system, so my first virtual port is port 9 on my physical input.

but as Christian points out, IAC might come before these midi patchbay ports. the easiest thing to do is to create a monitor object (environment/new/monitor) and cable each port you think could be the midi patchbacy port to it. then press your master keyboard and you should see notes in that monitor. if/when you do, cable from this monitor to the channel splitter, then from each individual port on the channel splitter to a specific audio instrument channel.

then just insert EXS/instruments on each of the AI channels and place an I/O plug on each (being sure to select an output within the plug and then disable the plug), press play in the 2nd logic and go back to the first.

you should now be able to play each of the logics in the 2nd song by just selecting different outputs of the MultiInstrument in the first logic.

hopefully i haven't missed anything.

edit: yes, as aubrey says, disconnect the SUM output of the Physical Input object in all logics. then in the master, cable the physical input port of your master controller into your sequencer (in my case, the master controller comes in Unitor8 port 1, so it is port 1 on the physical input, so i cable that - not the SUM - to the sequencer).

S8T,

Thanks, but I got it working a few hours before your post actually. the main thing was to understand that to SEND to the other Logics I had to select a MultiInstrument that for some reason in the port settings was set to an INPUT. Go figure.

Also, to understand that the SUM needs to be cut and that the Physical Input represents PORTS not MIDI Channels.

In the SLAVE Logics I also created a NO OUTPUT Channel and made sure that that was the selected active track. This is so that notes will only sound if coming from the virtual MIDI cable and not an echo from the MIDI master Keyboard.

I also concur that the I/O Plugin seems ot have almost NO EFFECT on CPU usage, however it does indeed remove the latency issue.

I am using a G4 Dual 1.42Ghz. And it is looking pretty promising.

I am finally happy to be able to use my own invention! I'm glad other's beat me to the punch, I was too busy and this idea needed to be fulfilled.



S8T,

So you think it's a useable idea? It seems to be for me. Are you on G5 or G4?

Evan Evans

S8T,

That's because when I already had it working I posted about Logic not having an OUT selecteable port. Anyway, that puts it around at least 1:15 before your post. [] But what-ever.

As far as Audio Streaming from Logic to Logic, there are quite a few solutions out there. I am not worried in the slightest about this, especially since it could be solved with an audio cards D I/O. For instance, I have one audio card. In the second Logic I can set the output to my DIGITAL OUT. In the first Logic I can set a bus to recieve the contents of DIGITAL IN. Sure there's a potential loopback if you're not careful, but that's a backup method and it'll work.

Have you tried JACK TOOLS yet?
http://www.jackosx.com/

Evan Evans

P.S. So do you think my topic title is aptly named now?

Well, S8T, if things go as theory dictates, your Dual G5 ought to do as much as 40 Giga Racks, but we'll see. My calculations say approx. 40 GigaStudio setups.

Also, I hope that users who begin to embark on this kind of setup become plentiful enough to where Apple will allow Logic to do this all in one app in the first place!!!!!!

Evan Evans

ok, after a long day of setting things up, i have some preliminary results.

i created 4 songs of 64 instruments each (one song each for strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion). many of these 64 instruments were ALL instruments, for those of you keeping score. and i created environments such that each instrument had its own channel and a corresponding master logic channel which could send midi to it. i put an I/O plug on each channel (sending to output and bypassed).

i then loaded each of these four songs into a separate Logic application and loaded my master song with its 256 instruments in a fifth.

i then created a single 17 4 bar line and duplicated that to 90 different instruments, adjusting the transpose setting so the line would play its associated instument (sorry, too tired and out of time to create individual lines for each instrument - hopefully tomorrow). and then i hit play.

and promptly got core audio overload and audio/midi sync errors. after much trouble shooting, i determined that i think the I/O plug causes the audio/midi sync errors (there is a chance that it was caused by a conflict between the sessions being 48K and the samples being 44.1, i don't know. i changed all songs to 44.1 and then disabled the I/O plugs).

at the very least, the I/O plugs, used on such a massive scale, really do cause a punishing level of CPU. so i removed them from all the songs. still got overloads.

so then i staggered, ever so slightly, all 90 parts so they would start at slightly different times within the first bar and then loop from there. and after again getting OS X to recognize all necessary samples (the old start/stop/start routine - though with such a huge load, it was more than 7 starts to get all the songs/channels ready) -

it worked. i could stream 90 channels from a choice of 256 instruments.

of course, most of the time, real world situations will hardly be so demanding (90 of the same line?).

anyway, my CPU was totally maxed with 90 instruments streaming away so screen redraws were very very slow. and i'm not convinced that i can't load anymore songs/applications/instruments into virtual memory - i spent all day building these four songs (among other things) so that is all i could test at once. but the damned things played.

for the record, these 5 logics took up almost 10.5 GB of virtual memory space (the system needed 14.5 GB during this).

also, i disabled everything that wasn't necessary in the slave logics (like software monitoring, 24 bit record, sample accurate automation, and delay compensation [yes, i tried the I/O plugs with DC both enabled and disabled and saw no difference]).

i'll try to confirm tomorrow if the audio/midi sync errors were from the I/O plugs or from the session sample rate. i think it is the I/O plug, but i'm not absolutely certain. i'll try to get a better max on the RAM load too.

i'll also try to determine the best settings for streaming. for instance, i saw much better performance with an I/O buffer setting of 256 instead of 2048. will check into disk buffer settings, process buffer settings, etc.

more to explore, but for now i just wanted to confirm that 256 instruments totalling about 9GB of sample heads have been loaded, each of which could be played, and 90 of which could be streamed simultaneously.

kinks to work out, but aren't there always?

cheers

S8T,

You can also QUIT the FINDER. And oyu might try doing ALL of this in a NEW USER so it's not clogged with extras and freeware crud.

Also, be sure to renice each application just a little.

And you MUST up your maxvnodes, etc., according to my old posts. The system will not be able to handle that many open files without upping them.

As far as 40 Giga Setups, I am referring to voice count, # of insts, RAM, load sizes, layers, the whole thing, but only on P4 based PCs. But, duh, even if it replaced 5 maxxed out P4s it would be a huge cost savings and certainly something to consider for those not platform brainwashed.



Evan Evans

Aubrey

what are your settings in EXS' VM? mine are set to fast, less. i can only guess that yours are higher because i am having no trouble loading 64 instruments, of which at least 16 are legato/performance set and at least 16 are ALL. my largest VM size is just over 3 GB (the actual RAM used really doesn't seem to actually mean all that much). if you need more specifics i can look into it for you tomorrow.

Evan

i plan on testing this again tomorrow after a fresh boot. today was at the end of the day and, after testing, i had safari and mail open without trouble.

not sure how to quit finder. also, is that smart? does it really save all that much space?

as for maxvnodes, i'll up them buy i've samplemerged the whole library so not sure how much it will help. but i'll up them nevertheless. and renice each app a little, too.

Nick

yes, i got midi bouncing around successfully using the midi patchbay method which was mentioned previously. i made a post about setting it up back on page 9. it was a bit of a pain to set up - and you really do need to disconnect ALL sum cables from all your physical inputs in all your songs.

also, it is wise to have all 64 instruments in the slave songs on the same layer in the environment so that you can connect to each channel splitter from the same physical input. i tried copy/pasting it from one environment layer to the next only to find my midi wasn't getting through.

cheers