Vienna Symphonic Library Forum
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  • Audio using Hardware please - I just want a 64bit shell and Midi over Lan

    Why doesn't VEP give you the option to send your audio via your hardware? Either allow the standalone to use the MIDi over Lan ports, or let the server give you the option to route to audio instead of LAN. I don't believe in audio over LAN - it doesn't work. I don't want to be playing in music with latency. Even if VEP is clever enough to compensate on playback. For a moment I thought this VEP worked. I just installed it yesterday - out of desperation since MusicLab software doesn't seem to work now on 64bit Windows 7 with Cubase or Pro Tools. Please give me tips on how to set up the LAN properly. Please tell me it needs to be gigabit (been there done that) or that I should spend money on a gigabit switch (again been there done that). Disable firewall maybe? Doesn't make any difference. Audio hardware - simple. LAN - jump through hoops to save a few buck on a sound card.

  •  Does the standalone not allow MOL then? I thought that it did. It certainly allows hardware MIDI input.

    DG


  • I thought MusicLab's MOL wasn't working in 64bit Windows 7 - because it isn't doing what it should inside Cubase or Pro Tools. But it seems to work properly within VEP in Standalone - (praise the Lord!). So I've only wasted 200 Euros buying a piece of software for Midi Over Lan that doesn't work. Isn't the Standalone free? But on the plus side, I might actually be able to do my fulfill my contract this week. VEP in standalone itself doesn't show any of its own MOL inputs (because you have to have some sort of server client arrangement for that) - so it only shows the hardware inputs you have. So my solution is currently - use Music Lab's Midi-Over-Lan with VEP in Standalone mode (replacing V-Stack of course). Am I missing something here? Should I have been able to achieve as good a result using VEP Server?

  •  Sorry, I've totally lost what you're asking now.

    AFAIK:

    1. MoL works on W7 64bit (according to the supported OS on their Website).
    2. There is no way that I know of to get audio out of the server version of VEP, other than using the LAN connection.
    3. The standalone should accept MoL as well as hardware MIDI. This way you can route the audio however you like. Using VEP in this way is just an alternative to V-Stack.

    Am I missing something?

    BTW what sample player are you using with VEP?

    DG


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    @composermark said:

    Should I have been able to achieve as good a result using VEP Server?
    you should be able to achieve a very excellent result using VE Pro on a slave using the server, instead of MOL at all. I doubt MOL gets midi over the network better, or VE Pro would not be very viable in the marketplace.

    I don't get what you're after with all these workarounds behind the premise 'VEP doesn't work', 'audio over LAN doesn't work'. I assure you it works very well with lower latency than I've ever had with virtual instruments.


  • Yes - well I have gigabit Lan connection between two computers. I'm not using a switch at the moment - I've bridged two connections on one computer, allowing connection to a router. But the computers are directly linked by ethernet cable. I've also tried it as a simple crossover cable arrangement.

    For a time, I thought I had cracked the situation. One of my cards wasn't actually running at 1000 mbps. But once I forced it to, I got a very usable result.

    Today though, it was back to an unusable latency. That is I'm talking about playing a note, and the sound coming late. It's not as bad as it was when I first opened this thread (because I was obviously at 100 mbps then) - but it isn't good enough. Not a patch on the results I'm used to getting from simple Midi Over Lan - but using an audio interface in each slave computer.

    This was my big issue with FX Teleport. I spent all the money on a gigabit switch and gigabit NICs and MOBOs with built in gigabit LAN but found the thing unreliable.

    I'm seeing the same unreliability here. And what are we supposed to do, bounce around for days on a forum, debating whether it is this setting or that hardware that is the problem? Spend money on something else - does it fix it - maybe / maybe not.

    I simply can't see how LAN technology (which requires every bit of information to be put into a packet, received, acknowledged etc.) no matter how theoretically fast it is, can be a substitute for sending a digital signal or analog for that matter over an audio or digital cable. The only conversion there is Digital to Analog - and if your sound card is good, you get very little latency.


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    @Another User said:

    BTW what sample player are you using with VEP?
    I'm using Play 3.

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    @composermark said:

    I simply can't see how LAN technology (which requires every bit of information to be put into a packet, received, acknowledged etc.) no matter how theoretically fast it is, can be a substitute for sending a digital signal or analog for that matter over an audio or digital cable. The only conversion there is Digital to Analog - and if your sound card is good, you get very little latency.

    I get latency with goodly sized projects in a full mixing scenario of around 10 milliseconds combined. For most things it's negligible. If I needed bigger projects than I do, and saw the need to add more latency, I would farm out to an additional slave and be pretty confident of the same level of performance with the latency I enjoy now. I know from working day in day out with VE Pro, that it works. I do not have problems with it. It is completely stable and I just make music with it. The software is reliable, all the time. NB: I'm just an end user, I have no vested interest. 

     

    You have an idea that it doesn't work. I don't know why you get the unsatisfactory results you do specifically, you have complications I have no knowledge of [I've bridged two connections on one computer, allowing connection to a router/ crossover cable arrangement.'] but you seem to have made conclusions about how well it works or doesn't following your idea it must be problematic. 

     

    How does it work just connecting with a single cable? BTW, it must be a CAT6. It can't be a CAT5 and expect it to work right.


  • I thought I was the only one who wants to use VE-pro in server mode

    but run audio over ADAT.

    I also thought I was the only one who can't deal with the latency of VEPRO over ethernet.

    Please VE-PRO can we have this added to furture updates??

    thanks
    Dave 


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    @civilization 3 said:

    How does it work just connecting with a single cable? BTW, it must be a CAT6. It can't be a CAT5 and expect it to work right.

    Well I managed to get a much better result now. There were a few other issues that were fouling up the works, like Cubase choosing the default ASIO driver - which of course has appalling latency.

    I will definitely want to try CAT6 though. I don't think the cables I had lying around here in the UK are. I have CAT6 cables back in LA. Maybe this will sort out one remaining issue I've experienced, which is that changing the tempo in a project causes the instruments on the Slave to glitch (audio pop).


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    @ddk said:

    I thought I was the only one who wants to use VE-pro in server mode

    but run audio over ADAT.

    I also thought I was the only one who can't deal with the latency of VEPRO over ethernet.

    Please VE-PRO can we have this added to furture updates??

    thanks
    Dave 

    Yes that would be ideal I think. At least if VEP in server could offer that alternative. Then it would still respond to all the extra sync data you need with your project plus MIDI, but that your audio has its own separate channel.

    One thing I'd like to be able to do though, is route the separate Mic positions in the Play libraries to different outputs in VEP. I can't find a way to do that yet. I can only change the overall output of the VST instance.


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    @ddk said:

    I thought I was the only one who wants to use VE-pro in server mode

    but run audio over ADAT.

    I also thought I was the only one who can't deal with the latency of VEPRO over ethernet.

    Please VE-PRO can we have this added to furture updates??

    Not possible, for synchronization reasons. In server mode, the host software (Cubase,Logic etc) is the sync source - it sends VEPro a chunk of data, which VEPro processes and sends back. VEPro is then not caring about timing. In standalone mode, the sound card is the sync source - it continually asks for blocks of processed data in realtime. Combining the two is not possible, without additional buffering and latency.

    So, if you want to use your soundcard outs - use VePro standalone and MoL or ipMIDI. If you want to run midi/audio over network - use VEPro Server.


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    @composermark said:

    One thing I'd like to be able to do though, is route the separate Mic positions in the Play libraries to different outputs in VEP. I can't find a way to do that yet. I can only change the overall output of the VST instance.

    VePro supports auxiliary outputs from VST/AU instruments. If your instrument (Play) offers the feature to send different mic pairs to different outputs, you can create tracks in VePro to handle them. This is explained in the VEPro manual.


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    @MS said:

    VePro supports auxiliary outputs from VST/AU instruments. If your instrument (Play) offers the feature to send different mic pairs to different outputs, you can create tracks in VePro to handle them. This is explained in the VEPro manual.

    I think I found this now - on page 23. You have to create Input channels within the VEP mixer - and then you can see the different outputs of the VSTi as possible Inputs for that channel.


  • It is explained on page 24 of the manual. Just insert an audio input channel, and choose the additional Play output as the input to the channel.


  • Also, not to overstate the obvious, but with a stable ethernet connection you can get more audio channels over VE's Audio-Over-LAN than most interfaces with ADAT. Sky's the limit.

  • Indeed I'm sure you are right. However the fact remains I'm still on this forum trying to solve and track down mystery pops in slave VSTis when I change tempo too quickly in my sequencer - a problem I never had with hardware audio.

    Is it the VSTi? Is it the sequencer? Is it VEPro? Is it the quality of onboard Gigabit Lan interfaces of ones motherboard? Or how the motherboard handles the data stream? Is it the network cables?

    Maybe it's the janitor?

    My point being that Pro Audio card does what it says on the tin. It may have its limitations and you can always get driver issues with your choice of OS and software, but the Pro card manufacturers tend to work hard at ironing those things out. I've never really had an audio card problem with multiple different manufacturers over many years.


  • I understand that this is not possible, for synchronisation issues... however, would the following be possible: I want to work on a [cubase|sonar|...] project on the master pc. I instantiate the VEPro plugin. In the VEPro gui, I tell a server to launch the VEPro standalone on the pc the server is running. On saving the project, the Server requests the VEPro standalone state, sends it to the client/Plugin, which sends it to the host, so that the Standalone VEPro state on the slave gets saved with the host project on the master. (It would be like saving the standalone VEPro project to a file and sending this file to the client) On opening the master project, the Plugin requests the server to launch VEPro standalone and sends it the saved VEPro standalone state. (It's like sending the VEPro standalone project file over to the slave and launching the Standalone VEPro with this project file) It is just necessary to have the Standalone VEPro launched on the slave and have it loaded a VEPro project file automatically whenever a DAW project on the master is opened that relies on the VEPro standalone on the slave. No need for transfering audio over LAN to a standalone VEPro. Audio will be transfered with two synced audio cards.

  • Of course it would be possible. It is nothing we plan to implement, however.


  • oh bummer... I once checked the demo as I already use two PCs, both equipped and linked with a RME HDSP Digiface by 24 x ADAT. It was the first thing I encountered: No Audio Hardware with the VEPro client. No standalone instantiation with a DAW project. I always have to manually load a "slave project" on the slave PC, on my slave DAW app, when I load a master project on my master PC within my master DAW app, with the slave project corresponding individually to a master project... quite a hassle... bummer However, are there any details available how automation in VEPro 5 is presented to the user? Are automation parameters of plugins instantiated in a VEPro client available via automation parameters of the VEPro plugin? Any details how automation is presented to the user? (I come to think about the limitation of the number of automation paramaters per plugin ~ 1000) I think about opening a plugin GUI via the VEPro plugin on the master, without audio processing, but sending automation data of that plugin via the VEPro plugin to the plugin instance on the slave. (So you see the plugin GUI on the master, but have audio processed on the slave) like Cockos ReaMote does? I already have the demo license for VEPro 4 on my USB key used. Will there be a new demo license for VEPro 5? Thanks!