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  • Vienna Ensemble Routing to Reaper

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    Hi, My DAW is Reaper and I'd like to route individual channels of a single instances of Vienna Ensemble (used as a plugin in Reaper) to separate Reaper MIDI tracks. The Vienna Ensemble manual addresses this issue for Pro Tools, Logic, DP, and Cubase. It doesn't for Reaper. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks. Christian
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    Hi Christian,

    As a fellow Reaper user, maybe I can help.

    If I understand you correctly, you can do it as follows:

    1. Set up your Vienna Ensemble instance with all of the instruments assigned to various channels as desired.

    2. Open the I/O routing window (on either the Vienna Ensemble track or one of your destination instrument tracks). It should be on the track control panel. In the default theme, it should appear as a square "I/O" icon between the track name and the track fader.

    3. For argument's sake, I'll assume you opened the I/O on the Vienna Ensemble track (it is easier to do many at once that way).

    Under "- Receives -" click on "Add new receive..." and select your other track with the MIDI on it. If you do it from the MIDI track instead, you need to do the same thing but under "- Sends -".

    4. You should now have additional options appearing just below the menu you clicked on. The one you want to focus on is the MIDI (bottom right) part. Change the destination channel to the relevant channel you would like to use in Vienna Ensemble.

    5. [Optional] If you like, you can also click on the left Audio menu (probably looking like "1/2") and choose "None". Then the MIDI icon turns green, which tells you it's a MIDI-only connection. This step is entirely optional.

    6. Add another Receive until you have all of the tracks there.

    Then you should have instruments happily feeding MIDI into Vienna Ensemble.

    Please let me know if you have any problems. It should be fairly straightforward once you get the hang of it, as Reaper's routing is incredibly flexible and powerful.

    All the best,

    Julio
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    Hi Julio, Thank you very much for your assistance. I'll follow your directions and let you know. All the best, Christian
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    Thanks again for your advice Julio, it was a great help. I do have one additional routing question: now that I have the Vienna Ensemble channels routed to individual Reaper tracks, is it possible to create FX chains for those tracks in Reaper (as opposed to using the Effects insert in the Ensemble plugin)? I ask because when I go into the I/O of one of the MIDI tracks in Reaper (e.g. a Bassoon on Track 4 "Out 5/6") and I "Add new send" (e.g. IR-1 Reverb on Track 19) I am unable to successfully route the signal. However, if I use Vienna Instruments as a plugin instead of Ensemble, I am able to complete the FX chain as I just described. If you have any further suggestions, I would appreciate it. Cheer, Christian
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    You won't have any luck adding a send on a midi track to a reverb track. Watch this video to get the concept of how you'll need to route things. Even though this tutorial is for Kontakt, the idea is the same. After you've watched the video and you still need some help, let us know and we can probably answer any specifics for you. I use VE with Reaper and am familiar with what you need to do, but I really think you'll be able to apply the ideas in this tutorial to get yourself running.


    Video tutorial for Kontakt and Reaper

    Glad to help though if you need anything.

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    Thanks a lot winknotes, the video is very informative. I guess I need to first render the MIDI tracks in Reaper to audio tracks to be able to create FX chains in Reaper like I am able to do with other VIs. I do see a potential compositional work flow question arising from this technique (that's if I understand the concept correctly), but I'll do some experimenting in Reaper with Vienna armed with this new info before I bother you with a possibly idle question (and thank you very much for your time in responding to my query). Cheers, Christian.
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    You don't have to actually render the midi tracks to audio tracks to accomplish this. 

    1.  Insert your virtual instrument as done on the video and let Reaper create all the audio outputs. 

    2.  Load your instruments in VE and in VE's mixer change each track's output to NET1/2, NET3/4, etc.  This step will route the various VE channel's sounds to the audio outputs Reaper created for you in step 1. 

    3.  Start creating midi tracks as posted earlier, OR I believe you can have Reaper do it for you by opening the FX panel for your VE track and in one of the menus you can have it create midi tracks for this effect. 

    4.  So now you should have 1 track for VE, 16 tracks of midi all routed to VE and 32 tracks of audio.  Again make sure you change the output of your VE channels to NET1/2, NET3/4, etc. or you won't hear sound coming out of each audio channel you've created.  If you don't change the routing inside VE everything will sound out of the first audio track Reaper created in step 1. 

    Hope this makes sense.  If I have time I'll put together some sort of tut on how to do this.  I don't get the impression many here use Reaper, but I know there are a few of us out there :)
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    Thanks again, I'll give it a whirl and see how it goes. A tutorial would be awesome, please let me know. I really appreciate your help; I'm a recent convert (addict actually) to Reaper from DP and Pro Tools, and while I love the power, flexibility, and general ethos surrounding Reaper, I do find sometimes that the learning curve can be a little steep. Cheers.
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    Here's a tutorial. I'm not very good at making them but hopefully it will be clear for you.

    VSL_REAPER_TUT
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    Wow. Your tutorial was excellent. It was right to the point, and I got things running smoothly right away. Thanks greatly. I don't know if it's your bag or not, but perhaps you should think about doing tutorials for $$$. The insertion of text for the important step by step procedures was really effective. Cheers, Christian.
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    Hi - i need this tutorial too, but the link isn't working.. Could you post it? thx!
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    Link updated.  Sorry for the inconvenience.
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    Hi - I've mangaged the first part of instructions above. In my particular instance, I have 1 track in reaper with VEP being feed by 4 midi tracks (from reaper) which trigger 4 midi channels in VEP (sampletank.) All audio returns by way of VEP's Master Bus to arrive in reaper's VEP track - whew - thanks for the instructions. What I don't have is access to Youtube - the country where I'm traveling for the next 30 days has restricted youtube - as such, I am unable to watch the tutorial cited above. My objective (like the Reaper user before me in this thread)is to return VEP tracks (midi triggered from Reaper) into audio files back into seperate audio tracks into Reaper. For the life of me, I'm unable to snag audio from VEP as anything but through the VEP track in Reaper, feed by VEP's Master Bus. This is the same problem that I'm having with my 'audio' only tests, ha ha, at least I'm performing the wrong procedure consistently...regardless of it's origins being either midi or audio. In VEP I pick a sampletank channel, change output from '1Master Bus' to a pair of outputs - in my case as I'm typing 'OUT1/OUT2' and that's as far as I get - I don't know how to return 'OUT1/OUT2' into a channel of choice within Reaper. any thoughts folks would care to offer would be considered a fine X-mas gift! winknotes, you've cited 'Net1, Net2, etc in both this thread and the other thread that you were helping me out a few days ago in - I don't see these options for output - perhaps I've have an incorrect setting...somewhere...scratching head...but not giving up
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    The simplest thing to do is to let Reaper create the midi and audio tracks for the plugin. 

    So if you start with a track and add FX (VEP - 32 out).  In the options menu of the FX window there are a couple of options that let you do this.  So you'll end up with 16 channels already configured as midi tracks (sending to the VEP track) and 32 channels already configured as audio tracks (recieving from the VEP track).  Each of the audio tracks is configured to recieve from VEP on each of the stereo tracks VEP is capable of sending.  So in VEP if you go to the mixer view at the bottom of each channel strip you'll probably see MASTER BUS as the output for each VEP channel.  That's really a sort of drop down menu where you can change the output to NET1/NET2, NET3/NET4, NET5/NET6 and so on up to all 32 of the stereo pairs.  Just change the output of each channel in VEP to send to it's respective audio track in Reaper. 

    I hope this helps.  The video would probably be clearer than my ramblings when you're able to watch it.
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    hi - thanks! getting closer i have created a vep 32 out track, i have a vep instance up and running with sampletank, i have changed the output of each sound/track in vep - each sampletank sound now arrives into seperate reaper tracks (thanks for this!) - provided I trigger each sound with the sampletank keyboard inside VEP or my virtual Reaper Keyboard but I'm shut-out using my physical keyboard = when I attpent to trigger sounds with my physical keyboard, I can only do so from midi channel 1 (my first instrument in Sampletank) As mentioned, I am able to trigger midi channels of choice using the virtual keyboad - I change the channel and the different sounds in VEP trigger, flowing to Reaper into the desired channels Guess it's a box somewhere unticked - ha ha - I'm on it fingers crossed - thanks for helping me along...still searching...getting closer...
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    ha ha - OK...I'm slow but I do get there - all is working fine - it was my keyboard - i got so used to being lazy and not having to assign a midi channel (a habit that i picked up in reason) that I simply didn't think that this was an essential step (duh!) it has been a very interesting last few days - I thank all that have helped - I hope to return the fav someday...or at least pass on a tad of what you all have shared to other newbies - I'm smiling! Merry X-MAS!
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    @Filmusic said:

    ha ha - OK...I'm slow but I do get there - all is working fine - it was my keyboard - i got so used to being lazy and not having to assign a midi channel (a habit that i picked up in reason) that I simply didn't think that this was an essential step (duh!) it has been a very interesting last few days - I thank all that have helped - I hope to return the fav someday...or at least pass on a tad of what you all have shared to other newbies - I'm smiling! Merry X-MAS!

    I don't think that is a necessary step actually.  If you right click on the record button on any midi channel you'll see a context menu.  If you check "Monitor Input" it should fix things so you don't have to change the midi channel of your keyboard.  You might also want to check the midi input in that same context menu. 

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    i certainly will follow your direction on this...oh...what i'd give to get back to being lazy - thanks!
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    Hi Guys, I must be crazy - I've been trying desperately to get the Reaper->Vienna Midi routing working properly, but to no avail. Here is what I want to do: 1)Have multiple Midi tracks in Reaper. For example: Strings 1 Strings 2 Brass 1 Brass 2 2) host multiple instances of a multitimbral vst instrument (Kontakt 5 in this case). So, for example: Vienna Plugin 1: KONTAKT 5 Strings 1 (Kontakt Midi channel 1) Strings 2 (Kontakt Midi Channel 2) Vienna Plugin 2: Kontakt 5 Brass 1 (Kontakt Midi channel 1) Brass 2 (Kontakt Midi Channel 2) Now, I can't for the life of me figure out how to send midi on track i *just* to the strings - without it going to the brass. I realize this may have something to do with ports, but it doesn't appear to be working. Maybe I'm not understanding the port routing correctly in Reaper *and* in Vienna? Any help greatly appreciated! T
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    Hi Julio and Christian, I was happy to find this thread, as I am having a similar problem routing MIDI from Reaper to VEP5. I followed your steps, but there seems to be a step missing: if I'm using several multitimbral midi plugins in Vienna, how do I route the MIDI from reaper properly? The problem is when I go to map my MIDI channels in Reaper, I can assign midi channels out of course, but when I select BUS2->Midi2, in theory this would go to… Brass Ensemble Short, Right? But the midi never arrives on any channel other than 1. I can’t seem to invoke the proper routing communication between Reaper’s MIDI Out and Vienna’s MIDI in. Is there something I’m missing? I have checked the manuals for a REAPER setup, and the forums here - but none seems to address the routing of multitimbral midi. I don't want just MIDI channel 2 out - because that will play back String Ens Short *and* Brass Ens short at the same time! Any input appreciated, T