VE Pro Slave -- multi-instruments VS Multi INSTANCES

[timbani]

Hey all I'm new at using VE Pro 5 (running on a slave PC connected to my Mac Pro running Logic 9.17). But one thing I'm not clear on is this -- Right now, I load up ONE instance of VEP on my Slave, and it runs 3 or 4 instances of Kontakt. Each Kontakt instance is assigned to its own MIDI port and stereo output. That way I have 16 channels of Brass on one stereo channel (to Logic), 16 channels of strings, 16 channels of percussion, etc. I'm doing this using the 'Multiport Environment Layer for Logic" downloaded from this site, and it's almost working great (- the almost being automation issues I haven't sorted out yet). Is that the "normal" way of running VE Pro on a slave machine? Seems I read more about people running multiple INSTANCES of VE Pro itself on the slave machine, ie. one VEP instance for 'Strings' one for 'Percussion', etc etc. Why would you pick this method over my current setup? Are there advantages in speed, responsiveness, or workflow? Just curious. And are there any good tutorials or videos anyone can point me to for the Logic/VE Pro setup? So far I haven't found many that are clear or concise enough to be useful... thanks all.

[Ashermusic]

As a  long time VE  Pro user, I was excited about the Multiport method and switched to it on both my slave PC and my Mac to work with Logic Pro 9. I even wrote an article about it for MacPro Video's Hub.

But I have returned to multiple instances because I became convinced that in the end having more instances gives me more flexibility to create alternative metaframes and better overall voice count performance.

On my slave PC, my present template has 7 separate instances from an SSD for EW's Hollywood Strings, Hollywood Brass & Hollywood Orchestral Woodwinds.

Similarly on my Mac, my present template has 6 separate instances for Kontakt based orchestral string, winds, brass, and percussion libraries. Everything else, synths, guitar, bass, piano libraries, etc. loads directly in Logic.

It works great.

[timbani]

Cool - thanks for the reply Jay. I was thinking the same thing-- that the virtue of separate instances is that you could save different metaframes for strings/brass/percussion etc, and then have more flexibility to swap individual pieces in and out on a project by project basis. Instead of having one be-all metaframe for each project. In your setup, which method do you use to address and automate the VE Pro instruments from Logic? I've started to think the old school "create a midi multi-instrument and cable it to the master instrument" method is better than Logic's newer method of multi-timbral instrument handling. Mostly coz using a transformer to turn cc7 into cc11 makes fader automation simpler... thanks again for the input.

[Cyril Blanc]

Here is a few rules I have made doing days of tests

1) On a single computer, if you think in the future to go to MIR Pro, it is better to have the VEP server running one VEP

2) if you dont use MIR PRO it is better to have multiple VE PRO in the VEPRO server !

3) If you get in trouble(clicks, pops and hanging note) with the Multi port you can use IAC

4) If you have a slave and thinking to move to MIR PRO, it is better to use the fastest computer as a slave and put Logic on the slowest one

CC7 converter to CC11 is a good solution

Hope this help

[timbani]

thanks for the info -- I'll try to follow the rules and see how it goes... So far I'm using the multi-port enviro layer in Logic with more success than the 'event input' plugin.

[gs_vsl]

I used to try to cram everything into as few instances as possible, but I am running into a bug that causes midi messages to get lost. See the following:

VE Pro missing midi messages