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  • Pro Tools HD routing questions

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    Hi all, I'm fairly new to VEP I've jumped straight in to 6 and this is my first post. I have an issue with routing and i'm trying to work out if this is a limitation with Pro Tools 10 HD or if I'm doing something incorrectly. 

    I have a small netork of machines running VEP 6. My machines are listed below.

    1x Mac Pro 12 core 5,1: Pro Tools HD 3 machine running PT 10.3.10 and OSX 10.8.5 connected to 2 x Aurora 16 AD/DA. 32 i/o in total. 48Gb RAM, 5TB SATA RAID over 3 internal drives. 

    1x Mac Pro 8 Core 2,1: VEP Slave machine, OSX 10.9.5. 8Gb RAM, 4TB SATA RAID over 3 drives. Kontakt library plus other kontakt instruments.

    1 x late 2012 Mac Mini VEP Slave machine, OSX 10.12.5. 16Gb, 9TB Promise RAID over Thunderbolt. This is my main slave machien which runs Kontakt, East West, Arturia through VEP etc etc 

    I'm running VEP 6.0.15864 on all machines as to keep the same version. This is due to my Pro Tools HD machine being on mountain Lion and I can't upgrade that machine due to Pro Tools 10. I have all machines over CAT6 cabling via a Netgear unmanaged 1GbE switch. All machines IP's are statacally assigned, the network and performance is very good, the problem I am facing is the routing anf the amount of outputs avaliable to me.

    Currently I set up a single instance in VEP, add 15 more channels via the + sign, Shift Control Cmd the outputs so they appear as 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 until 32-33. Add my samples into Kontakt, assign the oupits to the Kontakt instruments which gives me 16 diferent articulations or instruments.

    Now in Pro Tools.

    I create 16 Insturment tracks, on the first track I create a multi mono VEP plug and connect to my VEP instance. I route my MIDI to correspnd to each track and I selet my inputs to correspnd to my VEP outputs 1-2, 3-4until 32-33. This gives me 16 channels. This all works absolutley fine, but. Is that it? Can I not add more outputs in Pro Tools to at least give me 32 stereo tracks instead of 16? seems very restrictive to only have 16. Is this a limitation with Pro Tools 10. I have tried to increase the number of outputs via the VEP prefs and I can see the track count increase within VEP but in Pro Tools It just crashes and it seems that I can only get 32 channels. 16 Stereo. 

    I'm sure I used to have more channels before. I have recently rebuilt the Pro Tools HD machine from the ground up. New OSX install, new fresh and clean Pro Tools install so I had to redo my Kontakt outputs and VEP outputs on the Pro Tools HD machine. Since that was rebuilt, I can only seem to get 32 channels. I have a Mac laptop running Pro Tools 12 (non HD) and I have experimented with rasing the channel count and I have been able to get 256 channels so far, surely my HD rig should have more outputs than a 10 year old Mac Pro?

    Is there another way to route instrumets from VEP, via Kontakt into Pro Tools. I have experimented with using for example, 16 kontakt instrmets each with their own MIDI in VEP, all out of a single pair of outputs 3-4, then in Pro Tools HD, create 16 Instrument channels, configure the MIDI for each and route them all so they have an input of 3-4 but I'm getting no sound from Instrument channel 2 thorugh to 4. All sound comes from the channel I have teh plug in connected to. 

    My original explination of how I route things would be far easier although It doesn't really represent how to mix an orchestra in the real world (you wouldn't have different mix channels from each different way a player bowed the cello ) But it makes sence in a virtual instrument world and I'm happy to proceed like that, if only I could get more outputs into Pro Tools. 

     

    Any help would be much appreciated 

    Thanks, Stuart 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

       
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    Would you say it's better to group instruments into one bus then send that out into pro tools. For example, all my violin articulations (16 in total) in 1 Kontakt all outputting to 3-4 then have correspnding midi or instumentchannel in Pro Tools so essentially having 1 mix channels for all of those 16 articulations?

    Thanks, Stuart 
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    Or perhaps using MIDI channels from instrument 2 onwards and using a stereo instrument track to monitor the sends?

    Any help or how other people use it with Pro Tools would be greatly appeciated 

     

    Thanks 
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    VSL Tech support. I've sent you a request for some help, could you please get back to me
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    Hi stuart

    I have protools as DAW on a mac and two PC slave's. I have difficulty understanding your set up, but I would try to limit the amount of stereo returns on an instance of VEPRO. I have a lot of instances on the slaves (eg string library A, string library B , different woodwind libraries, brass, etc... ) On protools: only instrument tracks with VEPRO to connect to slave.  

    Most of the time I  work with only 1 stereo return per slave instance (the more returns, the more cpu it takes from DAW) So my strings from  one library would return on 1 return , and the balance is made on the slave, and programmed with  expression or dynamics CC.

     eg for an instance of strings:  5 kontakts (VI1,VI2, ALTO,CELLO, CONTRA) and in each kontakt: midi1 legato, midi 2 shorts, midi 3 ....). If you want them seperatly on your protools, you need 5 returns, but 1 stereo will do, if the sounds come from the same library. If you do need returns, you can route them on a AUX track, and choose the correct instance, and audio channel.
    Having different instances for different libraries, or sounds, makes it easy for building templates, and adding an instance when looking for a particular sound, or even trying the same programming to a different library (chamber to symfonic strings) that is if you build the instance in a logic way, and the same for different libraries

    Midi channels are on seperate midi channels (easy to make templates)

    For mixing, You can commit every midi channel to audio ; you solo the midi channel, eg violin 1, and you have an audio track to use for mixing. Takes a little time, but you can mix all you want. (If you do use aux tracks with more returns from an instance, protools has issues when you commit the midi to audio on those tracks)

     

    grt

    hans
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    last edited
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    @Stuart Peck said:

    snippage

    I'm running VEP 6.0.15864 on all machines as to keep the same version. This is due to my Pro Tools HD machine being on mountain Lion and I can't upgrade that machine due to Pro Tools 10. I have all machines over CAT6 cabling via a Netgear unmanaged 1GbE switch. All machines IP's are statacally assigned, the network and performance is very good, the problem I am facing is the routing anf the amount of outputs avaliable to me.

    Stuart:

    As a long time PT user (started with PT10) and now using PT11.3.2 over different OSX versions I can safely say that PT10.3.10 (this is the latest revision of PT10) will run just fine on OSX 10.9.5 The only reason PT10 isn't considered compatible with Mavericks is that the uninstaller doesn't work. There are instructions on how to uninstall PT10 on Mavericks on Avid's website. Several people over on the DUC have no problems with the combo of PT10 and Mavericks. Now PT10 does have issues with Yosemite with blank insert menus and such.