Vienna Ensemble Pro 6 Workflow

[fbeauvaisc]

Hi,

Let me first start by intoducing myself. My name is François  and I'm a composer for film and video games. I've recently upgrated my system to a master/slave setup with VEP 6.

My first question is about having many instances (one per multi-timbral instrument) vs multiple midi ports per instances.

For exemple :

One instance for 1st Violins with 16 articulations on 16 midi channels.

One instance for 2nd Violins with 16....

One instance for Violas etc...

VS

One Strings instance with 1st Violins on port 1, 2nd Violins on port 2 etc... again with 16 midi channels per port.

With Cubase 9.5, having 1 Strings instance on an instrument track and having multiple midi tracks assigned to the different VEP 6 ports of that single strings instance is one way to go but the down side is that I can't use audio automations with the midi tracks. I would have to have the ouput tracks along side the midi tracks to use automations and then the automations on the output tracks would not follow the events of the midi track if I move them around. 

If I use individual instrument track each connected to it's instance. I can have all my volume, panning, sends automations etc...

So the final question is. Is there a big down side to running many instances compared to grouping all the strings in an instance and triggering them with midi tracks on different ports?

Is there a significant workload difference between the two methods? Is there anything else I should consider?

Sorry if my question was kind of long and I hope I was clear enough.

Thanks,

[Paul]

Welcome Francois,

The difference between handling multiple instances vs one instance is not significant, so you can go ahead and choose the workflow that suits you.

Did you check out Parameter Automation yet, on page 76 in the VE PRO 6 manual?

Best,
Paul

[fbeauvaisc]

@Paul said:

Welcome Francois, 

The difference between handling multiple instances vs one instance is not significant, so you can go ahead and choose the workflow that suits you.

Did you check out Parameter Automation yet, on page 76 in the VE PRO 6 manual? 

Best, 
Paul

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the reply. I'll check the automation parameters for instrument automations but I'd like to be able to automate the standard panning, volume and sends first and that's something I figure out with Cubase. Midi track vs instrument tracks vs instrument rack. They all have different pros and cons. The instrument tracks can be handled pretty much like an audio track but I think I'd need an instance on each if I want to have all the "audio like" automation features (from cubase). Using the event input has a bunch of pros but not in this scenario.

With midi tracks or rack intruments, I can have a single instance for all my instruments (per section) but then I need output tracks alongside them to be able to automate (again from an audio track's point of view).

I'm still going to read about all this but if anyone has suggestions, I'm all ears. I'd love to be able to have as few instances as possible just because if I need the re-assign them, it's a lot quicker to assign whole sections than individual instruments. I also would think that opening and closing cubase sessions might be a little quicker but I have not really tested that yet.

Thanks, 

[Richard Ford]

I've also had issues too with multiple instances - using VEPro6 with Cubase 9.5

It's mentioned elsewhere, but essentially if 48 midi ports are set in VEPro global setup then Cubase takes an age to load any associated project files, even when the instances are all decoupled.

I have a template with 12 instances (roughly half for orchestral sections and half for 'studio' sections), and it had 48 midi ports per instance. With the Vienna template all fully populated and loaded it took "put the kettle on" lengths of time to open any of the cubase projects associated with it. Approaching 10 minutes.

But that's 12(instances) x 48(midi ports)  x 16(midi channels) = 9,216 midi channels all told. And that does sound silly.

I have mitigated this by bringing down the midi port number to 8. NB: I did not have to change anything in my VEPro session to do this, but any ports from 9 upwards are just not available instantly, but I can change the port numbers to any of those instruments quickly if needed.

I noticed that in practice I only ever got to about 6 ports in orchestral sections (eg: Strings - Port1= Vi1; Port2= Vi2 .... Port5=Basses; port6= Ensembles) because I don't realistically have more than 16 V1 patches etc.. online - (I suppose I could if I used everything I have in the library but don't see the point, I'm only using the good ones) 

But Kontakt instruments present a dilemma. Like many of us I have 100's of K5 libraries with many many patches and setting them all up multi-timbrally but unloaded in case you want to audition them is a very easy way to listen and select from thousands of samples really quickly that haven't seen the light of day for years!! It's truly so much easier than ever was before in the DAW as a loaded instrument. I can consider them 'Nearline'

But that quickly racks up the midi port count and suddenly 48 doesn't seem so silly after all.

So my compromise is to leave my massive Vienna project alone, reduce the midi port count to 8 (could have been 12 or 16) and then when I really want to audition those "nearline" Kontakt sounds I can rubberband the section in VEPro and change the midi port to something Cubase can now see.

And most importantly I can load my Cubase files in a few seconds instead of 10 minutes. But on the downside there is less opportunity to drink tea...