I have one big feature suggestion/question/issue concerning a particular way I like to work - more along music production lines than film/media work - which I accept 99% of VEP users who write for film etc won't need - and it is this:
It appears the way most users work - mostly in Cubase - is to use a huge template were to choose from different instruments of the same kind - for - say a piano or bass track - one simply has a MIDI track set up for each instrument - so say 3 MIDI tracks connected to 3 instances of Ivory in VEP - one for the Steinway, one for Bosendorfer one for Yamaha. Or for a bass part - maybe a separate track for all the different Scarbee electric basses in COMPLETE ULTIMATE. And then via the search filter feature in Cubase - simply alter by name on the track named with the appropriate instrument.
Now for this to work when one has just ONE MIDI part for - say the baseline - one might have MIDI in one track and then - in order to check out how the part sounds with different basses - simply routes the MIDI to whatever track is connected to the different bass instruments in VEP.
This seems ok.... ish.
But another approach - one which CONTACT currently allows for - is to let one set up a 128 KONTACT INSTRUMENT *BANK* - and then one can - once the bank is loaded - say with a selection of basses - simply - on the SAME MIDI track- with between instruments simply by sending a MIDI Program Change number between 0 and 127 - on the SAME TRACK. This is a little like having ones sample library instruments set up as presets or in a GM MIDI MODULE.
Now the CONTACT BANK method isn't too bad but there are downsides to using it.
So - cutting to the chase - I was wondering if your developers and product manager for VEP had considered the idea of being able to assign separate PROGRAM CHANGE numbers to a collection of instruments in an instance - where ONLY ONE of such a collection is active at any time - like in the banks i mention.
Now if your developers were to adopt such an option - it would allow one to try out different instruments while only having a very few MIDI tracks created in the DAW for this.
As well as the PROGRAM CHANGE idea - it would be cool if - on the CLIENT side in the CLIENT plugin - one got to flip between instruments ( say between Yamaha, Bosendorfer or Steinway ) simply by clicking on the "channel-strip-name" in a choice list of names sent from the SERVER to the CLIENT.
This kind of feature is obviously most handy when one just wants a quick way to audition the MIDI part against a whole variety of different - typically similar sounding - instruments held in VEP.
What do you think? A feature for VEP7 maybe?
It would also come in very handy for ABLETON users like me- where there is currently no track-name filter feature available currently.