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  • Floating Plugin GUIs in VEP?

    Hi,

    I have recently moved my template to VEP to compensate for deficiencies in Logic X.

    Is it possible to have your instrument/plugin GUI windows 'float', so that you can see them while working in your DAW? It's especially annoying using the VI matrix because whenever I click in the piano roll to edit keyswitches - I can no longer see the VI matrix without making the Logic window annoyingly tiny.


  • Hi,

    you can detach the instance or single plugins from the VEP main window, but it will only on top in VEP, but not when switching to other applications. So I assume that this is no solution for you.

    There is an other solution if you work with Vienna Instruments Pro:
    In the plugin, open settings (top right side), click on "MIDI Driver and Remote Setup", then check "Enable remote control (Web Server)".
    (On Windows now the a firewall popup will appear where you have to allow the application to open the port.)
    Now open the shown url with a tablet or a phone (your device should be in the same network, then you should be able to access the http://192... url).
    In the Instruments player there is now on center top a button "Control me". Press it to see this instrument on your phone tablet.

    Hope this helps.

    Best, Ben


    Ben@VSL | IT & Product Specialist
  • Hi Ben,

    Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it and it does work, but I don't have a tablet and the display is too small on my phone.

    I am very surprised that this feature does not exist - I assumed that there must have been a setting somewhere, becuase it seems like such a vital thing for a program like VEP to be able to do. It's quite the workflow killer as it is now. I may just end up getting cubase while its on special - then I won't have to put up with Logic's bugs and hopefully won't need to use VEP to compensate anymore.

    Cheers,

    Jon


  • I have two screens that I use when working in a DAW and use an old tablet to see the matrix when programming an instrument.
    Imo it is only possible to work efficient with at least to screens.

    I heard of some Windows 3rd party programs that can turn any window to an "always on top" window. But for MAC I don't know if something like this exists.


    Ben@VSL | IT & Product Specialist
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    @antcarrier said:

    Hi Ben,

    Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it and it does work, but I don't have a tablet and the display is too small on my phone.

    I am very surprised that this feature does not exist - I assumed that there must have been a setting somewhere, becuase it seems like such a vital thing for a program like VEP to be able to do. It's quite the workflow killer as it is now. I may just end up getting cubase while its on special - then I won't have to put up with Logic's bugs and hopefully won't need to use VEP to compensate anymore.

    Cubase has bugs too.  swhat problems are you having with LogicPro?  Maybe I can help...


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    @bbelius said:

    I have two screens that I use when working in a DAW and use an old tablet to see the matrix when programming an instrument.Imo it is only possible to work efficient with at least to screens. I heard of some Windows 3rd party programs that can turn any window to an "always on top" window. But for MAC I don't know if something like this exists.
    Metric Halo's MIO console does it, so I assume it is just not a feature that is useful for most everyday applications. For something like VEP, though, it seems quite essential. To VSL, please consider this as a feature request.

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    @antcarrier said:

    Hi Ben, Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it and it does work, but I don't have a tabletandthe display istoo small on my phone. I am very surprised that this feature does not exist - I assumedthat there must have beena setting somewhere, becuase it seems like such a vital thing for aprogram like VEP to be able to do. It's quite the workflow killeras itis now. I may just end up getting cubase while its on special - then I won't have to put up with Logic's bugs and hopefully won't need to use VEP to compensate anymore.
    Cubase has bugs too. swhat problems are you having with LogicPro? Maybe I can help... I'm sure it does. But some of the recent bugs I have encountered have caused me to lose lots of work and prevented me from working for days on end while I find workarounds. Thanks for the offer for assistance, but so far even Logic support have had no ideas. The first problem I encountered was due to Logic having kernel panic if using Sampling Modeling Brass/Kontakt, causing crashes among other strange problems, as outlined here: https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360004054417-A-Sample-Has-Disappeared-en-us- Ultimately NI blamed Apple and Apple blamed NI, so this was never resolved. The solution was to load SM Brass into VE Pro, which works well and is the primary reason I use VE Pro. The next issue I had that was a show stopper was that Logic would crash every single time if I even scroll to view a certain section of a project. I am currently working with Logic support to locate the cause of this occurrence. The next problem I had was audio files not loading at all (blank waveforms in audio regions/silent audio), explained here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250380991?r_s_legacy=true although I think I have finally found a solution to this one (while troubleshooting I ported my entire template into VEP as an experiment). I think telling Logic to recreate file overviews may work. If it does, I will probably pull my template out of VEP (until this feature becomes part of VEP), except for SM Brass, which is completely non functional in Logic without VEP. Thanks, Jon

  • ok,  Well first of all, Kernel panics are caused by hardware problems, not software.  So if you're having a Kernel panic, you have something wrong with your mac.  Are you using a mac laptop by any chance?  

    In the past I had a 2010 MBP that started kernel panicing whenever I ran Logic or garageband, for no reason I could figure out.  Apple support was clueless.  It happened after I updated to Mavericks, which seemed like it must be their fault.  I could not tie it ot any particular plugin per say, but it didn't matter ultimately because after some frustrating months I finally figured from google searching that I wasn't the only person having this problem and it was related to the GPU on my MBP.  Sure enough, I could replicate the kernel panic easily by running a CineBench test.  The reason it was happening in LogicPro all the time was simply becuase LogicPro was making more use of the nVidia GPU, which was related somehow to the kernel panic.  

    Then I found a utility that disables the nVidia GPU most of the time, which basically eliminated the kernel panics msot of the time, but not always, because sometimes OSX would still force the nVidia GPU.

    A year or two later some independent electronics engineer figured out the problem is related to a particular capacitor on the logicboard of the MBP, which is connected to the GPU..and this capacitor, Apple used a $1 part instead of a $3 part, and the $1 part has this problem when it changes temperatures rapidly.  So the fix is to have that capcitor replaced and problem be gone.  Many people on the internet have performed this change and the problem is now gone for them.  Someone else made a Kext hack that gets around it a bit by limiting how much speed stepping takes place in the Mac.  that's what I have been using for several years and not a single kernel panic ever since.  

    So anyway, the moral of the story, Apple hardware has had some issues like this, as it turns out there were a few MacBook products with similar issues, not exactly the same as this, but still issues...and hardware related...

    Kernel panics happen from hardware problems, you could have a bad logicboard capacitor like I did, or could have bad memory simms or any flakey hardware part could cause it.  And certain software might expose the problem more then others, but still the problem is not really the software which is just doing what its supposed to be able to do, the real problem is flakey hardware.  kernel panics suck, I feel for you, but that is the real problem you're having.


  • second of all you should be aware that Cubase performance on a mac is really poor compared to logicPro, DP and StudioOne.  I did a methodical benchmark.  Using VEP together with Cubase makes it tolerable performance and helps a lot, but alone, Cubase performance on mac is really really bad.  Can't play anywhere near the same number of tracks.  If you have a newer Mac with 8th or 9th generation Intel chip, it might fare better...not sure about that though.


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    @antcarrier said:

    Hi,

    I have recently moved my template to VEP to compensate for deficiencies in Logic X.

    Is it possible to have your instrument/plugin GUI windows 'float', so that you can see them while working in your DAW? It's especially annoying using the VI matrix because whenever I click in the piano roll to edit keyswitches - I can no longer see the VI matrix without making the Logic window annoyingly tiny.

    That's exactly how I did it. But since a few months, since VEP 7 it doesn't work anymore.

    The VEP 7 manual says: The mixer, the interfaces of the virtual instruments and MirPro can be disconnected and displayed in a separate window. The "unsnap" button in the instrument window removes the user interface from the split view and creates a floating window.

    I was able to work well with this, because these "floating windows" were not covered by Logic windows, but were always visible.

    Please vsl, I would be happy if this would work again.