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  • Logic Pro X 10.4.5

    Hi Folks,

    I'm curious to hear people's experiences with the latest Logic update (10.4.5) and VEPro. So far I've had great results with projects running purely inside Logic. They're much faster and I even have one orchestral project which can now run at 64 samples without glitching. It previously only worked with 1024. Does the increased track count mean our large templates using VEPro should be modified differently to the multiport template approach provided by VSL?

    I've been following this video to gain a better understanding of the multiport routing, but have things changed since changed since then with the new update?



    Looking forward to hearing people's thoughts!

    Robin


  • Hello Robin,

    it's still early days but things have indeed changed since that video. I need to get a bit technical here, so my apologies if this doesn't mean much to you - I know there are others who are very much into the technicalities of this topic.

    That pre-AU3 multiport workaround used two discrete MIDI messages sent from Logic Environment to specify port number and channel number for each and every MIDI event sent from Logic's sequencer to VEP. It's a clever and creditable workaround by VSL and seems to work very well most of the time. However, I'm not convinced those two MIDI messages will stay together under all circumstances while being passed through Logic and onward via operating system core services - perhaps via an Ethernet LAN - to the appropriate VEP server instance. It's like trying to send a letter through the mail using two envelopes, each with a different part of the address written on it. Hence I suspect (though I can't say for sure) it may sometimes be possible for the port number message to be associated with a different (i.e. wrong) MIDI channel message by the time they reach VEP's routing - which can't be blamed for the confusion.

    Since LPX 10.4.4 we now have Apple AU3 which, I assume, administers each MIDI event's data content and port and channel assignments within an indivisible packet or some sort of data frame which ensures port number and channel number always stay together with the associated MIDI event data. Thus it is to be expected that AU3 will ensure more robust and dependable multiport communication between Logic and each VEP instance.

    As for how LPX 10.4.5 works with VEP AU3, I'm still working through it but from what I've seen and tried thus far, I haven't yet found a slick way to set up multiple ports for VEP7 AU3. But at least now each instrument strip in Logic can be expanded to provide up to 25 separate stereo pairs of audio from the VEP instance. 

    LPX 10.4.5 includes hundreds of fixes (though lord knows how much additional stuff they've broken as a result); see Apple's complete release notes here:

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203718


  • Thanks for your reply Macker, I hope you'll share any future news of AU3 slickness!


  • 10.4.5 totally broke the vep AU3 plugin for me on high Sierra mbp.

  • Just out of interest was it in a pre-existing or a new logic project?

  • Trying to load the AU3 templates provided by vsl. Later on I tried to start with a clean project and add the plugin but that would work either the plugin gui does not open. Still later somehow it worked once for no explicable reason but after that no. It’s broken. I personally think 10.4.5 is a buggy update I have other problems with it too

  • I think one thing might be problematic with 10.4.5 is related to how they updated to handle 1000 channels. Now the underlying instrument objects seem to be created in demand rather then seeing a list of 256 inst channel objects. But if you open a project that was previously created with inst object inst255 instead of inst1, it does weird things. Maybe. I dunno but other strangeness when I create a new software inst track it does not appear on the arrange page until I click on the page. And I’ve had crashes too. Buggy release IMHO

  • Dammit that sucks, Dewdman42, sorry to hear it.

    I was really disappointed to see - apart from a couple of undocumented tidy-ups in the use of ports with VEP7AU3 - that 10.4.5 seems to have placed zero importance on getting AU3 up to full production standard.

    I'm seriously entertaining the not too distant prospect of terminal so-called "code rot" in LPX. That'll be a terrible wrench for me cuz I've been with Logic since Logic Audio Platinum 3.5F back in 2001. Honestly I don't think Apple's LPX devs are up to the challenge of maintaining and developing Emagic's erstwhile masterpiece of software engineering. Years ago, Steinberg faced up to code rot in Cubase; they decided to ditch a big chunk of Cubase's legacy code that could no longer be maintained and developed economically or technically, replacing it with more recent, cleaner, better structured code lifted from Nuendo. Apple has no such option. I've very recently taken the plunge and embraced Cubase Pro 10, having banished Cubase back in the early 2000s because I didn't like its rudeness, its propensity to fall over in a big heap usually taking down the Mac with it, and its being overly influenced by Microsoft's geeky and less-than-congenial ideas about user-interfacing. But, well, things are very different now and I'm preparing for the worst with LPX.

    Meanwhile let's just hope LPX has another few versions' worth of life left in it. Judging by the thousands of fixes in recent versions, it seems Apple are now seriously concerned about getting LPX to live up to its "Pro" name. Only time will tell if they can succeed in that. I'm betting - against my dearest wishes - that they can't.


  • Well a week ago I was marveling at how well studio one works with vst3 multiport. Then a few days later on LPX 10.4.4 I tested out vep AU3 and was blown away by how smooth and performant it was. Then today 10.4.5 broke it again. I guess it will get sorted out eventually and I think logic is still good for a while it still has many nice features. But it also has many annoyances too, I guess they all do. There are certain old flukey things about lpx that have never been fixed and probably never will be. Sometimes I wonder if the engineering team at Apple even uses the product. They bumped up the number of inst plugin aux multi outs to 25 stereo so that’s cool. Cool new features I guess but I feel it’s a buggy release and won’t be able to use it on my MBP. Tonight will try it on my 5,1 daw machine

  • One would think that Apple, sitting on a near quarter-billion dollars of repatriated cash, would take their pro audio software more seriously and fix/recode or do whatever it takes to be the best product on the market. ESPECIALLY if they’re trying to sling these $6,000 to $20,000 modular cheese graters to us lol.... That said, is it the case that a master comp on the latest iOS, with Logic 10.4.5, with latest VEPro7, that AU3 is broken on a NEW session made with it? Or just old sessions with the VSL multiport template beta that aren’t working?

  • Right now I can't get the AU3 plugin to work at all.  At some point I did something accidentally that got it working, but I'm not really sure what I did, but it was definitely when NOT using the VSL AU3 template.  But that didn't always work to get it working either.  Very strange.

    I've actually gone back to 10.4.4 for the time being, might come back to it later.  I get the same behavior on both my 2010 MBP with High Sierra and my 5,1 running Mojave.  Also some other weird stuff with LPX 10.4.5, like if I try to create a new software instrument track it doesn't show up unless I click on the arrange page after.  Also happening on both computers.  


  • Hello Stephen,

    Lol, agree with your comments about Apple's apparent 'strategy'. I still have a great deal of respect for Apple's desktop hardware design engineers (much more so than the MacBook cowboys), and OMG the exotic new cheese grater and that fabulous new 6K 32" Retina screen have set the world of computer techie Youtubers on fire! Looking forward to some serious testing and reviews from those guys before I know whether to feel miserable or very miserable about not being able to afford those beauties.

    As for AU3, I've had VSL's AU3 Beta multiport templates (created by VSL on 2nd May) working without problems on my localhost 2017 5K iMac with LPX 10.4.5 in High Sierra. Also I've been able to build my own custom AU3 multiport templates from scratch without too much hassle and thus far without any serious problems in operation. 

    Custom-building AU3 templates is not exactly a slick job (though just a little smidge easier than in 10.4.4) because Apple clearly haven't yet brought AU3 functionality up to full production standard in LPX; it seems to work ok on my system but one could say right now it's in an early Windows/Cubase kind of awkwardness lol. I'll be posting a new thread here on how to approach the building of custom AU3 multiport templates in LPX 10.4.5.


  • I wonder why it’s not working on my older hardware?