I use a Mac mini 2018 fully specced as a pure VEP server machine.

Ive been trying out two dongles which act as virtual HDMI monitors and can access the mini remotely via screen sharing.

However I've found with both dongles that I bought - one from fit-pc.com, the other sourced from China over Amazon - that even when no apps are running at all there is around a 10-11% CPU usage for the process kernel_task. 

This disappears when I actually use a real monitor instead. 

Anyone else having this issue? is there a dongle which is bette? I suspect that all current manufacturers are probably using the same chips inside ( or copied the design ) 

the idea of 10% of CPU on a core being wasted just because of thus headless dongle ( necessary unless using a real monitor ) vexes me.

For those who run or are planning to move to a client Mac OSX DAW machine + 1 [high powered] VEP server machine arrangement over ethernet - are any here considering moving to a fibreglass thunderbolt connection instead of high speed internet? 

Currenrtly for example - in a 1-1 arrangeement it is possible to avoid entirely the need for an ethernet switch - and instead just connect the DAW mac to VEP mac direclty over an ethernet cable,  This is handy to know for those who are on 10gbe ethernet cabling and have 10gbe ports oin their macs. 

this would be both faster and cheaper for 10gbe. 

But with modern Macs and OSX - it is also possible to run an ethernet protocol connection between two macs over thunderbolt. Now in the past and up to now its only been possibly with TB2. which is more comparably with 10gbe ethernet speeds. but wiht Corning due to be launching a TB3 fibre cable - long enoiugh to - like ethernet - be able to place the [noisy]. server in a different room to the DAW client - this would mean that for a cost of maybe £400 or so onew can be running a client to [1 only] server connectino of near to 40gb/s. 

Anytone considering this?     perusing the forums i've noticed more and more people who've moved or are planing to move from a 1 - many server.  setup to 1 to 1 server.  And a TB3 fibre connection would be considerably less expensive than buying a 10gbe switch - and possibly a 10gbe thiunderbolt network adapter too.

Having said this -  I dont use Logic but use Cubase.

Whereas none of the KK plugin functionality - LED strips, mapped controllers etc work in the PLUGIN page mode,  

For Cubase at least the MIDI mode on KK does work ok - where many od the DAW functions in Cubase get controlled by my KK controller.  I just lose use of the one unique benefit of KK controllers and that is all the NKS stuff.

Hence one could really use any other controller insteac of KK and get the same type of DAW conrtrol functionaloity. 

Like for exampke NEKTAR

NOPE. 

And this is one of my big bugbears.

I have a KK 88 mk II myself.  And am beginning to think that such controllers probably are largely redundant and a waste of money for comoposers who chiefly use huge track count DAW templates where the majority of sounds ( chiefly orchestral ) are being hosted in VEP.

it would be great if NI and Vienna ( and Steinberg in fact ) could crack heads and collaborate on something where for example there was two halves to the. VST plugin - a client component and back end component - so that for example KOMPLETE KONTROL would just contain the GUI elements but a "server" plugin component of KK would sit in VEP for each instrument.

But this involves major reworking by NI of the KK plugin tech so dunno.  It would seem to be that since Kontakt is used for so so many libraries that are used by orchesrtral composers with VEP rigs that it would be i NI's interewst to make KK work nicely with VEP systems. But I suspect that much more of the income raised by NI's products come from "producer" pop music type users - and these customers arent your typical VEP user.  :(

in answer to the technical questions: 

• Would a mini PC such as https://www.hystou.com/fanless-mini-pc-i7-7500u be good enough?

yup that would be fine. 

• Is it possible to pre-configure the necessary software to use the PC as a standalone box, i.e. have it start up to be ready to play?

Yup. this is perfeclt possible. in fact it could even be "headless" without a screen but use something like a FIT-PC dongle.

• Is there any way to control various aspects of the system through a remote app on a tablet such as an iPad?

Well there are VNC remote apps and Splashtop available.  But direct app control for Windows ( or mac ) VST hosting apps like VEP is rare. 

What you might seriouslt want to consider is actually using an iPad iOS app with grand pianos on them as these are acxtually very good these days.  For example KORG's Gadget and MODULE apps have a lite version of Synthogy's. IVORY. Steinway Piano  in those iOS apps. 

In adddition there is an iPad  piano app with a superb sample library of the Ravenscroft piano available. So rather than usig an iPad to controll a plugin player in a PC.Mac you might want to consider also as an option just using an iPad for everything. And then if necessary recording the MIDI in an iPad app and larter transferring the result to Cubase or another DAW. 

• Are there any pitfalls in terms of latency and number of samples played at the same time? 

If you are only usig the PC or mac or even iPad to play a piano instrument and nothing else this should not be an issue. You can run at very low buffer sizes. Most modern piano libraries andf players support very large numbers of simultaneous notes so no worries there. 

• What resolution in terms of using the maximum dynamic range of a mechanical action can be expected? Is it anywhere near the acoustic piano itself?

I dont know about current QuietTime sensore or retrofits but currenr MIDI only supports 127 levels.  But there are special add-ons to the MIDI spec that do increase this.  In short though I think If its going out via standard MIDI then no, the resolution wont be near a real mechanism.   MIDI HD ( 2.0 ) will change this but is in its infancy. 

Hi,

I actually paid to haver a MIDI retrofit done for the Baby Grand ( Zimmermann ) in our house around 10 years ago.

It was a Quiettime Magicstar system.

It served me very well but there are some caveats worth bearing in mind when doing this to a piano - namely that it does slightly change the action and make the travel a little reduced. This can result in a slightly heavier action than before. And I think this applied whether the silencing bar was being used to silence the piano or not.

I suspect that the pianos - primarily Yamaha but also KAWAI and recenrtly Steinway - where such MIDI silent systems are fitted from the time they are in factory and the pianos can be designed with dimensions specifically tailored for the silent MIDI system and its sensors, that such pianos will be better as compared to retrofits. 

I gotr many years of use out of my MIDI retrofit - used primarily with Ableton, but it has to be said that the MIDI sensitivity and response was good but had lmitations due to the way such systems work - and a good new designed MIDI controller such as made by KAWAI ( considered by many to have the best actions these days ) will be far better.  But of course wont give the joy of being a real piano.

Also it needs to be said that my Quiettime System was v4 and a much more recent iteration of those silent piano systems is being made and sold these days by Pianodisk that i believe has much better and responsive sensors. So maybe things have improved a lot. 

But even though the sensort nowadatys in such retrofits might be much better there is still the issue of how adding such a retrofit does physically change the actual real action mechanism a little. 

My mother - who is 93 found it too hard to play the retrofitted piano due to the very slight incvrease she said in the stiffness. But having said that - I found the action in tewrms of stiffness no different to the FATAR 88 key mechanism in my currrent KOMPLETE KONTROL MK II 88. controller keyboard.  But then i'm a little younger and not a trained classical pianist.

My mother now has a great value KAWAI ES110 piano and I have to say I absolutely love playing that thing. So you might want to consider any controller keyboard that uses KAWAI. the VP1 dfor example. Plus NORD released rhe Grand recently which has a KAWAI mechanism.   Not a real acoustic of course but very playable.

Just my tuppeneth - having actually paid for the MIDI retrofit you mention. 

regards

Dan

looks promising. 

The option to clear out all recent items menus - for histories of last files opened etc. is something so common in apps its really frustrating that this isnt the case in VEP.

Its not rocket science to add such a thing: 

Yes I think this is a known issue.  Far as I know theres no way of selecting a MIDI port other than 1 either.

So 1 midi port 16 MIDI channels.....   

that is if one is trying to stick to a single VEP instance on the server.

Of ocurse Vienna cant do anything about this, Only Ableton and its been requested in Centrecode for them.

Similarly (and to my annoyance ) there doesnt appear to be any way of accessing ports and channels other than those on port 1 in MASCHINE either.

Which only adds weight to the argument that Ableton clip/pattern SESSION  mode features in a new version of Cubase would be extremely useful for those who like the SESSION page mode of composing.

I imagine there are keyboard shortcuts for some of this hidden away - but in any case I need EASILY DISCOVERABLE menu items in the VEP menu bar or context menus that can do this - APPLIED TO A SELECTION OF CHANNELS....

1 ) renumber in asc sequence

2) renumber to same channel, MIDI port or audio channel pair

3) all the other common repetitive tasks one ends up doing in VEP when setting up templates.

Any keyboard shortcuts should obviously be shown for these menu ( or contextual menu ) items where they apply. 

I dont want to have to refer to the manual

I have a single VEP server running on a mac mini connected via ethernet cable to my macbook pro client - also over CAT7 ethernet.

Both computers are connected directly via a CAT7 cable and not via a router -  for optimum speed.

As instructed by Vienna manual - i have assigned manual IP addresses to both units - 10.0.0.1. and 10.0.0.2 

I can connect to VEP fine over just ethernet ( with WI FI turned off on both machines to avopid potential packet routing confusion )  but have to type in the IP address into the VEP client plugin myself - and type the name of the instsnce i want to connect to. 

Why?  because the two instances in my server don't appear in the plugin instance list. 

It seems that currently the only way I can get instance names to appear is if io turn on wi-fi on both server and plugin. 

Please can you modify the software so that regardless of whether one is using wi-fi, going via a router... or not.... the VEP plugin still is able to receive and instance names from the server.  I can live with hacving to type the IP address of the server into the IP field in plugin .  But after doing so I expect all the current instances loaded into my VEP server to appear listed as would be the case if i was connecting both machines over a router.

I am not using an ethernet router between cplient and server but simply connecting a single CAT7 cable between the two macs.  

I dont want to have to also turn on wi-fi on the server machine unless necessary ( for web access etc )

with wi fi turned off

with wi fi turned on. ( and stilll using ethernet between two machines ) 

it would be useful to be able to locate tracks instruments or channels by name via search 

ie similar to what is possible when searching tracks in Cubase

Actually Paul - if the only thing you did was allow more controls to be shown in the current "minimal" view ( by pressing F several times ) and allowed more info to be shown by being ale to resize the left hand area to be bigger - that would do it. And wouldnt require any new page,view or mode. 

sorry. i tried. all these attachment features seem a pain and the old picture i drew has been lost.

But in essence just take all the words, buttons, icons , drop-down menu-boxes and sliders etc in your left-hand pane (when fully expanded ) and place them all in a SINGLE LINE 

so only one row ( but with lots of columns etc ) is displayed for each channel. Nothing else. 

This would allow for a full overview of the config and let us more easily spot what needs fixing. 

While we're at it please can you also makeit much more obvious logical and simple as to how one can assigne or change  a property for MORE THAN ONE channel.  in one go.

It shouldnt have to be as hard as it is.  Ableton makes it really easy.  So can Vienna.

Like this?  

Basically all the info for the channel on a single line.

get the idea? 

For managing big instance setups it would be really useful if there was a new display option which extended the current channel list onthe left hand side - and made it take up the entire space of the screen so that one row shows EVERY parameter for a channel or track - in grid fashion.

This would make setting up instances and templates  a lot simpler. 

When listing ALL the channels down rhe left hand side in narrow mode - and showing the plugin editor or mixer channel-strip for a selected channel on the right hand side  it would be really useful to have an option to display the channel-strip view for just the selcted channel alongside the plugin editor being viewed. 

In the left-hand single-line view the resize handle simply doesnt seem to do anything on OSX in v7.

Plus i need to be able to view all MIDI channel, port and output audio routings  for each channel too - when in single line. This would be so useful for large instances.

Is it not possible to just add the for an "alias" name that us users can optionally just set ourselves?

Currently it doesnt seem possible to highlight more than one channel and in one operation set all of them to a common MIDI channel or port.

Adding this feature would speed up workflow

In fact a collection of tools to manage multiple selection of channels would be very useful.

For example:

1   - assigning a sequentially increasing range of contiguous MIDI channel numbers to a selection 

2 - reassignign a sequence starting from 1 - 

3 - DELETE - with reassignment channel option  - where a gap in MIDI channel range gets filled in so numbers are still contiguous after one has been deleted.

This is VEP 7   and Cubase 10.30

The Kontakt instrument is Una Corda Piano  ( felt or cotton ) 

In addition I tried to edit the very long parameter string to something shorter in the Cubase inspector - for Smart Controls. BUt for some reason Cubase seems not to remember the rename once i save the cubase project and reopen it.  This is of course a Cubase issue or bug  but just makes it even more important that there's some way in VEP to have custom shorter names - aliases for use in the DAW in order to clearly see which parameter one is automating in the DAW

I set up a bunch of automation parameters from my Kontakt instrument ( Una Corda ) and saw them appear as names in the Cubase Quick Control list in the inspector. 

However the names of all the paremeters as passed from VEP server to VEP client plugin and onto the VST  host (Cubase ) are extremely long and unreadable. 

It would be very helpful if one could create shorter "alias" names for these parameters so that they become readable and managable in the DAW.

In fact some of this could be made automatable -  for example VEP could optionally generate just the parameter names, stripping off the channel name, plugin name, and even ( with a little bit of simple algorithmic string processing code ) remove the end name section - which in the case of Kontakt is the Kontakt Instrument name.

In any case - seems to me there's a big case for adding ability to rename automation parameters in VEP7.

( unless i've missed something in the manual and its already possibe )

This suggestion requires the VEP developers, Steinberg VST3 API developers and NI Kontakt developers all liaise together to agree on the best way to modify the VST3 API and underlying code in order to support what I discuss below:

The new feature is intended to help address the slow speed of communicating COUPLED instance data from VEP plugin to VEP Server in KONTAKT and other plugins which store very large amounts of plugin  saved-state data.

Kontakt has a feature called SNAPSHOTS which allows one to save different parameter settings for things like reverb, effects, volumes etc while leaving data such as sample metadata, KSP scripts and everything to do with the particular Kontakt insrtument “core” datas alone. The amount of data involved in Kontakt snapshots is generally tiny in comparison  with the complete data needed for the Kontakt instrument itself and its sample layer metadata - so to save and recall just this alone would  be significantly faster - arguably near-instant compared the waits for Kontakt to load and initialise the Kontakt instrument saved-state data in its entirety. 

If  an updated version of VST3   incorporated the additional concept of snapshot state-saving and loading - then VST3 plugin hosts like VEP could use this to make saving and restoring small tweaks to plugins hosted in VEP very fast. 

Of course because a single instance of KONTAKT can use more than one KONTAKT instrument in the form of MULTIS. There would have to be support for saving and loading more snapshot data for potentially more than just one “instrument” but this could easily be added to an API by means of an index to indicate “multi-instrument 1, multi-instrument 2 etc etc  

Such an improvement in VST3 would have a huge positive effect on workflow.  The only other major aspect in a VST3 “+” would be to allow the plugin editor panel to be presented on the CLIENT machine - ie in a VEP CLIENT plugin if one could tweak a plugin held on a VEP server as if it were local - instead of having to use VNC or some other remote access software - then again there would be a huge benefit to workflow. 

As well as this - it would allow KOMPLETE KONTROL to be used for plugins hosted in VEP. 

Originally Posted by: civilization 3

You're probably in the VEP Server not connected to a DAW. Kontakt's GUI doesn't fully load unless it's connected.

Ah yes.  that does seem to be the case.  Works now ive connected to a cubase client.

Clearly Kontakt could do with a few dummy audio refresh cycles to update and draw its GUI properly.