I recently switched to Windows from macOS and being used with aggregate devices and virtual audio ports, I was suprised how f-ed up these things are under Windows.

On macOS I used their Mainstage App to have a low latency virtual summing mixer builtin. (I was running various routings and a bunch of different master chains to quickly preview how the songs I'm working on are sounding through these different chains)

On Windows I tried a demo of Reaper coupled with ODeus ASIO Link Pro and I was getting a lot of clicks no matter the buffer size.

And after days of tinkering I had the (turned out to be brilliat) idea to fire up Vienna Ensemble Pro Standalone which to be honest I have no idea what's the actual use use for it (I was only using the server). Set the same ODeus driver, 32 samples buffer (!!!) at 48000 Hz SR, and now my system audio and daws all working together at low latency (I tried busy projects, they work fine). I have a 64ins/64outs virtual sound card and huge amount of routing possibilities. Bonus: midi controller knobs and faders mapped to Standalone for controlling various parameters (like solo Mid, solo Side, EQ etc)

So really, thank you for developing a piece of software that can manage so well my virtual audio ports! (Ableton Live itself can't go with so low latency straight into the sound card, while Ableton Live routhed through a 3rd party ASIO driver to a virtual audio port then into Standalone then back to a virtual audio port then to audio card works with very low latency).

TL;DR So now in short I have the following working topology for Ableton Live: VE Instrument set up on a midi track + VE Audio sends set up ONLY on the return tracks. I've set up the entire project to sum on 10 out of these 12 stereo busses, and the first 2 are also sent to the slave VE with the purpose of being used as reverbs.

Long

Thank you for your input, bbelius!

"Audio Input" into VE Pro has always been some kind of experimental feature. Most DAWs are not ready to send audio to an external application from anything else than their actual outputs; abusing a plug-in like VE Pro's "Audio Input" for this task comes for a price ... please keep in mind that VE Pro has been primarily invented to act as a MIDI host that reacts to incoming MIDI data, not audio. - Dietz

--First of all, please don't kill the existing feature, it has great potential :)

--Second: Major DAWs are all having their own plug-ins for sending and receiving audio and midi so they can properly work with hardware gear. So I'd say they are pretty ready to send audio from a track and importing on another audio track and using the actual outputs as well.

Third: I manage to set up Ableton Live to work with Vienna Ensemble Pro by using only the return tracks.

- My first attempt was to make a Live-specific set of summing busses by using audio tracks. These audio tracks were then sent to VE6 Server and then back to a multi-channel instrument track via VE instrument plug-in. This resulted in the disaster I mentioned above.

- Luckily I didnt abandon things and started a fresh empty project bu this time I had a simple plan: to see if could just host a reverb on the slave instead of main computer. So, set up VE Instrument plugin in a new instrument track, set up a click track and send it to Return A, placed an audio send, signal goes to server, no processing and then comes back to VE Instrument. Wow, no clicks, no delay. Awesome. So I set up quickly the max amount of returns that Ableton can do, which is 12 stereo busses. I also set up the returning path with a 6 stereo channel output from VE Instrument. The network connection was "meh, I can do 10 times more data". I placed various plug-ins on the channel strips on the slave, with various latencies, all seems to sync perfectly. Only problem I had so far is with Adaptiverb, this one have a huge buffer, the project is synced while Adaptiverb is inserted and turned on but gets messed up when the plugin is deactivated. So if out-of-sync happens, this may be a reason, remove all deactivated plugins from the project, or keep them on and "bypassed" via dry/wet knob (where available). I didn't populated a full project at this time, I'm almost sure that it wont overload and keep working regardless how busy the project is. Or I'll reduce the number of busses - however this is a huge step forward for me.

[partial solution] try sending audio ONLY from daw's return tracks, not straight from your daw's audio or instrument tracks. So if you want to apply a heavy processing (via a slave VE) to a synth, send it's audio to a return track, place a VE Audio Send on that track, send it to the slave, process, then send back to a VE Instrument.

I find myself in a sad situation: I am sending between a macbook pro and a PC (clean windows 10 install, vep running as admin) via static IP addresses and no router or switch - straight cable between the computers. The transfer speed when copying files (both ways) is 900 Mbps flat, ping 0.3ms, both computers have i7's and SSDs, and the crackles appear even when the server is empty (no plug-ins, just the input, outputs and folders).

Tried all buffer combinations (0-4), threads (1-8), DAW's buffer size (128-2048), (firewalls on/off), no difference whatsoever except for larger CPU usage on the client side for small buffer settings. Tried bouncing to audio, the crackles are there. Every time in the same place-ish - looping a 4-bar loop, the crackles appear at the end of bar 1. Tried Logic and Ableton Live, same thing.

I just realised that I purchased this software 2 years ago for the sole purpose to unload the summing processing to a different computer and never managed to use it for this purpose. I am using it sometimes to better distribute the load over multiple cores when using very hungry synth presets which otherwise would choke a single CPU core.

So... did anyone managed sucessfully with VE Pro to send 16 stereo channels to a slave and receive back 8 stereo channels with no pops and clicks?

Can someone else confirm that VE Pro 6 (server) does not adjust it's PDC when disabling an insert plug-in in a chain? Bypassing a plug-in using it's on-board bypass function (where exists) keep the sound in sync. However, as soon as I bypass (turn off plug-ins) via VEP bypass option, the track gets out of sync. 

My project receives only audio streams (doing summing in VEP).

I think the problem is with VEP & High Sierra. Just tried running a single audio track through an empty VEP session, from Ableton Live, and it clicks and pops regardless the buffer settings. Also it randomly crashes. So many issues with High Sierra, I hope all devs will manage to sort them out during the next 6 months. I'll not update the OS next year, that's for sure, at this point macOS is the new Windows XP in terms of stability.

Logic is SO stupid with multithreading management. In Preferences -> Audio -> Devices try changing multithreading from Playback & Live Tracks to Playback Tracks only (I know, is counter-intuitive), see if for you will offer an improvement, for me (MBP 4-core) it did.

TL:DR Is there any way to optimize CPU cores load when using lots of insert plug-ins in VEPro? Like distributing the plug-ins over multiple busses in series? (this solution works for most of the daws)

Long version:

So I can't seem to find out by myself, usually any DAW out there seems to handle a track in the same way: all insert fx (and the instrument) on the respective track are processed on a single core.

I made this little test in VEP6: a 5-channel instance, inputs 1-2 on channel 1, output 1-2 on channel 5. All channel are in "series" (each channel outputs in the input of the next one in line). After that, I placed 5 intensive-CPU plug-ins (high oversampling rate was the main CPU consumer) on each channel (so one plug-in per channel).

Thing is, while the CPU shows 35-40% load, Vienna Server shows 100% in the bottom corner and chokes the audio.

In preferences, the number of cores is set to 8 (the max available on my computer) during the test I've just sent audio from DAW to these channels, so the DAW was reporting 1% CPU load, VEP6 100% and the cpu meter in the system peaks of 40%. Is there anything I can do in terms of instance topology to optimise it's performace?

EDIT: Nevermind, it looks that VMWare Fusion manages the usb devices better than Parallels and this confilct is non existent. Luckily.

I know for sure is not your issue, I wrote to Steinberg support after 15 minutes of looking for support page on their website, so I don't think they would answer back. And I thought maybe you are in touch with wthem and can pass along a quite unexpectedly unsolved issue:

My message below:

I own two eLicensers - one hosting reFX and Vengeance products and the second one Vienna Ensemble Pro licenses. I run macOS on an Apple Mac Book Pro and Windows 7 in a virtual machine under Parallels 11 on the same computer.

The reason I purchased a second eLicenser USB key was also to host Vienna Ensemble Pro inside a Windows vm, to host windows-only FX plugins.

The problem is that even though the second USB key is attached to Windows virtual machine, the macOS eLicenser app is trying to access it and crashes the local plugins and daw even if I have the first USB key properly installed on macOS machine.

It is possible to sort this out in a future update?

Many apps can crash (or misbehave as your case) if the virtual machine can't deliver a proper virtual video card, it may not be VEP related at all your problem. I don't know exactly how a VM works, but if your QNAP's video card has no compatibility with Windows (which can run headless aka without video card at all) then that's your issue.

This I found out myself when accessing remote my PC via Microsoft Remote Desktop app which is emulating a very low-spec video card for speed purposes - I don't understand quite well.

Originally Posted by: Lionberg

Master connected to the router via WiFi

It's because you are on WiFi.

I have a master macOS and a slave Windows. Slave always connected via ethernet cable to router.

When macOS is on WiFi, I can connect to master if I manually type in the IP address but does not appear on servers list.

When macOS is also connected with ethernet cable (regardless if WiFi is on or off) the server appears on the list.

Thanks a lot, I'll take notes and give it a try. Right now I'm in the middle of a project, I managed to basically use the server as a summing mixer - sending 16 stereo VE Audio Input to server and receiving only a stereo pre-master mix. It works.

I started to watch carefully which plugs may introduce higher latencies in order to avoid them and the connection works on a manageable manner.

Living some frustrating days here between VEP's moods and a new purchased synth which is literally taking GPU like a video game :)

Edit: So, I tested your exposed method from A to Z, it works. Gets frustrating for latencies over 400ms as there's no connection anymore between DAW's needle position and what I hear. For the moment it is a compromise that I'm willing to accept.

On the other hand, on my Mac, the formula was 3072 + VSL round-trip latency. To avoid the math I just inserted two sample delays, one with a fixed 3072 and the other one with whatever the r-t latency was reported. Now I only need to find a way to sync the settings for more plugins at the same time: either using a global midi mapping through smart controls (key B in logic) or some sort of midi mapping. For the moment I'm doing tests, but I'm looking into making a set of standard FX racks. Easier for me to remember what they actually do, and also trying to keep the latency lowest possible.

Thank you once again for your effort, hope this thread is going to be useful for future VSL purchasers.

At this point I think I can say the most often the following problem arises: The actual signal coming back to the DAW through Vienna Ensemble Pro Instruments (innitially sent via the Audio Input Plugin) is "coming back earlier".

Explanation: I've sent audio from an instrument via audio plugin and back to daw with VEP Instrument. I can clearly hear sound happening before daw's needle reaches the beginning of the midi region. So it's like the daw is compensating all the tracks to a higher introduced latency but not the VEP instrument track itself.

If I place a sample delay on this track, it seems like the problem goes away. I still have my doubts that the sync is perfect though.

VEP Instrument w. 2 buffers reports 17807 samples latency. Apparently the daw compensates for the buffers so 17807- 2*1024 = 13.711 = 1024 * 13 + 399

I've inserted on VE Instrument channel a total sample delay of 6 * 1024 + 399 to keep the project in sync.

But if insert some plugins in the server side which will change latency, the whole thing falls apart. And this is without the aspect of Server not compensating properly for some plugins (it compensates with the plugin on but fails to compensate when the plugin is bypassed). Let's say I could live with this and pick only plugs that work or plugs that can stay on with Dry/Wet set to Dry. But this game of cat & mouse with the latency is killing me.

I hope this is the final edit: I've noticed that bypassed inserts in a VEP Instance will do a total mess up in terms of  delay compensation. Using only active inserts looks like a big improvement. Will do more research.

Originally Posted by: snattack

I've had issues with the VEP delay compensation in all setups. It doesn't reliably calculate ans compensate for the buffer setting or messes up when switching between Low Latency-mode and regular mode. Not sure which.

I've done the opposite: added a sample delay to all non-VEP DAW channels INCLUDING the clicktrack with the same ms that is displayed in the VEP plugin windows. Works fine.

The VEP Plugin reports round trip latency 3072 (3 x 1024). I can confirm that on example on my video above, with a sample delay of just 1024 samples the sync is perfect.

....and update: on the same project as the video above I inserted a VE instrument plugin, added a synth on the server, reported latency for this one was 2048. At this moment I had to set all the sample delays in the project to 3072. So Logic does it's job.

....and sync is gone. After adding several inserts on the innitially empty master chain, the server reports in lower right 730 samples compensation, the VEP in Logic Pro increased from 3072 to 3802. It's really a pain in the rear to adjust   all the channels' sample delay in a serious project. I make dance music so I deal with a max of 60 tracks but still...

I made a video, I get the same result with local server (on my mac) and network server. On the server side is just an empty master bus (lower right corner latency says 0) with In1/In2 selected on the top of the strip and Out1/Out2 at the bottom.

The signal flow is obvious, but here it is: Kick channel > Aux 1 > VEP Audio Input > [Server] > VE Pro Channel strip

When I feed a parallel signal using the send to Aux 2 the delay is obvious. Is this something that can be corrected?

https://vimeo.com/195723610

All I/O inserts look like this: http://imgur.com/a/3mwph

Server version 6.0.15567

macOS 10.12.2 - Logic Pro X 10.2.4

MacBook Pro retina late 2013, i7 2.3 GHz, 16 GB DDR, GT 750M 2 GB DDR, Intel Iris Pro 1.5 GB DDR

I tried it with a setting by ear on a daw strip which was receiving a parallel processing via VEP. Didn't worked as expected and quickly abandoned the idea. But I'll try again and this time more thorough. Cheers!

You have to rethink your routing: the VEP Audio Input will capture audio from your daw (channel strip or Aux bus) but will basically mute your channel (it will not return sound after it as a normal insert plugin would do). Instead, the sound returns via "Vienna Ensemble Pro" placed as (stereo or multi-output) instrument.

There are latency issues (I'm just discovering VEP6 myself), I managed to make it to work in Logic Pro X (see my thread on this forums section, the one starting with [maybe solved]), but not in Ableton Live.

When working with a server, just leave the instances connected when quitiing and saving in your DAW. After closing your daw you can close the server and discard the changes. When you reopen your projects, (with an empty server powered on) the projects will push data back in the server (will populate instances and plug-ins). If you forget to power on a server, just close daw project without saving, start the server, reopen daw project and you're all set.

You can also save both server project and daw project before quitting daw (and again leave all instances connected) just to be double sure you have your data saved.

If you are running VE Pro Server on the same computer you run your daw, then the server's IP address is 127.0.0.1

It is usually a firewall issue. Try to manually input the slave's IP in the box and a name for a session. If it gets created, it's definitely an Firewall (on slave or on master) issue, or you have a WiFi on while having the ethernet connected.

For all having the same issue, this is what worked for me - I suppose (definetely not sure) the onboard audio card has a big latency, and adding extra buffers and network buffers are contributing to messing up the things:

Logic Pro Settings: I/O Buffer Size: 1024 // Processing Buffer Range: Small (512) // VSL Instance: 2-3-4 buffers (still experimenting with these - 0 buffers put a lot of stress on the CPU). These values allow me to send 16 stereo channels for summing on a slave VEP Instance, and at this point I am sending MIDI to 6 VST instruments on the same slave (different instances) but this doesn't seem to impact the latency compensation. 

Hey all, I purchased VEP6 few days ago, read a little bit the manual and then all the threads I could find on latency compensation issues.

I have this simple project, see the attached image: basically a click track which sends a click sound on two Auxes. One Aux is going straight to stereo output, the other one is going to an VEP instance which has an empty Master strip which receive the click on IN1/IN2 and outputs the click to OUT1/OUT2 and this gets back on the "Click Return" strip in Logic Pro.

In Logic I have the IO Buffer set to 1024, onboard audio (macOS Sierra, i7 16GB DDR, LPX 10.2.4), process buffer range set to Large. On the slave (Win7, i7, 8GB DDR) VEP reports Plugin Latency Compensation 0 with empty strip and starts growing if I add insert plugins.

The purpose I've purchased VEP6 was to run heavy instances of Serum synth on the slave and submix and process the stem tracks (drums, synths, vocals, fx) and return everything to stereo output and for the moment I found no ways to keep in sync everything. 

Apparently all the MIDI I send over to a instrument loaded on slave VEP, comes back as generated audio signal in perfect time. But anything I send using the Audio Input plugin, comes back probably with half of a second delay. I've noticed that the level meters on the slave are pusling on the same rhythm so the input signals arrives in time. So the problem is on the return channel (Vienna Ensemble Pro plugin).

Any ideas to sync them up? Do I do something wrong? Same thing happens with Ableton Live and same thing if regardless if I use 32 or 64-bit server or if I use a localhost server or a networked one.

Edit: direct link to the same image: http://imgur.com/a/SW9ES