I too cannot connect to more than 8 instances. This is kind of a downer as I had hoped to replace Plogue running 16 instances of Kontakt on my slave Mac Pro 2.8gHz slave machine.

Any word from the VSL team on this?

Exactly.... I need to replace many many Kontakt instances,  way more than 8.  Until there is a way to go more than 8 instances this will not help enough to revamp my template.  Hopefully this is something they can change easily.  Can anyone from Vienna please comment on this issue if it is possible?

Thanks

@dlpmusic said:

Exactly.... I need to replace many many Kontakt instances,  way more than 8.  Until there is a way to go more than 8 instances this will not help enough to revamp my template.  Hopefully this is something they can change easily.  Can anyone from Vienna please comment on this issue if it is possible?

Thanks

 the current limit is 8.

However, there are ways around some of the problems with using multiple Kontakts, for example.

If you load the VST3 version of VE Pro, you can get up to 32 MIDI ports. Therefore each instance of Kontakt that you load, can itself address 16 MIDI channels, giving you 512 MIDI channels per instance of VE Pro. The snag is that each of these Kontakt instances can only use one audio output. However, if you were going to bus some of the Instruments anyway, then put them in the same instance. this should help temporarily whilst Martin looks at the possibility of an increase in the number of VE Pro instances allowed to connect to the server.

DG

Another reason why the limit of 8 instances is a big problem:

If you insert "VE Pro" as VST3 and you define 128 audio ports Cubase always crashes. Do you have similar experiences?

@DG said:

If you load the VST3 version of VE Pro, you can get up to 32 MIDI ports.

In another thread Martin from the Vienna team answered:

@Martin said:

The current limit is 8 instances per server. We are looking at raising this limit in an update.

See also http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/t/22789.aspx?PageIndex=3

@petera said:

Another reason why the limit of 8 instances is a big problem:

If you insert "VE Pro" as VST3 and you define 128 audio ports Cubase always crashes. Do you have similar experiences?

 I'm using Nuendo 4.3, but I don't get a crash with 128 audio Outputs.

DG

@DG said:

I'm using Nuendo 4.3, but I don't get a crash with 128 audio Outputs.

Thanks DG, that's very interesting.

May I ask you if you have the problem that saving a song project is very slow if you are connected to VE Pro? I have a VE Pro instance with 20 Kontakt instances (~ 10 GB). If this instance is connected to Cubase saving of the song project takes about 45 second. If it is not connected saving only takes 1 second.

Try instantiating 20 Kontakts in your sequencer, and see if you get the same saving speed.

@MS said:

Try instantiating 20 Kontakts in your sequencer, and see if you get the same saving speed.

Thanks, Martin. I'm so stupid that I have not tested this simple case. I will try this this evening when I'm back at home.

Anyway, do you think it would be an idea to implement a button "Disconnect/Reconnect all instances" in the server instances window (see below). Of course this button should remember which instances (of VE Pro Server) belongs to which VST instances (in the sequencer). But then you could easily disconnect (for very quick saving and loading) and reconnect.

I was more thinking about an option which decouples saving/loading. This way, a save could be pretty much instant - all that would be saved in the project would be the preserved session name and the IP address of the server, instead of all data belonging to the VE Pro instance (which in the case of 20 Kontakt instances, can be ALOT of data). I'll see if I can add that for an update.

@MS said:

I was more thinking about an option which decouples saving/loading. This way, a save could be pretty much instant - all that would be saved in the project would be the preserved session name and the IP address of the server, instead of all data belonging to the VE Pro instance (which in the case of 20 Kontakt instances, can be ALOT of data). I'll see if I can add that for an update.

Thanks, Martin. That's a brilliant idea. I can hardly wait to... [:D]

This would be SO much appreciated!!

It takes pretty long time to save in my case too, and the Cubase file is rather large (16 MB).

How is this possible to do on a MAC running Logic 9?

Why limit it to 8, can this be expanded?  If not this really does not allow many Logic users to use this to its full potential.

I'm puzzled whether this is a real problem or not.

Isn't it true that you can, even without VST3, run 16 instances of Kontakt (one for each MIDI channel) inside each instance of VEPro, and then run 8 instances of VEPro?

Therefore even with this 8-sever limitation you can run 16x8 = 128 instances of Kontakt on each PC or MAC.

And then, given that you could run the 64bit server alongside the 32bit server, you could put 64bit Kontakts in the former and 32bit Kontakts in the latter.

And therefore you can actually run 128 x 2 = 256 instances of Kontakt on a single machine, even without VST3.

Isn't that so?  Isn't that enough?

The problem with your math dag, is that if you run 16 instances of Kontakt in 1 instance of VEpro, you still only have access to 16 different patches because you still only have 16 midi channels to use per VEPro instance. This is the same as if you only had 1 instance of Kontakt loaded with 16 patches. Either way, you only get 16 patches per VEpro instance.

Then, if you are using a mac, Kontakt does not register as a 64bit plugin, so you are unable to use the 64bit server as well.

In my case, I was running plogue with 16 instances of Kontakt each with 16 patches loaded on a MacPro.

VEPro now limits me to having 8 instances of Kontakt each with 16 patches.

DP and Logic users unfortunately do not have access to VST3.

However, the forums are all a buzz with what doesn't work, and I have to say that this is an absolutely AMAZING piece of software that will single-handedly revolutionize the way large-project-workflow happens. I just can't (as I had dreamed about :) replace my current setup quite yet, but am looking forward to further refinements in VEPro.

Exactly.

@MS said:

Try instantiating 20 Kontakts in your sequencer, and see if you get the same saving speed.

Hi Martin, I have just tested it. With the same 20 Kontakt instances in Cubase the saving speed only takes 5 seconds. I hope this is helpful to you. Thanks a lot for your good work!

Best regards,

Peter

Hi Peter,

did you also load 10 GB of samples in the 20 instances of Kontakt?

Best,

Paul

Hi Paul,

yes, in Cubase I have loaded 20 Kontakt instances with exactly the same instruments/samples (about 10 GB) like I used in the VE Pro instance. With the result that saving only takes about 5 sec (instead of 45 sec, when instruments were loaded in VE Pro).

Best regards,

Peter