Hi DG,

I've just tried with Chainer and Play loads correctly (at least the 32 bit version). So, as you said, it's a VE Pro problem. And this conclusion is pretty obvious having said that Play is not (yet) supported under VE Pro.

Again, my only curiosity regards the way some people managed to make it possible in a similar configuration (Windows 7 64 bit): as an IT Engineer I can't believe it's just a matter of humidity, pression, temperature, pollution or some other kind of meteorological conditions! [;)]

And if it's a matter of IT conditions, that environment has to be reproducible.

Can you load Chainer in VE Pro?

DG

I managed to load Chainer under VE Pro (32 bit) and Play under Chainer: I could see Play's GUI, by I couldn't interact with it (pressing button doesn't seem to work anyhow).

Then I tried a different approach: I opened Chainer and loaded Play into the first slot. The GUI works fine there, then I was able to load a patch of Voice of Passion. Now I saved that configuration as a preset. I went back to VE Pro, opened a VST track with a Chainer instance and loaded the preset I saved earlier.

The strange thing is that now I can interact with Play's GUI.

The strangest thing is that Play doesn't play (ahahah): I can see the incoming MIDI led activity on VE Pro track, but Play doesn't produce any audio.

Gemini,

Sorry for your problems.  The only two things I did was one to remove the Vienna Instruments and make sure I loaded them last if I wanted to use Play.  Also, and I had a similar problem to you, I would get a similar error that the product could not be found.  I would ignore it and even though the screen was white I would save the metaframe.  Then close and reopen VE Pro.  Play would then load normally.

Here's a picture of one of my instances fully loaded with different Play instruments.  All this on a Win7 64 mahcine built on an X58 chipset motherboard and using a Core I7 920.

Don't know if you can see but on the very right of the picture, I overlayed the VE Pro Server to show it was running on 64 bit.

Here's the Server running.

THANKS A LOT CSTEAM!

That helped so much!!!

Actually, I also forgot another trick I read in another thread: to switch on the audio engine BEFORE loading the Play's VST.

Now the problem of uninteractive GUI still remains... But I believe that I can solve it somehow trying to create some preset with the standalone version of Play and load that just after creating the VST instance...

I will try some tricks and I will post my results with a reproducible procedure to make it work!

Thanks again!

@Gemini said:

Now the problem of uninteractive GUI still remains... But I believe that I can solve it somehow trying to create some preset with the standalone version of Play and load that just after creating the VST instance...

Glad to hear that you've got some solutions. The GUI problem is solved for me by using J-Bridge and un-embedding the GUI of PLAY.

DG

The interface goes blank as soon as you change view and go back to Play instrument.

Whatever it is, visible or blank, it's impossible to interact with it (the entire VE Pro window loses the focus when you click in the Play's GUI area).

I remember that Play showed a similr behavior when I loaded it into FX Teleport, if too many other instruments were loaded before it: also there it was not possible to interact with the GUI and the entire FX Teleport's window lost the focus.

@DG said:

The GUI problem is solved for me by using J-Bridge and un-embedding the GUI of PLAY

Thanks DG: I will give it a try.

Ok. J-Bridging Play solve the problem of the un-clickable GUI.

And now, even though the J-Bridged Play engine is not able anymore to see the Library folder ("favorites") of the installed product, you can manually browse and load from the local folder where it is located.

What I'm wondering is: CSTeam managed to load, use and interact with Play without the need to J-Bridge it.

Has this something to do with Windows interface capabilities? In fact, from the picture posted by CSTeam, it is clear that he has AERO effects activated, which is not my case, as I optimized my machine to deactivate all effects in the interface. Just an idea, though.

Just to be clear and in case someone else is trying to make Play work in VE Pro, this is the complete procedure to load and use a Play VST.

1. J-Bridge Play, paying attention to move the original DLLs in a different folder than the one where VE Pro scan the VST DLLs.

2. Open VE Pro Server (32 or 64 based on your preferences)

3. Activate the audio engine in VE Pro

4. Remove the VI channel that is automatically created in an empty instance

4. Create as many Play channels as you need

5. Configure each channel based on your needs

6. Save the entire server state as a metaframe

This worked for me. CSTEam managed to load and use each Play VST instance without the need to J-Bridge it: I'm still wondering what is the trick! [;)]

Gemini,

No these are the X64 versions of Play not Jbridged. 

Just to make sure..did you save one of your unusable Virframe instances of Ve Pro/ Play where it the GUI was misbehaving and then reload it?

I used to have those same problems but mine all work on both my Win7 and Vista 64 system.  Don't know what else to tell you?

BTW, I love Jbridge.  I was very early on with the beta on this.  The developer is very helpful.  He really deserves a medal from the VI community.

CSTeam,

thanks for your efforts helping me. Unfortunately your last suggestion doesn't solve my problems.

Even if I save both the VIFRAME and the METAFRAME, when I reload the entire setup, Play's GUI behaves the same way as before: no interaction at all and – what is very strange! – the entire VE Pro interface loses the focus (the title bar goes "gray", as you had clicked outside the window area or activated another application). This happens only for the strict area of Play's GUI: if you click outside it (yet inside VE Pro), VE Pro gets the focus again.

My only guess is that it could be something hardware-related (video card?).

Gemini,

It could be graphic card related though my Vista64 uses two ATI (3870) cards and my Win7 machine uses two Nvidia (9800 GT) cards and I have it working on both.  Could be a driver issue though.

Certainly not worth swapping machine hardware for software deficiencies.

Best of luck. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Thanks again for your feedback.

You need to know that my new server (the MASS) where I run VE Pro is based on a Tyan server motherboard with integrated VGA. Though, since I control it through a software KVM solution (KaVooM), I don't have any video cable attached to it, for I see that server's screen through the LAN on the monitor of my host machine.

It's just a guess that it could be a kind of video driver related problem... but I can't understand why, considering the same configuration for any other software running on that machine (I've just tried FX Teleport and Play is loaded and works regularly), only VE Pro should be affected by a possible hardware driver issue.

Anyway, thank you so much for taking time to consider my problems: I appreciated.

I had to give up trying to make VE Pro and Play work together on my hardware setup (even though it is the same of other users who claim to have successful experience with that).

Until an official support for Play is integrated in a future VE Pro release, I had to accept the compromise of using both VE Pro (for any plugin but Play) and FX Teleport (for Play only).

Everything work like a charme even if I can't take advantage of the preserve function of VE Pro, so I have to wait the loading time of the samples in Play. It's not a big issue, but an integration of Play into VE Pro could simplify enormously the workflow.

Thanks to everyone here helping me out with my problem, particularly to CSTeam for sharing his experience with me.

Play just doesn't work in 64bit VST hosts and none of them are supported.

It works in VSL Pro 32bit on XP fine and it works on a Mac in Bidule but it doesn't work on a PC in Bidule, VStack or 64bit VSL Pro. It looks much more like a play problem than a VSL problem to be honest as everything else I have  - Kontakt etc all run fine in everything.

Very frustrating though for those of us trying to combine libraries. A lot of people either run Macs as slaves or just run Play as a standalone on a single machine in which case its fine.  Play Pro is out in two months time so lets see if the underlying software has been improved!

 To add more mistery to it all:

I used to have VE Pro 64 bit working on dedicated Windows Vista 64 bit with East West Play engine 64 bit (RA, Gipsy, SD+ SD pro, Silk). But today after changing nothing to my machine. It doesn't work anymore. I also get the "product not found message". I uninstalled and re-installed everything but no luck :-(

I hope jBridge will help me now

 Hmm I didn't get it to work with jBridge but now I have it working again:

How I got Vienna Ensemble to work with East West Play for me:

The probable cause why it stopped working is because I installed the latest version of Vienna Ensemble Pro 4.0 build: 4881. I installed 'the old' Vienna Ensemble Pro 4.0 build 4686 and all is working fine in my situation. Let me be clear on that:

I have a Windows Vista 64 bit PC with some VSL libraries and four East West Play libraries. There are a couple of ways I can use VEPro:

1. I start Vienna Ensemble Pro (64-bit) on the Vista 64 bit slave PC.
   - Through Add VSTi -> play_VST_x64 I can load my Play engine perfectly
2. I start Vienna Ensemble Pro server (64-bit) on the Vista 64 bit slave PC.
   - On the main screen I click on the buton Add and I give the new instance a name e.g. "test".
   - After I click on OK the new instance is openend and I see the instance "test" in the list of Active instances in the main screen.
   - Through Add VSTi -> play_VST_x64 I load the East West Play engine but get the message screen "product not found" with the text "That product does not exist (Product Id -1)" and I click the button OK.
   Note: In the latest VEPro build 4881 I did not get to see the message text and the OK button. All was just blank (and that's where I got stuck).
   In the screen where normally Play would load I see a grey area with the text "Some of the Play components are missing. Please check your installation"
   - Save this project through the main top menu File -> Save Project and give it a name. e.g. test
   - Now immediately load the project you just saved ("test") now the Play Engine looks and feels as it should!
   - On my other PC (Win XP SP3 32bit) I load the VST plugin Vienna Ensemble Pro in Cubase 5.1.1 and I connect to the slave VEPro Preserved Session "test" and all is working perfect!  :-)
3. (This is the best way) Start Vienna Ensemble Pro server (64-bit) on the Vista 64 bit slave PC.
   - On my other PC (Win XP SP3 32bit) I load the VST plugin Vienna Ensemble Pro in Cubase 5.1.1 and I connect to the slave Vienna Ensemble Pro server. It is not mandatory to give the preserved session a name.
   - Now on the Vista 64 bit slave PC again, load the East West Play engine through Add VSTi -> play_VST_x64
   - And all is working perfect!! :-)

Like i said, I use method 3 with no problems at all!
Maybe important things to know:

• on my slave Vista 64 PC I installed all my vst plugins (32 bit and 64 bit) in the same directory: C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Vstplugins
• My master PC is a Windows XP SP 3 PC with Cubase 5.1.1
• On both my master Windows XP PC and slave Windows Vista 64 PC I installed the 'old' Vienna Ensemble Pro 4.0 build 4686 (or else it will not work)
• On my slave Windows Vista 64 I have the latest Play software update 1.2.5
• I can be hired as a software developer and/or tester [;)]

Hope this will help someone else!
Daniël

Hi Daniel,

your post can help us so much. And I believe that it can help VSL as well, as it's pretty evident that there is something broken in the new 4881 compared to the old 4686.

I'm trying your suggestion on my system: I will let you know what I find.