VEP as live gig rack?

[mbira]

Hi folks,

I am curious if people are using VEP in this less traditional way.  I use Ableton in our live band setup and we are incorporating Malletkat midi instruments to trigger soft synths that are playing through VSTs.  I am needing to be able to enable and disable tracks where each track will have the synth and processing for a certain part of a song and then will switch (with something like a program change from Ableton) to the next track and disable unused tracks.  

A few questions:

1) Does anyone use VEP in a live band setup?  If so-how reliable is it for you in terms of crashing and latency?

2) Is it possible to send remote MIDI messages that will enable and disable tracks in VEP? 

I am also demoing a program called "Gig Performer" and it's actually working pretty well for this purpose, but I'd prefer to use VEP because then I could use VEP durring my production stage and more easily move between production and live use.

[mbira]

Sadly, after a day of trying to get VEP working reliably I am going to abandon it.  I have found VEP to be constantly crashing both the server and my host DAW.  I recognize this is primarily being used as a mixing tool, but for live use crashes like these are just not possible.  I see many other crash threads on this forum, so it sounds like this is an issue across the board.  Hopefully the VEP folks can get it sorted out.  

If anyone is interested, here are a couple points that I found that made this unusable (other than the crashing):

1) Only CC is able to be sent as automation from the Host.  For things like enabling/disabling tracks, button pushes, etc, it would be nice to be able to send program changes or even midi note numbers instead of CC.  Having to automate CC curves to try and control track enable/disable will quickly become unmanagable.

2) VST 3 support.  This would enable less CPU usage for tracks that are not active-right?

I recognize that I'm probably not the intended market for VEP, but it is really a shame because I use Cubase for my production and mixing, and it would have been wonderful to have been able to just port my VEP instance from Cubase in to ableton for when we are playing live.

[Paul]

Hi mbira, 

Thanks for reporting!

Crashes always have a reason, and ideally they can be reproduced on similar systems. 

Which OS are you working on?

Do you want to send us a crash report, with the circumstances of the crash => support@vsl.co.at

Automation is indeed a tricky chapter with the parameter automation that is integrated, but we're always open to suggestions. 

Best, 
Paul

[Sami Boman]

I use VEP5 for live playing and haven't had a single problem. I have two keyboards connected to my Macbook Pro laptop and all the VEP tracks are enabled all the time. I just change the midi channels of my keyboards to control which track is playing.

[mbira]

@Paul, Yes I'll be happy to send along the crash reports to you guys.  I have been testing on my macbook pro which is on 10.10.  The studio computer is a Mac Pro running 10.11.  

The crashes have been on Ableton, but for production I use Cubase 9.5.  I haven't tested VEP on Cubase.  

I'm sure the issues have been because of the way I have been trying to use it...lots of plugins and then duplicating them, and trying to enable and disable things with CC, etc.  Probably an outlayer issue. 

@Sami.  I'm glad to hear that you are able to get your live rig working!  And even with all your plugins enabled!  I use so many synths and plugins in each song that I can't even get one song to play back at a low enough latency setting to be playable in a studio without freezing 90% of my tracks-much less live.  Cheers to you for keeping your set managable! :-)

[adriaantaylor]

You are NOT the only one thinkiing along these lines!!!

I have a very complex setup with over 8 keyboards with 110 plugins or combos of plugins with 16 tracks per keyboard in vep. 

This includes using bidule to put in dual apregitors inline with each keyboard as well as using push2 and utilizing maschine for use as a midi controller. 

Things ive notices. I do save resources when tracks are disabled.. this maybe new with V6 not sure. 

But as i deactivate tracks in vep ram use and cpu does go down on the mac side.  

So far the main issue for me is the midi learning / automation..This is very basic and could use improvement.

1 - this needs to get overhauled the paramater vs midi ports is not intuative at all.  and tedius one one one learning of parmaters other then a few basic ones is not great. 

In my example.. i also noticed that... vep never seems to get the midi channel correct. I send out from my controller  cc## on ch3 for example. and then one from cc## on ch 2 for example.. and both are showing up as channel 1 with the same CC##. also.. seems to effect all instances of the disable button on the same track in all instances in server not just the one im hooked up to. 

I also have the machine controller routed into each of the tracks using Apple AIC virtual midi driver. 

as well as the breath controller.. This way i can control the arps on/ off with maschine in midi mode as well as paramaters in live since each track is set to the iac ins for each keyboard. 

VEP seems to just ignore my midi channel assignments from maschine and puts them all on ch 1 and also makes them connect to all instances so if i turn off track on on keyboard 1. it also turns off track 1 on all the other instances... what am i missing here. NOTE also does not seem to be a way to invert the range values.. hense my having to reverse my 0 to 127 in machine controller to control when the pads light up or not based on that toggle. 

 

See photos - Take a look at the musicstationV4.png as well. 

 

The first one is what im sending from machine out.. (it is in midi controller mode). and what vep is seeing on the recv. end. 

Makes no sense!!