Vstack or other AU host question

[nick.halliwell]

Hi all,

I got my first VIs the other day. I have a Pro Tools rig as my main recording machine and then a G5 iMac as my "sampler". Until now it’s been running Kontakt2 with a number of Horizon series sets and some stuff converted from my copy of the Pro Edition, although I’ve now pensioned off my old Giga PC.

OK, so I need to get an AU (or VST) host to run on the iMac so I can have at least 4 instances of the VI running to rough out string quartets or whatever before printing to tracks to PT. I have a copy of Logic on the iMac but it uses up way too much RAM to be viable. I need something leaner just to act as a host.

So does Vstack (or any other host) allow you to route audio from an individual instance of a virtual instrument to a specific audio output? I would kind of assume that you ought to be able to do this but I’d like to be 100% sure before parting with even another £36.

Basically I’m using the ADAT port of an M-Audio FireWire 1814 piped to my 01V96 digital mixer within the digital domain. With K2 I can select the ADAT outs individually but with the standalone VI I can’t. The 1814 shows up as a single device and if I choose it the audio is sent to its analogue outs, I can’t easily get it to the ADAT outs. Basically the VI seems to just take its settings from CoreAudio rather than from the 1814's own driver (as K2 does) which gives much greater routing flexibility.

While we're on the subject, what is everyone use using for this on the Mac? Is Vstack the best bet? If anyone has any recommendations about other hosts I’d be interested. I need something nice and simple which will allow me to use as much of my iMac’s RAM as possible for the actual VIs and then be able to pipe the audio via ADAT to the mixer without involving any converters.

Many thanks!

Nick

[tomhartman]

Check out Rax here: http://www.grantedsw.com/rax/

I downloaded the demo and it seems to work fine..

Tom

[nick.halliwell]

Thanks Tom. Rax is one of the ones I'm looking at (although I think there's a newer version at http://plasq.com/rax). I mainly want to know a) which of these hosts is the least resource-hungry and will allow me to get the most out of the RAM I have in the iMac and b) whether you can only use CoreAudio or whether, like Kontakt, you can access the FW1814's driver and thus assign things to the ADAT outputs easily.

I will give Rax a go, certainly and thanks for the recommendation. If anyone else has any suggestions I'd be really interested to hear them.

Nick

[nick.halliwell]

Hi again,

Over the weekend I gave RAX a try. But I wasn't able to assign individual instances of the VI to different audio outputs. I've worked out a way of assigning the output of a VI to the ADAT outputs of my FW1814 (using Jack which I've had installed on my system for months - funny how it's the obvious solutions you don't see, isn't it?) but at the moment the only way I can have one instance of a VI with celli going to output1, another with violas -> out2 and a third and fourth with 1st and 2nd violins --> outs 3 & 4 is to use Logic 7 as my host and that takes up so many of the computer's resources.

So my question remains: is there an AU/VST host which allows you to assign each instance to a different output? Using Horizon Solo/Chamber Strings with Kontakt2 I've always been able to do this and it's very, very useful.

I've not been able to find any specific documentation on Vstack so I don't know whether it can handle this or not. If there's anyone out there who's using Vstack on the Mac, could they possibly let me know?

Many thanks

Nick