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.

Hi Daniel,

you are right: the build 4686 works like a charme with Play.

Your previous procedure (scenario #2) needs to be modified, though. You get that error just because you need to switch on the VE Pro Engine (the first icon in the toolbar) BEFORE loading the Play VST. If you do that, you can use it right after you opened it without the need to close it and reopen it.

Now my problem is that I cannot open my old frames (both VIFRAMES and MFRAMES) with an the old version 4686. The message I receive is "Could not load the plugin". Are those files that much version-dependent?

Unfortunately, I need to reinstall 4881 as I don't want to build a template with 80 instruments from scratch!!! [:P]

I hope VSL can fix that problem. There's no reason why a plugin can work in 4686 yet not in 4881.

A new try.

I managed to save the VIFRAME in build 4686 and open it in 4881.

Don't ask me why, but in my configuration, Play works ( and you can also interact with its GUI under VE Pro) only if you are loading a VIFRAME saved with the previous version (in this case, 4686).

So that incompatibility seems to be even more strange than it appeared before!

Scenario 1: loading into 4881 a VIFRAME created in version 4686 ends to a completely working environment: you can both play the instruments and interact with Play's GUI (even if the VE Pro audio engine button is switched off and the VIFRAME has been saved for changes in version 4881)

Ok, based on my previous experiments I can describe a workaround to work with Play under VE Pro 4881.

Basically the idea is to create the VIFRAMEs involving PLAY under VE Pro 4686, then use them under VE Pro 4881. Thus what I'm suggesting is to use 4686 just to edit the VIFRAME.

I managed to have both installations side by side: the only care, obviously, is to install them in different folders. I also uncheked the "Install VST Plugins" during the setup of 4686, installed after the 4881.

Of course, you can't have both of them running simultaneously, but this doesn't affect at all the workaround.

And now, the procedure:

1. Open the VE Pro Server 4686.

2. Add a new instance assigning to it a name

3. Switch on the Audio Engine of the instance you are configuring (IMPORTANT!!!)

4. Add the instance of Play and configure it, loading all the instruments you need (you can repeat this step as many times as you need)

5. Save your VIFRAME and close it

6. Exit the VE Pro Server 4686

7. Open the VE Pro Server 4881

8. Open the METAFRAME where you want to integrate the new VIFRAME

9. Add a new instance

10. Load the VIFRAME you have previously saved using the 4686 Frame editor

11. Close the Frame Window

12. Save the METAFRAME (you can save it with a new name just to be sure not to lose your previous configuration)

It worked like a charme for me.

Best,

Luigi.

 Hi Luigi,

Thanx for the tip about my scenario #2, guess I'm learning everyday.

I agree, it is even more strange then I could think of...

I hope the boys and girls from VSL and East West can come to a proper solution (and maybe  these findings can help), so we all can benefit and think of today as "the old days when VSL and East West were incompatible".... 

Best,

Daniël

 Anyone tried the latest build 5436 to check if it is solved?

I was so happy because Play always worked with VE Pro, even with the version 4881. I never had any problems.

Last week I updated VE PRO to version 5436 and since this time VE Pro always crashes when playing a Play-instance. Loading a Play-instance is ok, but after playing some notes it crashes.

So I changed back to version 4686 but I still have this problem.That's very strange. Maybe the reason for this problem is at a very different point, for example new (automatically) Win7-Updates, or other things I don't see at this moment. I have to investigate this problem.

 Hi Petera,

I had the same problem last week in Windows 7. I am not sure what fixed it, but what I did was:

- save the metaframe in VE Pro 

- reboot all systems

- load the metaframe in VE Pro first

- then connect to it from Cubase 5.1.1.

Then my problems were gone. The next day I started everything as usual (load VE Pro instances via Cubase 5.1.1) and still no problems.

Still don't know what happened... I am keeping my fingers crossed, 'cause I will be starting my VE Pro machine for the same project in 5 minutes (after I get some coffee)

Best,

Daniël

Well unfortunately, it was a disaster. I too have the same problems as Petera: My dedicated 64bit Windows 7 Ultimate, 8gb, Q9400 VE Pro crashes when I play a note on a East West Play instrument.

I tried the latest Ve Pro build 5436 but then I get the unresponsive GUI. Finally after a couple of reboots and trying other versions of VE Pro I got it to work again on VE Pro build 4686 (again). Not the way I thought I did in my previous post above but:

- load project

- press DECOUPLE on VE Pro

- save project

- load project

- manually add the required EW Play instrument in VE Pro (SD2 Pro in my case). Loading a viframe did not work!

And then it works again but I have totally lost my inspiration for tonight :-(

So I made the decision not to buy anything from VSL or East West until this get fixed. (Universal Audio be happy, my euros are coming your way)

I will try again tomorrow....

Hi Daniel001,

I found out that editing of saved metaframes is very buggy.

Don't edit a (loaded) metaframe and save it. You risk to damage it. Only save completely new, reestablished metaframes. It means: if you want to create and save a metaframe...

1. create a blanc metaframe (File->Clear All),

2. add as many instances as you need,

3. fill this instances with your instruments (loading of saved projects is ok!)

4. save this metaframe.

If you reload this metaframe everything should be allright. But don't edit and save this metaframe again, in my case it often crashs after reloading (in combination with "Play")!!!!

With this rules I managed to get VE PRO and Play worked again.

Best regards,

Peter

Hi All,

This is very intersting. I have this problem with 4881 on both Vista/Win 7 64bit. Play was fine in 4686, you can load the Play presets in 4881 but as soon as you play a few notes, bang. Crashes. I've been using Play with Jbridge. and It crashes in that as well. "acirne" in another post suggested something which I've tried out....

Play in Jbridge crashes but VE Pro is still responsive. When play crashes and essentially empties the "play_1" channel, open another Play channel, VE Pro calls this "play_2" reload your presets into this channel and leave the "play_1" where it is. Save a new file. This has worked for me today without any crashes. No idea why but hey ho i'll take it.

Paul

@petera said:

Hi Daniel001,

I found out that editing of saved metaframes is very buggy.

Don't edit a (loaded) metaframe and save it. You risk to damage it. Only save completely new, reestablished metaframes. It means: if you want to create and save a metaframe...

1. create a blanc metaframe (File->Clear All),

2. add as many instances as you need,

3. fill this instances with your instruments (loading of saved projects is ok!)

4. save this metaframe.

If you reload this metaframe everything should be allright. But don't edit and save this metaframe again, in my case it often crashs after reloading (in combination with "Play")!!!!

With this rules I managed to get VE PRO and Play worked again.

Best regards,

Peter

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the tip! That's indeed what caused the problem. Normally I load all my instruments from Cubase and not via a metaframe preset (when I load a song). But this time I did create a preset and did some editing on it. So there you go...

Hopefully all is perfect in a next release...

Best,

Daniël 

Hmmm... a crash again when I added a second instance in VE Pro [:(]

But what I also noticed that when I play a Gongs preset ('light' sound preset) in SD2 Pro VE Pro doesn't crash at all but when I play the Dynasty Daiko ('heavy' sound preset) it crashes on the first or second note. This started me thinking about CPU spikes...

In VE Pro I had set the Audio Engine Settings, Multiprocessing (Options-> Preferences -> Audio tab) to 4 threads per instance.

Now I changed this setting to Multiprocesing: 2 threads (per instance) and I am no longer able to crash VE Pro build 4686 (yet) with EW Play.

Can anyone confirm the same behaviour?

Best,

Daniël