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  4. Cubase 6.0 / VEPro 5.0.9637 Long connection time

  • Cubase 6.0 / VEPro 5.0.9637 Long connection time

    O
    O

    Hi all,

    I am currently wrapped in the capabilities and enjoying the ability to use slave machines now instead of being limited by one machine.

    Great job Vienna!!!!

    Anyway, I am currently trialling Cubase 6.0 and doing my best to configure a complete East West Quantum Lab template. These are the only products I use currently. After soon discovering the limited capacity of Apple's Logic Pro track limit of 255 tracks, I found Cubase was able to take unlimited tracks. My idea was to have all the instruments I own in a single template and simply choose them as required compared to loading single instruments and finding its not the one Im looking for.

    So, Its currently working quite well between the Mac as DAW and my windows slave box running VEpro. My only concern is the time taken for Cubase and VEPro to connect to each instance. Its averaging 6-7 seconds per instrument/instance from the slave. Its running over GbE connection so I am wondering how I am able to speed this up.

    I am loading the metaframe on the slave completely first, once done I open Cubase on the mac and load the template which is simply VST connections to the instances. All is has to do is connect which is taking a long time. Considering each instrument is taking so long, simple mathematics puts it at over 5 hours to connect to all my instruments...... I realise 4-5 seconds per connection may not be much to some, but every second counts when you are looking at over 3000 instruments/instances.

    Thanks in advance....

    and great job once again Vienna team. Truly are opening the doors for us musicians!
  • K
    K

    You may want to decouple your VE Pro plugins with your way of working (the Decouple or All button, see manual). That will avoid any project data being sent over network, which is probably what's taking so much time.
  • O
    O

    Hi Karel, Thanks a lot for your speedy reply. I've tried decoupling all the instruments - *note* by selecting "ALL" in any instance within cubase, they all do indicated a purple highlighted all... yet the decouple button has no effect. Only on that one instrument/instance. Odd. Probably user error.

    Anyway... I saved the template with all the instruments decoupled and closed the project. All the instruments were loaded on the slave still just simply disconnected from the Mac host DAW. Re-opened the template, still the same amount of time required to make the connection.

    Im at a serious loss here as to why this has had no effect on the time its taking to connect per instance.

    If it would be any better, I could provide an screen recording to provide a better insight than with my words. Probably put up a quick 2 min vid or so on youtube over the weekend to demonstrate it.

    Thanks once again Karel
  • O
    O
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    Ok, a 2 minute 58 second video of what the hell I am doing on this end has been conveniently placed on youtube. Can be viewed at:



    there is a 720 res video if required...

    I hope this makes more sense than the posts.....

    Also, what kind of connection times between instances has Vienna experienced for Cubase during it's testing phases? Just to provide a ball park figure. I don’t want to be asking for an unrealistic time. I understand all this software is complex so if the best it can do is say 3 seconds per instance.... then thats what we can aim for. I didn’t want to be rude and give you the impression im thinking it should connect in 0.0000001 seconds or something ridiculous for each instance.
  • D
    D

    OK, first things first:

    1. How many MIDI ports are you using?
    2. How many VSTi Outputs are active?
    3. How many MIDI tracks do you actually need?

    I think that one of the problems is that you are using a very old fashioned library, and way of working. Is there any way you could use less tracks, without losing articulations?

    DG
  • O
    O

    1. 1 midi port and 2 audio (im assuming for left and right channel) per instance as set in the preferences for VEPro. Not the default 8 or 16 midi ports it has and 32 audio. I cut that down to minimum.

    2. Im not quite sure what you mean by active VSTi outputs. In the video there is no track data but as I add more, Im adding an empty section (smallest amount possible) of midi data but no notes in it... just a black split second section so the ability to freeze the track becomes enabled. Otherwise the ASIO meter goes through the roof. Opening the template with frozen or non frozen tracks is having no effect on the time its taking for each instance to connect from the Mac to the individual instances.

    3. This is where Im at a loss. I've seen quite a few posts and even templates where instruments are simply listed piano, violin, drums etc. To simulate the playing of a violin you need to have legato, staccato, vibrato, sustain etc.... so one articulation will not do.

    In terms of how old fashioned the library is, Im not sure how any other manufacturers / composers are doing this to help workflow. I realise it's unrealistic to go scrambling through so many articulations.... but the limitations i've had on working on one machine before getting VEPro, i spent more time simply going through patches waiting for them to load only to find it was not the one i was looking for. With time i'll be more comfortable with using the library and have a better understand of which patches i want for certain types of workflow. But at the moment Im fairly green with it. Im using the latest version of PLAY 3 East West have put out... so whether or not theres better ways to do this, im just not aware of them.

    I appreciate your time too. thanks DG
  • O
    O

    Actually, whilst I think of it. How have you got articulations arranged to eliminate this inefficient and old way of working? Any possibility of a quick screen recording from your end of how your articulations are arranged? Apologies if the request is a bit much of your time as so, Im just having the hardest time trying to visualise alternative approaches to templates at this point.

    Thanks again.
  • D
    D
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    @ozzietj said:

    1. 1 midi port and 2 audio (im assuming for left and right channel) per instance as set in the preferences for VEPro. Not the default 8 or 16 midi ports it has and 32 audio. I cut that down to minimum.

    2. Im not quite sure what you mean by active VSTi outputs. In the video there is no track data but as I add more, Im adding an empty section (smallest amount possible) of midi data but no notes in it... just a black split second section so the ability to freeze the track becomes enabled. Otherwise the ASIO meter goes through the roof. Opening the template with frozen or non frozen tracks is having no effect on the time its taking for each instance to connect from the Mac to the individual instances.

    3. This is where Im at a loss. I've seen quite a few posts and even templates where instruments are simply listed piano, violin, drums etc. To simulate the playing of a violin you need to have legato, staccato, vibrato, sustain etc.... so one articulation will not do.

    In terms of how old fashioned the library is, Im not sure how any other manufacturers / composers are doing this to help workflow. I realise it's unrealistic to go scrambling through so many articulations.... but the limitations i've had on working on one machine before getting VEPro, i spent more time simply going through patches waiting for them to load only to find it was not the one i was looking for. With time i'll be more comfortable with using the library and have a better understand of which patches i want for certain types of workflow. But at the moment Im fairly green with it. Im using the latest version of PLAY 3 East West have put out... so whether or not theres better ways to do this, im just not aware of them.

    I appreciate your time too. thanks DG

     

    1.  I think that there is probably a sweet spot between instances vs ports. I would increase the number of Ports and audio (VSTi Outputs in Cubase) and reduce the number of instances and see if that makes a difference. With too many ports things will be slow, but I would have thought that you are way away from that.
    2. I meant VSTi Outputs activated by clicking the little black triangle next to the instance name in Cubase's VST rack. You have answered this by explaining that you are using only on VSTi Output per instance.
    3. By "old fashioned" I meant that in past times we all needed to put one articulation per MIDI track. With many libraries this is no longer necessary, as multiple articulations can be accessed from one track via patch change, keyswitch or other controller. Unfortunately PLAY only gives you a few pre-packaged options, which makes things much more clunky to use. I'm afraid that you will be stuck with this until EW improves PLAY. However you may still be able to find some pre-packaged stuff that suits you, and thereby reduce the number of MIDI tracks hat you need.

    DG
  • D
    D
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    @ozzietj said:

    Actually, whilst I think of it. How have you got articulations arranged to eliminate this inefficient and old way of working? Any possibility of a quick screen recording from your end of how your articulations are arranged? Apologies if the request is a bit much of your time as so, Im just having the hardest time trying to visualise alternative approaches to templates at this point.

    Thanks again.

     

    You can't do what I do in PLAY, I'm afraid.

    DG
  • O
    O

    No worries, Thanks for your input DG.

    Just so odd how logic can connect to the same instances in far less time for the apple logic equivalent template i've made. I dont know why it is so much faster connecting to instances in logic than it is cubase, frozen / unfrozen....

    the mind boggles LOL