I've decided to abandon VEP entirely. We've been waiting 2,5 years, and quite frankly, I halved the processing overhead in Nuendo 12 after removing VEP.

I've been a VEP user since 2011, teaching it in universities and engaged in the community, but there's a limit to how long it's possible to wait. VSL is among the last to fix M1 compatibility, only passed by a couple of old-school plugin manufacturers like Lexicon, Musictribe and Kush Audio (which will probably never fix their plugins, their codebase is too old). I've abandoned those as well, and will recommend any students to do the same.

It was a pain rebuilding the template into disabled instrument tracks instead, but worth it. For remote usage of plugins and libraries, I'll look into Audiogridder instead in the future.

@snattack said:

For remote usage of plugins and libraries, I'll look into Audiogridder instead in the future.

Wow.. sounds good. Thnx for the info.

Looks like VSL is updating and releasing new stuff, but nothing related to VEP. I guess it's time to move on.

I got quite excited whenI saw that update come in yesterday! Oh well, time to move on I think..

The update has just borked my entire setup. I'm totally unable to connect to any of my existing instances. The whole thing is an utter disaster. There's often very little in the way of tech support and it's had me tearing my hair out all afternoon. I simply can't afford to waste the time with this anymore. I'll be using next week (I have a bit of rare downtime) to move across to a deactivated template. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who's done the same. I'm writing in huge frustration at the moment, so might calm down, but we're all under enough deadline pressure without this nonsense getting in the way. Sorry if that's a little intemperate. I'm fed up/stressed.

[quote=snattack;313675]

For remote usage of plugins and libraries, I'll look into Audiogridder instead in the future.

That's what I'm doing as well( loading all libraries disabled). It takes a little longer to access instruments (enable) and projects can be quite big with lots of instruments loaded but it's much cleaner.

I'll look into this, although I have to say a single computer setup sounds very appealing). 

The constraint, as ever, is RAM, but now Cubase supports freezing multiple tracks, that should be less of an issue. 

I'll see if they can fix VEPro, I'm extremely frustrated right now, but if they can get it working again, it really is a useful tool. However, I'm actively exploring alternatives. I just can't afford to be letting clients down like this.

Hello Mike,

Sorry to hear that you are negatively affected by the last update. We are currently investigating - but in the meanwhile, the rollback feature (via the right-click context menu) will allow you to get back quickly to the previous VE Pro version.

=> Software Rollback - Context Menu

Best,
Andreas

I setup an i9 sample server last night, and the latest version of VEPro (7.1.1427), and can confirm it has serious bugs.  In my case, connecting from the main host (M1 Mac), caused VEP on the i9 to create a new instance with a truncated name.  If the original instance I connected to was named "Strings", the new instance would be "ngs".  I couldn't simply use the new instance.  Saving and reopening a project caused the same bug - connections would create a new blank instance and connect to that.  

I have an i7 server working fine with VEP 7.1.1298, so I rolled VEP on the i9 back to .1298 and it now works fine.  Both servers are connected.  I would withdraw 7.1.1427 from VSL's downloads and installer. 

I'm having the same issues on a networked Mac. I rebuilt a program that worked, but now everything is coming back distorted. This is only on the networked Mac, not the Mac running VEP.

I tried rolling back to the previous version, but it wiped the VEP AU plug in from Digital Performer.

Really not sure how to proceed.

Jon Newton
Portland, Oregon

I'll try a rollback asap (not in the studio for a few days now). I hope that works! Thanks for the info

VSL LiveChat <livechat@vsl.co.at>
           
17 Nov 2022, 19:26 (14 hours ago)
           
to me
Hello Oliver,
 
thanks for getting in touch.
 
You can use all our samples & software on the macOS Ventura. Our software also works with the M1 and M2 chips, and it works surprisingly well on Rosetta 2. You can find more information about Rosetta 2 here:
 
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211861
 
Apple's M1 and M2 and chips are not yet officially supported, but we have this high on our priority list. Our developers are working on full-native support for Apples new Silicon CPUs - but we don't have an ETA at this point.

iLok works fine with Pro Tools, Ivory, Omnisphere and a lot of software on my Mac Studio (Rosetta).  I've never been in love with iLok but it's never caused me much trouble either.  Pro Tools is going native soon.  They're testing Beta now w developers.  

The truth is, with my Mac Studio, I no longer need VEP.  Sad.  I love its economy and organization - and I have a mountain of old sessions that depend on it. Rebuilding those without VEP will be an enormous headache.  

Last I heard, Apple is nowhere near as big in Europe as it is in North America.  I suspect this is a bit of what's going on.  When I switched from analogue tape to digital in the 80's, Apple was the only game in town for audio.
I never left the platform, although we did buy a bunch of Windows machines in the nineties when we were developing interactive multimedia.  From that experience, I have no plans of switching to Windows anytime soon!  

I think letting VEP slide much longer will be a big loss for VSL.  Maybe they should switch to a subscription model to provide enough funds to keep VEP up to date?  Avid did it.  It's expensive.  And I would hate it but, since they started the subscription thing, Pro Tools has finally started working again. 

...except when I did the rollback, it removed the VEP plug in from the Library > Audio > Plug-ins folder, and now it doesn't work at all in Digital Performer...

@Jon Newton said:

...except when I did the rollback, it removed the VEP plug in from the Library > Audio > Plug-ins folder, and now it doesn't work at all in Digital Performer...

Are you running VEP server locally on the same Mac as DP?  In my case, it was a slave PC that I had to rollback.  That only affected VEP server.   My Mac M1 is running an older version of the plugin itself (7.0.1120).  Both PCs are 7.1.1298.  That setup works, at least with DP.  Nuendo 12 doesn't work well under Rosetta with VEP plugins. 

I have to switch over to my M1 system this week, one way or the other. At the moment, I'm working on a small project in Pro Tools, which runs in Rosetta anyway. Is anyone having acceptable results with Pro Tools (latest version 2022.10.0.134) and the VEPro7 plugin?

Hoping that by the time I have a bigger score to write in DP they'l have the MAS plugin written-- and if not, I'll use the AU plugin for my VSL libraries (running on my Intel machine) and run everything else native on the M1. Thank god for DP's V-Racks...

All I want for the holiday is an Apple Silicon native VEP.   🎄

Any updates or timeframe?   

My guess is at least June 2023 - If it would have been any close to release a native version in the next 3 months, they would have given a timeframe.

@C_Caouette said:

All I want for the holiday is an Apple Silicon native VEP.   🎄

Any updates or timeframe?   

It's time VSL offer everyone unlimited free licenses to run its ancient VEP software on as many external machines as they want so that we can put all the VSL stuff on those old Intel computers we have lying around while running native M1 DAW software on our new Mac Studios. 

I really doubt that it'll be another 6+ months.  My guess would be end of year, or January.  VSL has publicly said on this forum thread that they are currently working on M1 native comparability and it will come out soon.  Or something like that, I can't find the exact post.

Btw I'm not saying I'm not frustrated, or that I'm not shocked that VEP is the last thing in my setup that isn't M1 compatible.  But they did say it would be soon, hopefully they actually meant it.

I also hope on a Christmas release. It would make life much easier. It's the only plugin for me now that is non-m1 native in my cubase template.