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Robert, have you tried the demo or at least investigated the specifications of Blue Cat Audio's PatchWork plugin?
It appears to be very relevant to what you've said you're trying to do. I've used it for years for a variety of odd tasks, including hosting a MIDI-controlled MultiFx rack. I've found it to be tremendously flexible and it's always done what I've wanted it to do.
I reiterate, Robert, I suggest you try or at least investigate Patchwork for yourself.
Most unfortunately, there seems to have been a lot of 'crying wolf' in this forum about this or that technical solution, and too often it looks suspiciously like deliberate smearing just in order to get some other provided solution favoured.
Hence, regretfully, I strongly suggest you rely on your own investigations and judgments in this particular minefield that you're currently struggling with. (Btw I am in no way affiliated with Blue Cat Audio.)
I did look at the Blue Cat website and was very interested in Patchworks. It seemed to me, given the reported GUI issue within VEPro, that a standalone version of Patchworks with another network audio solution would be ideal. Dante audio networking would also be ideal, but the price of admission is prohibitive to me at this point. Here is a crazy thought, I noticed VEP input and event plugins were available within Kushview, but Elements does not allow audio to pass through the VEPro firewall (I suppose it the ports are simply not connected). Thinking outside the box, what about using VEPro plugins within Bidule as a means to create audio nodes for FX loops?
In the meantime I will look into coaxing Plogue to allow a trial version of Bidule and also see about a trial version of Patchworks.
Here is a short video I made of me playing my rig for your amusement. 😊
I downloaded the Blue Cat trial and am trying it out. Since the machine I am running it on is a 12 core with 98 gig of RAM, perhaps I may not need to be so hasty in hosting it on a VEPro server. I will check the processing load as I go to see. I did read your previous forum posts on that matter and found them illuminating!
I am glad you enjoyed the video. You probably heard how I was automating FX so can see my need for such capabilities. 😊
Blue Cat Patchworks is rocking my world. One of the reasons I was moving FX to VEPro was because I could not access MIDI preset changes in V-Racks on Digital Performer. Of course the other reason was because of the savings in processing power. Patchworks does something I have not seen before by adding working MIDI ports internally to my DAW, even though they are in that virtual rack. I have tested it and I can automate patch changes and Patchwork configuration changes in that configuration. Plus the load on my processor seems to be in the acceptable range even with five instances of Patchworks running. Badass! Thanks for the tip!!! I will check later to see if perhaps it works within VEPro without crashing. As it stands now, I am buying!
Awesome to hear. BlueCatAudio definitely makes cool stuff. Just make sure to fully test it out in VePro if that is where you intend to use it. Its been a while since I ran it through Vepro tests, its always possible that some updates from either party have removed the concerns from one year and two years ago per the other thread.
Thanks Macker,
I am exploring PatchWork and really like it a lot. It does not seem to help with my issue within my VEP server where I would like to access both MIDI and audio in a channel strip. I have successfully launched it in VEP and it does not crash the program. I have also embedded it within KushView Elements within VEP and still can not gain access to both MIDI and Audio to switch Patchwork presets or change Elements graphs. VEP just won't allow this and as I read, VSL developers seem to believe that there is not sufficient interest in such capacity. But the good news for me is that Patchworks allows me to use the plugin within my virtual instrument rack, which is shared by all my sequences and song "Chunks" within DP while allowing MIDI Data to control presets. That gives me a solution that seems to work. It would be better to farm out that processing within VEP, but alas <insert snarky comment about VSL not understanding the need to dynamically automate FX presets in an FX rack server>. Maybe someday they will understand the need.
Robert, I'm just glad you arrived at a solution of use to you, and that you got there under your own steam. A pity it didn't quite fit the bill as you originally wanted; I guess we'll have to wait and see what time brings on that front. In the meantime no doubt soon you'll have a depth of knowledge and expertise with your solution that can guide and help others. Anyway, well done!
Hey Dewdman, I have not seen any GUI issues with Patchwork embedded in VEPro, and that is also with Kushview Elements as a Wrapper. I may try Bidule down the road as a way to get audio past the VEP instrument limitation, but for now I am configuring my system for happy FX automation. Also, I am still using VEPro to host my virtual instruments and that is working out well too. 😊
I am also testing out Patchwork again right now, so far no GUI problems! So perhaps those have been fixed since last year...which would have been BlueCatAudio fix, VePro7 hasn't been updated in quite a while.. Please let us know if you have any issues with it as you get further into it.
I vaguely recall it had something to do with hosting plugins inside Patchworks when patchworks is inside VePro..the sub-sub-hosted plugins would have problem...but so far so good today! and good to know.
That being said, I don't think you will be able to get midi into patchwork/Vepro from IAC regardless.
The main point about PlogueBidule is that it has an IAC module that DOES work. So you could setup PlobueBidule as AudioFX...and inside PlogueBidule, use the IAC module to get midi from totally outside of VePro. If you are going to use VePro.
Also thanks Macker for the encouragement. I purchased Patchwork today and I am having fun getting it configured. Perhaps in the future it will work within VEP. I do wish the standalone MIDI paired with my MIDI setup, that seems to be an unfortunate omission. Fortunately the plugins do what I was looking for for s long now.
I also have come to realize that the VSL team really intended for this software to be used to host their symphonic libraries, so I was a bit too critical of features that were missing. It does a lot for me and in the future I will be moving into the symphonic realm.
