Help Me Understand V-Racks

[wonder]

I've been on DP since around 98 or so ... I'm sorry to say I haven't really dug into some of the cool tools.

I had some time tonight so I thought I'd google "DP tricks" and came across V-Racks.

How I normally write, or record, or just work in DP is ...

VI's go on top
MIDI tracks next
Master Fader next
AUX busses next
Audio Tracks next

I use a lot of VI's when writing or sketching ideas. I'm trying to figure out if V-Racks would benefit me.

I'm assuming its sort of like adding a Verb or Instrument patch at the "Concert Level" in MainStage and thereby allowing all Sequences/Chunks to use it? By the way...are Sequences the same thing as Chunks but just with a different name?

If you're gonna V-Rack something like lets say Ivory in Seq 1, when I go to Seq 2 for another version of Seq 1, I change the piano sound in Ivory and thereby changing the sound in Seq 1 as well? So, why even V-Rack them if you're gonna have to change the patches when moving back and forth between Sequences?

How do you use V-Racks? I'm seeing some guys use V-Racks exclusively.

Just trying to do some learning.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

The value of vracks comes into play when you have multiple sequences in the same project. They allow you to use the instantiated VIs in all the sequences w/o having to reload them every time you change sequences. That's pretty much it.

[wonder]

So I imagine it comes in handy when, say, scoring a scene and you want alternate melodies or alternate versions with the same sounds/patches?

[Guitar Gaz]

So I imagine it comes in handy when, say, scoring a scene and you want alternate melodies or alternate versions with the same sounds/patches?

Exactly - those of us who are old school users of sequencers (as DAW's used to be called) always composed in sequences (verse, chorus etc.) and then pulled all the sequences together into a larger merged sequence (a song if you wish). It took me an age to find a way round this problem in DP where every sequence has a different mixer and different setup without the same VI's - it drove me mad till I discovered V-Racks. Now each sequence (or chunk if you wish) has access to the same sound sources/VI's/aux tracks - much easier to use and also more efficient than having several different chunks with different separate instances of VI's loaded into each chunk. I now have several V-Racks as clippings so I can just copy them into new projects - so Reason, Superior Drummer, Wavestation, M3, Arturia Mini Moog, Pod Farm2 etc are there and available - of course you can change what the VI's sounds or setup are for each project.

I could never work the linear way some do with one long chunk with everything in it - therefore V-Racks are perfect for multi chunk projects. But even if you work in the linear fashion, being able to call up V-Rack clippings for a new project mean you have a favourite setup ready to use.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Not only that. You can save the vrack and call it up to load an into other projects. If you have a particular set of VIs and instruments... wait a minute...

:rtfm:r

[Guitar Gaz]

Not only that. You can save the vrack and call it up to load an into other projects.

Yes true - but clippings is probably easier as you don't have to remember which project has the V-Rack you want (you have to load the V-Rack chunk from a particular project otherwise) - the clippings will always be available in all projects. I find V-Racks particularly useful for Vocal tracks where I have a set of plugins for each vocal track which you can use again easily and quickly if you have to set something up in a hurry (you can always change the plugins later) and for guitars with plugin amps like Pod Farm2 - so for example I'll have 3 electric guitar auxes in the V-Rack, one bass guitar, and 2 acoustics - all there and ready to go very quickly. So I always have a combination of V-Racks saved in clippings, some bigger than others depending on what is needed, and some with different combinations of VI's.

[stubbsonic]

Sometimes when I'm working, I'll start out with a VI and an Aux Track (with reverb) in my main sequence chunk. Then as I set up either an alternate version or another section that will use similar effects and instrumentation, I'll realize I can just move them VI & Aux Track to a V-Rack and allow other sequence chunks to use those destinations as well. It is especially helpful as it saves the load time that might have occurred from switching sequences.

There are a few big DP features that are on my to-do list to learn and use more. If V-Racks and Clippings haven't been checked off your list, those are some pretty helpful ones to add to your workflow.

[daniel.sneed]

BTW, if you set your bus FX in a V-rack, you can easily disable all of them for tracking, and enable them back for mixing thru a single click.

Same applies to Master fader with many heavy plugs. Just a single click to get them on or off.

You need to toggle buffer size too, but now it's easy with Transport panel option.

[mhschmieder]

The funny part about it is that auto-reloading a bunch of plug-ins and/or VI's has always been something I needed to avoid at all costs, and could render an entire project permanently unloadable (requiring me to start a new project and to load the old chunks).

Even after I upgraded from a useless G4 iMac to a 2010 MacPro, I still found that the performance hit of V-Racks made them unusable, so bought VE Pro thinking I would use it towards that end (and yet I have only used VE Pro in experimental mode and never in real project work yet).

Now that performance is so good in 9.2, I am thinking it is time to re-evaluate V-Racks, for projects where the setups are similar between chunks (for me, only true of pop/rock projects, which is a genre I don't do very often, and most of my work has radically different -- and quite voluminous -- instrumentation per chunk).

I still disable all VI's and plug-ins every time I switch chunks or close a project. Force of habit. Sometimes I forget, or miss one. And sometimes that causes problems on re-open. As far as I can tell, using V-Racks does not improve that situation at all. It seems to be nothing more than a time-saver, and a convenience tool, which of course for pro studios charging by the hour can be super-important.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

And don't forget to distribute large & heavily scripted to their own channel - IE each in a separate instantiation of the VI. IOW, Five plugs of MachFive, Kontakt, etc., for five large, heavily scripted VIs. Each VI will be on its own channel in the mixer.

That will allow DP to take advantage of multi-core systems and distribute the CPU load across those cores. Otherwise, a single instance of a VI with a lot of instruments and some complex ones, will incur a greater CPU hit as it is only being processed by one of the cores in the system. That, according to MagicD, who knows something about this stuff...

[mhschmieder]

MLC, I had forgotten about that, but it comes up more with MAS and VST3 (the latter not supported by DP), with the exception that you listed of Kontakt.

I personally don't like loading Kontakt multi's with unrelated stuff, as it makes it hard to remember what is what in my layout. But what you said also goes a long way towards explaining why Kontakt is not a very good interface for drums, as my drum libraries for Kontakt are mostly "poor performance" due to how they fail to make use of multi-core. With BFD, I tend to use multiple instances.

[cuttime]

And don't forget to distribute large & heavily scripted to their own channel - IE each in a separate instantiation of the VI. IOW, Five plugs of MachFive, Kontakt, etc., for five large, heavily scripted VIs. Each VI will be on its own channel in the mixer.

That will allow DP to take advantage of multi-core systems and distribute the CPU load across those cores. Otherwise, a single instance of a VI with a lot of instruments and some complex ones, will incur a greater CPU hit as it is only being processed by one of the cores in the system. That, according to MagicD, who knows something about this stuff...

I'm beginning to wonder if this still holds true for 9.1

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Good question. Then again some are seeing CPU hits on playback in fairly simple setups. I my case one vrack with one instance of MachFIVE holding a piano VI.

[cuttime]

And don't forget to distribute large & heavily scripted to their own channel - IE each in a separate instantiation of the VI. IOW, Five plugs of MachFive, Kontakt, etc., for five large, heavily scripted VIs. Each VI will be on its own channel in the mixer.

That will allow DP to take advantage of multi-core systems and distribute the CPU load across those cores. Otherwise, a single instance of a VI with a lot of instruments and some complex ones, will incur a greater CPU hit as it is only being processed by one of the cores in the system. That, according to MagicD, who knows something about this stuff...

I'm beginning to wonder if this still holds true for 9.1

I just did a quick test with GPO and Aria Player on 9.1-far from heavily scripted, but was easy and quick to set up: 12 tracks with controller data on each track. A 12 instrument multi on Aria Player showed a 34-36% CPU on Activity Monitor, whereas 12 separate instances of Aria showed 74-99% CPU. My particular i7 is a quad core, but some gimmick called "hyperthreading" makes it look like an 8 core. Activity Monitor sees 8 cores. Of course, YMMV, as this is quick and dirty and barely scientific. All the windows were closed and in Pre-gen mode.

Oh, and buffer @128.

[avrstrt]

I use DP to record my symphonic works and in a particularly large work, you can choose a certain amount of measures to represent 1 sequence, another group to be the 2nd sequence, or have each sequence represent a different movement. This is very handy because now I don't have to close one project to work on another. I can switch between the two, chain them together and they play consecutively based on start and end times or times I tell them to come in.