How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

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How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by Steve Steele »

At a forum members request I made a "how to connect VEPro to DP" video. It shows DP utilizing 48 MIDI ports with the latest beta version of VEPro with MAS. I also briefly touch on a couple related DP tips like MIDI Device Groups (which I plan on discussing in detail in a later video).

Enjoy!


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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by Shooshie »

Very nice! Informative and also nicely done.

There's one little thing that might be helpful when doing a large template of audio tracks, and that's the Audio Assign command (Setup/Assign Audio). Set up 30, 40, 50 instruments with return Auxes and even audio tracks, and use that command to assign whole strings of tracks in one action. It's not necessary when setting up 2 or 3 tracks, but for 30 or 40... it's great! I'm sure you use it often, but setting up only a couple instruments made that unnecessary.

DP9 will reportedly make setting up MIDI as easy as setting up Audio. I can't wait to see how they make it all work.

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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by mikehalloran »

Shouldn't this be moved to Tutorial Videos?
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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by Rubens »

So manny thank's!
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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by Shooshie »

mikehalloran wrote:Shouldn't this be moved to Tutorial Videos?

Where nobody will see it? :lol:
Here, a lot more people will see it and benefit from it as it relates to DP and not just VEPro, but any MAS VI interface.

IMO, it's where it belongs. But that's James's call.

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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by mikehalloran »

Where nobody will see it? as opposed to where nobody will look for it?

It was a suggestion.
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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by Rusty Shackleford »

nightwatch wrote:At a forum members request I made a "how to connect VEPro to DP" video. It shows DP utilizing 48 MIDI ports with the latest beta version of VEPro with MAS. I also briefly touch on a couple related DP tips like MIDI Device Groups (which I plan on discussing in detail in a later video).

Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/1nYIzd3Ca7U
Thanks for posting this video. If you are using one machine for DP and all VI's, what is the advantage of utilizing VEPro vs. just hosting everything in V-Racks?
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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by Steve Steele »

Rusty Shackleford wrote:
nightwatch wrote:At a forum members request I made a "how to connect VEPro to DP" video. It shows DP utilizing 48 MIDI ports with the latest beta version of VEPro with MAS. I also briefly touch on a couple related DP tips like MIDI Device Groups (which I plan on discussing in detail in a later video).

Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/1nYIzd3Ca7U
Thanks for posting this video. If you are using one machine for DP and all VI's, what is the advantage of utilizing VEPro vs. just hosting everything in V-Racks?
Several reasons. The short answer is that I have a large orchestral template (about twice as big as what's on that video) and the two apps can handle it better than the one. I use a lot of VSL instruments and I use MIR quite a bit. VEP is good in that situation. Also I'm getting a second MacPro in a few weeks for a VEP slave.

Regardless, I want DP to maintain a quick reaction time. At a certain point on my machine, at about 10GBs of samples, DP starts to run sluggishly and begins to take a lot of time to respond to commands (with all plugin windows closed and everything optimized). DP can't handle more than about 15GBs of samples on my machine. My basic large orch template is about 28GBs in size (with MIR). VEP can handle a much larger load of samples in memory without reaction time being affected.

With DP alone I had to do too much VI disabling and freezing for my taste. To stay in MIDI as long as possible VEP was necessary.

Edit: End of post.

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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by williemyers »

nightwatch, also thanks from me for posting your video! well done and very educational...

now a question about VEPro5 usage, if I may...
let's say that you wanted to wind up with 5 Kontakt multis. You could accomplish it one of two ways; Option"A" = you create a single VEPRo5 instance and put the 5 Kontakt multis in it - or - Option "B" = you create 5 separate VEPro5 instances and put a single Kontakt multi in each one.....which would be preferable from a "load on your resources" standpoint? (and why?)
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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by James Steele »

mikehalloran wrote:Where nobody will see it? as opposed to where nobody will look for it?

It was a suggestion.
A good one, I think. If that's how I need to try to get people to look in that forum, then so be it. I worry about the main DP forum becoming a bit too much of a catch-all.
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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by Steve Steele »

Shooshie wrote:Very nice! Informative and also nicely done.

There's one little thing that might be helpful when doing a large template of audio tracks, and that's the Audio Assign command (Setup/Assign Audio). Set up 30, 40, 50 instruments with return Auxes and even audio tracks, and use that command to assign whole strings of tracks in one action. It's not necessary when setting up 2 or 3 tracks, but for 30 or 40... it's great! I'm sure you use it often, but setting up only a couple instruments made that unnecessary.

DP9 will reportedly make setting up MIDI as easy as setting up Audio. I can't wait to see how they make it all work.

Shooshie
Thanks for the nice feedback. I'm glad you liked it. That's great to hear about DP9. I can't wait to see what MOTU has up their collective sleeves for MIDI tracks. I'm sure they're on to something good.

Your audio assignments suggestion is of course an excellent one. I've been considering making a series of high quality DP videos, produced as well as I can make them that show the magic of DP. I notice on YouTube that DP videos don't get as much feedback as other DAWs tend to get. So I was thinking about a series of videos on features and workflows that are unique to DP, killer features that really show off the power and flexibility of DP, and videos about interesting ways to set DP up for certain workflows (Audio Assign, just how you proposed it would be perfect for a part two to this last video, and it being one of many features within the context of setting up a template that uses all of these features together).

There are some great videos about DP out there for DP users, which I've benefitted from. I think I'd like to present mine to users of any DAW (and to new DP users too) who might benefit from seeing how a DP user does the same everyday things (taking cues from your tips page), by utilizing all of the fascinating and powerful ways DP's workflow and commands offer.

In no way would I want to make this a "my DAW vs your DAW" thing, which would be a disservice to DP, Motu and MOTUNATION. But If I'm up to it I'd like to show the "magic" of DP in a polished and modern video form.

Actually, I'd like to publicly thank you Shoosie, for getting me to really investigate and access some of DPs more powerful features and for helping get into that workflow. It's made DP that much more fun to work with. For the past few months I’ve been skimming through DP's manual (long live the print and PDF versions!) looking for things I didn’t know about. It's so obvious how well everything has been thought out and how mature the app has become over the years.

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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by Steve Steele »

James Steele wrote:
mikehalloran wrote:Where nobody will see it? as opposed to where nobody will look for it?

It was a suggestion.
A good one, I think. If that's how I need to try to get people to look in that forum, then so be it. I worry about the main DP forum becoming a bit too much of a catch-all.
James - I understand. Normally I would post tutorials in the tutorial section. But I made this video in response to a couple of threads that were started in this forum. I could have just as easily written out the steps. So I didn't see it so much as a tutorial video as a features video, with the introduction of the new beta MAS version of VEP with 48 MIDI tracks being the theme.

Either way, it's always your call.

I'm going to make more videos and I'll put them in the correct section.

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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by Steve Steele »

williemyers wrote:nightwatch, also thanks from me for posting your video! well done and very educational...

now a question about VEPro5 usage, if I may...
let's say that you wanted to wind up with 5 Kontakt multis. You could accomplish it one of two ways; Option"A" = you create a single VEPRo5 instance and put the 5 Kontakt multis in it - or - Option "B" = you create 5 separate VEPro5 instances and put a single Kontakt multi in each one.....which would be preferable from a "load on your resources" standpoint? (and why?)
Hi - Good question. With the switch to 64-bit DAWs that's become a question that a lot of people have been trying to figure out.

Just like with MachFive, it's always better to use 5 instances of Kontakt with one multi, than 1 instance of Kontakt with 5 multis. That's not always practical (for example if you use LASS with it's ARC). Don't use multis unless the library or a patch has to be used that way. If you're using LASS with ARC, with the new MAS VEP, use a different MIDI port for each instrument. Vlns 1 use MIDI port 1, MIDI channel 16, Vlns 2 use MIDI port 2 MIDI channel 16, etc..

It all has to do with the way DP and VEP are programmed to use multi-processing. The more you spread instruments out evenly across VEP, the more VEP is going to spread the workload threads across multiple cores. Both Vienna has said this about Kontakt in VEP, and Motu has said this about MachFive in DP. That being said, if you have a powerful enough machine, I wouldn't worry about it too much if you're not stressing your CPU. Make sure to keep Activity Monitor open and watch what the CPU Usage and CPU History look like during playback. If one core is doing a lot more work than the others then you have too many instruments in on instance of Kontakt.

Other advice...

Native Instruments has a not too helpful support page about optimizing Kontakt. http://www.native-instruments.com/en/su ... kontakt-5/

Recently, a software developer put out a very good three part article on how to optimize Kontakt. http://impactsoundworks.com/optimizing- ... ow-part-1/ Basically, take advantage of the purge feature (reset markers and update sample pool), turn on CPU Profiling Mode (found in the Monitor/Engine tab). The document will show you watch that for optimization of Kontakt. Also, especially if you're using SSDs for sample hosting and are low on RAM, be sure to dial in Kontakt's Preload Buffer size. Nobody seems sure on whether to keep all the cores on in Kontakt or to turn them off. I currently have mine on all cores, but I experiment with new settings as my template grows (which is often). If you don't use multi outputs too much and don't load a lot of instruments into one instance it's not going to matter either way because OS X, VEP and DP presumably have control over the situation.

Tobias Escher has an article (no need to go crazy and alter a bunch of settings if everything's working for you. When I've talked to Tobias he wasn't 100% sure himself although he's an intelligent guy who knows what he's doing). When you're dealing with three apps that are trying to manage multi core support at the same time it's difficult to tell what setting is actually helping. http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/09/ ... templates/

Do you have a particular library you're curious about? I should be able to give you a best case scenario if I have the library in question. I know that was a lot of info but I like to spread the knowledge and I hope that gets you optimized more quickly.

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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by cowtothesky »

Great video!!

I love watching how other people set up their templates in DP. I learn so much watching things like this. Thanks for taking the time to make and post this.

One thing I always struggle with is separating Kontakt tracks within VE Pro, so that each instrument has their own input fader in VE Pro. You have to set up the outputs in Kontakt to correspond with VE Pros inputs. For some reason, I always have to go through experimentation to get the outputs set right in Kontakt.

I was hoping that this latest VE Pro update would allow us to use MOTU effect plugins within VE Pro… Unless I have something set up wrong, it isn't recognizing MOTU plugins, so I have to go the aux in DP route if I want them.
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Re: How-To video: Connecting VEPro to DP8 (48 MIDI ports)

Post by Steve Steele »

cowtothesky wrote:Great video!!

I was hoping that this latest VE Pro update would allow us to use MOTU effect plugins within VE Pro… Unless I have something set up wrong, it isn't recognizing MOTU plugins, so I have to go the aux in DP route if I want them.
Hey there. While VEP now has a MAS version of the server interface (the VEP plugin in DP), VEP still only supports AU and VST plugins in VEP itself. In other words, you can't use your MOTU plugins in VEP. You'll have to bus the audio back to DP to use the MAS plugins.

Hope that helps.

I didn't understand your other question.

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