Plogue Bidule as bit bridge

[Prime Mover]

I've been hearing people talk about using PB as a 64/32 bit bridge for 32bit plugins, but I'm kind of confused by what I'm seeing over at the PB website. There's a post that says that "the PB 64bit build will not recognize 32bit plugins," but if that's the case, then how can PB act as a bridge?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Because you will be running PB in 32 bit to run your 32 bit plugs, and DP in 64 bit to run the rest. I do believe that the 32 bit PB can still talk to a 64 bit DP.

Can't we all just get a long!

[dix]

PB is only a solution for 32bit VIs, right? It won't help with processing plugins. …or am i missing something?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

PB can handle plug ins but may only be able to process them on VIs hosted in PB. It wouldn't surprise me if they might be able to publish them to DP but I just don't know. You might ask at their website:

http://www.plogue.com/phpBB2/

[Prime Mover]

We're talking about running PB as a VI inside of DP8, right? Or are we talking standalone. Because if it's standalone, what's the point? I can run my VIs in standalone mode. The point is being able to run them inside my DP8 project.

Thankfully, I don't have any effects that are 32bit only... well, unless you count the effects module versions of B4 and korg Legacy, which I never use. So for my purposes, I'm only interested in VIs.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I have never run a VI outside DP and fed it back into DP for inclusion in a project. That is what PB is for. Aside from that, if you have a host of VIs and presets you are using, PB will load these in one PB project file and not require multiple VIs being launched independently.

There are also a lot of other features but if you can workaround with your own procedure go for it!

[Prime Mover]

if you have a host of VIs and presets you are using, PB will load these in one PB project file and not require multiple VIs being launched independently.

How does that work? I would expect that you load PB in through an instrument track. As far as I know, if you have 3 different instrument tracks, they are three different instances of a plugin. But you're saying that with PB, it all ties in with one central instance? I'm beginning to think that PB is actually running on a completely different thread... almost another application outside of DP, but somehow connected by a common save file. Is this accurate? And is this how you can run 32bit PB inside of a 64bit host?

Well, whatever the verdict, I'm going to wait a few months. Actually, 64bit does very little for me at this point. My main editing computer continues to only have 4GB of RAM, so until I upgrade that (very cheap, I know) 64bit processing will do virtually nothing. I'll wait for you guys to pound it out (and I know you will) over the next month, then I'll get it when I know it's safe.

What I plan to do is order PB along with a nice RAM upgrade, that should be nice.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

PB will, for example, publish as many tracks of Kontakt as Kontakt can handle. These show in in DP either as Bidule 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, etc., just like when hosted in DP. You could have multiple instantiations of a VI but you can also use the VIs multi feature.

You DO NOT need a separate instance of a VI for each track (unless you're using a VI that is so limited).

That is the most basic aspect of PB as it has many other very cool features.

[Prime Mover]

Ahhh, got ya. Basically PB is to Kontakt instances as Kontakt instances are to individual kontakt patches.

Honestly, these days, I tend to use one instance (track) per patch, as I like being able to automate everything separately. If I was back doing a lot of orchestral stuff, that would be great, though.

In any case, sounds like PB will do what I need it do to. Now I just need to wait a few pay checks.

[James Steele]

I don't know much about this, but if you don't want to use DP in 32bit mode, if you have a VST version of an older 32 bit plug, this might work since DP now supports Mac VSTs:

http://jstuff.wordpress.com/jbridgem/

[James Steele]

Sorry updated the link above to show Mac version.