Any Vienna Ensemble users with DP?

[wolfetho]

Just wondering which way to go- use the Vienna Ensemble with DP
or use it as a stand alone? Any tips on routing effects in the Ensemble
would be greatly appreciated. I can't seem to get the UAD-1 to work when I insert it into a buss.The UAD-1 plug-in stalls and won't open in the buss. It works when inserted in an instrument track. Is this a bug?

Thanks,

Tom

[Frodo]

Hey Tom:

As long as VSL has hammered out the beta kinks of VE, I'd say to use it.

Because VE runs outside of DP's RAM allocation, the purpose for standalone has changed focus. Standalone might be used when you'd want to host compatible VSL instruments on a second computer. Previously, people were running standalone on one computer to access additional RAM outside of the DAW because previous versions of VSL and other software would only load within the DAW's RAM limit of +/- 3.5 GB.

This is no longer the case with VE since it doesn't use DP's RAM. What you might want to do is to set DP's work priority to medium (or even low to see if nothing suffers). This makes more resources available to the VSL daemon.

As for UAD-1, I'll need to experiment with it because even though I have the latest version I haven't loaded it into VE yet. However, I was able to load Altiverb 6 and set pre-delays for each instrument. I'm still sorting out the best workflow, but I suspect that there are things I'd still rather do in DP's mixer, such as route mix groups from VE back to various aux channels in DP where the critical finish effects can be successfully loaded.

VE looks extremely promising, but I'm not quite sure if it's meant to be a total mixing solution with other mixing solutions are already available in DP. It's going to take a little time to figure out--

1. What's easiest or fastest to do
2. What VE is supposed to do but doesn't
3. What makes the most sense in terms of workflow and the most frugal use of computer resources.

I'll get back to you a little later with UAD-1 findings. If you've found any specific symptoms with UAD-1, let me know so that they can be more easily confirmed. I'm still in discovery mode with this and have only scratched the surface-- but I've been fortunate not to have seen many of the issues some users have reported (fingers crossed).

More soon.

[wolfetho]

Hi Frodo:

Thanks for your very quick and thorough reply-(as usual !!)

More specifically, I've found that the when I insert the UAD-1 Plate 140
into the Master Buss, things get locked up. I get the spinning beachball
and the Plate 140 never opens. I'm left with a blank grey rectangular box on my screen, like the plug-in is trying to open but fails.

Shouldn't i be able to do this on the Master buss (left side of Ensemble)?
As I mentioned earlier, the plug-in works in the instruments channel as an insert. I will also try it as an aux send on the instrument channels. I was just quickly trying things out.
You're right though, I should probably reserve the effects inside DP.

Thanks,

Tom

[Frodo]

Hey Tom:

It appears that there's something wonky with VE's master bus, as you have discovered. I was able to load UAD-1 v 4.8.0 on the instrument tracks but not the master bus. For the few things

As mentioned, I was able to set up pre-delays on the instrument tracks, route them into DP's hardware I/0s (the HW 1-2, etc.) and it seemed to work okay.

I don't know if it's Syncrosoft, VSL, DP, or a combo of everything, but instantiation is painfully slow about 3+ minutes with no sounds loaded. If something goes awry, the entire computer has to be restarted or a force quit of DP and VE must be done (either from the Dock or from Activity Monitor). This has always pointed to Syncrosoft. One glitch and it falls apart. (Really cheeses me off when that happens.)

I'm going to see if Logic 8 behaves any differently just for the sake of comparison...

brb

[Frodo]

Okay--

I got the Plate 140 loaded in both the instrument track and the Master bus using Logic 8.

However, after a few moments VE crashed. Logic gave an error message saying that VE was having trouble running in Multi-Processor Mode.

It's going to take some time to see if running UAD-1 on one of VE's instrument tracks causes the same problem. Clearly, there's something not understood about how VE's Master Bus is intended to work.

But again, as long as the instrument tracks are dealing well with their pre-delays, there other other advantages to running various reverb tails on aux channels in DP. Another nice thing is that with a 2408, for example, you can manage 16 stereo submixes at a time coming from VE.

I'll have to check out other effects on VE's master fader. I suspect it's still a little wet behind the ears.

[wolfetho]

Yes! I also found that the UAD-1 was really slow to open from the Master Bus.
I also found that if I select the preset button from the UAD-1 (Plate 140)
from the Channel inside the Ensemble, it causes both the Ensemble and DP to crash.

One question- should I select the Master Bus as my output on each instrument track when I'm running effect sends on each of the instrument
channels? I have my aux track (reverb return) in Ensemble set to HW out 1/2

Thanks,

Tom

[Frodo]

Hi Tom:

The nice thing about working with an orchestral VI is that you don't have to route tracks to different HW outs if you have no specific reason to. So far, I've kept all of my outputs on HW 1/2 simply because I've not felt a lack of mixing control inside DP. I might eventually route certain percussion instruments to HW 3/4 that require a little compression to bring out the transients since they are "in the back" of the orchestra where transients can get lost.

I put up a response to your post on the VSL forum addressing as much as I've seen so far, but there's really no excuse why one instrument with a reverb on the Master Bus should cause the computer to crash. The multi-processor error message I saw in Logic 8 is the most important clue so far. The same could be happening in DP, but let's see what the VSL teams says about this.

[mhschmieder]

Yeah, I was confused as well about purpose, but this was clarified on Vienna's own forum. I won't have a chance to use it for a couple of weeks though.

My take on it is that it can be more efficient (but also less efficient, depending on how you use it) in projects that use multiple VSL instruments, in terms of memory usage, etc.

As for workflow, it looks likely to help, but I'd have to see about whether using its mix capabilities would be an improvement for templating purposes vs. doing in DP. For instance, I like to use traditional orchestral positioning when I do a project with more than just three or four orchestral instruments. This takes a lot of time in DP (or any mixer, for that matter) and isn't easy to separate out as a working template. In Vienna Ensemble, this would be easier as it is dedicated to that task and is standalone from its context.

I also like their suggestions about using it to combine different articulations of an instrument. But quite frankly, I haven't had time yet to delve deeply into using anything in Vienna Instruments' interface other than the patch selector, so am not yet getting ideal renderings of MIDI so instead am splitting up tracks and/or doubling with multiple sources. Right now that is less time-consuming than trying to get my head around how to use the other modes (though eventually I'm make time to watch the tutorial, which I have not yet done as I hate not being able to try things out at the same time, and that's hard to do when using a computer to play a video).

[Spikey Horse]

I have downloaded it and apart from looking pretty and having that nice pan I can't really figure a use for it running on my single machine with 3GB RAM setup ... I mean I already use project templates, V-racks and trim plugs - that seems to do give me all that VE can give me ....

Am I missing something?

[instacue]

I just upgraded to an Intel Mac Pro 8 core, 9G ram, Sys 10.4.10, DP 5.12.
Since yesterday, with help from other users on the VSL Forum, I've gotten 4 fully loaded instances of Vienna Ensemble working, being controlled by DP on the one Mac. This uses all of the instruments and articulations from VSL Special Edition Extended, all loaded into ram and all available to be triggered from within DP. See my orchestral template-in progress:
http://www.stugoldberg.com/VE-Template

MIDI is sent from DP to VE via "Interapplication MIDI" (DP Setup menu - create as many MIDI ports as you need, configure each VE instance to receive up to 16 discrete MIDI channels each, loaded with up to 2.8G ram each). Audio is sent from VE to DP via Soundflower (free download:
http://www.cycling74.com/products/soundflower
)

This setup barely cracks a sweat in DP, because DP is only sending MIDI (lots of ram left for Altiverbs, Mach V2 and other virtual instruments). The VEs use other ram that DP isn't able to use anyway.

[mhschmieder]

Right, one of the things they mentioned is that it uses a different memory allocation from the "host" DAW (if you can really call it that in cases where you're running VE in standalone mode and using interapplication MIDI to record in DP). I don't know enough about memory management on the Mac to understand why that is the case, but I take their word for it due to all the testimonials already over on their forum and now your own.

Thanks for the templates. I'll take a look at those in detail in a couple of weeks when I revisit an orchestral project. This sort of thing is generic enough (with minor individual tweaks per user) that one person's work can save a bunch of other people a lot of time.