Bidule - One more thumbs up

[amplidood]

Okay, so here's something crazy. Trying to use the Jack setup. I've got the click in Kontakt/Bidule, and I record it unaltered into DP. It *sounds* late during the recording, but in DP it is *ahead*. Anyone seen this?

This is all using just Built-In audio hardware on my MBPro for testing, maybe that's the deal.

Guess it's just me then.

[amplidood]

Well one thing is for sure... getting accurate timing is very easily achieved through Rewire. Trying the Jack method is giving me crazy floating back and forth in accuracy. Something I'm doing wrong? I know ReWire's big thing is being "sample accurate". Does Jack say anything like this?

I'm not trying to make Vince Clark music here, I just want what I play to come back as I played it.

[zed]

Well one thing is for sure... getting accurate timing is very easily achieved through Rewire. Trying the Jack method is giving me crazy floating back and forth in accuracy. Something I'm doing wrong? I know ReWire's big thing is being "sample accurate". Does Jack say anything like this?

I haven't tried Jack, but so far I have been delighted with the accuracy of ReWire. I have not detected any latency issues at all, and reading your posts makes me even less inclined to bother trying to involve Jack in the mix.

[Tripi]

1) How do you 'make' a kontakt instrument using the MOTU click?
Do you mean use a kontakt instrument like a woodblock and record a metronome like MIDI track?

2) How do you print DP's internal click as audio??
How do you 'capture' that sound to an actual audio track?

I don't know if this is how Tripi did it, but in the Click preference window you can turn on both the MIDI and the Audio click at the same time and set their outputs. Output the MIDI click to a kontakt instrument and set the click's note value. Output the Audio click to a bus. From the Tracks window, output the kontakt instrument to a bus and set that bus as the input of an audio track for recording. Also set an audio track's input to the Audio click bus.

c-ya,

Dan Worley

Yup... that's pretty much the method I used. But, I actually found the audio file for the MOTU Click and dragged it into a blank Kontakt instrument. So, the sound of the internal click and the MIDI click are identical.

[Tripi]

Well one thing is for sure... getting accurate timing is very easily achieved through Rewire. Trying the Jack method is giving me crazy floating back and forth in accuracy. Something I'm doing wrong? I know ReWire's big thing is being "sample accurate". Does Jack say anything like this?

I'm not trying to make Vince Clark music here, I just want what I play to come back as I played it.

Using Jack seems to be very consistent with me, but I have a feeling Bidule would be more of the culprit if you are seeing weird latency drifts. There is an option in Bidule under Preferences / MIDI to reduce MIDI jitter. You might want to experiment with that too.

btw - with Jack, make sure you download the correct package. If you have Snow Leopard, get the 64 bit version.

[amplidood]

Okay. So my tests have revealed about a 20 sample jitter when using the Jack method. This is not a huge deal honestly, especially considering CPU usage seems to be less than half using Jack. That's a big deal.

The Live mixdown and the Stem mixdown don't null, but there's no feel difference. I expected there to be a feel change, but it was just sonic. Which makes sense, I guess. I'm gonna try this method for a minute, as the CPU gain is huge.

For anyone who's curious, I found the MIDI latency to be about 1050 samples (256 buffer, 24bit/48k). You just have to be sure to bypass the Time Shift plug when you print tracks

[Dan Worley]

At this stage I'm happy with Rewire. Everything seems to running along smoothly and there are no timing issues. I don't have any real heavy lifting going on yet, but it's enough to where if I had these instruments loaded into DP it would bog it down. With Rewire/Bidule it just flies and the CPU meters are staying down low. So nice. It's a big improvement to what I was dealing with before. As I get into more demanding setups I may check out Jack. I've used it with the Harrison Mixbus so I am familiar with it.

c-ya,

Dan Worley

[zed]

I've just encountered a potential complication with the Bidule method. Fortunately it is not too complicated at this point because I am still building my main template, and have not started saving song specific templates.

But I upgraded one of my VIs, and found that Bidule did not automatically identify the new AU and flagged that VI in my template with a red colour to show that it was missing. I had to manually rescan the plugins for Bidule to recognize it. When Bidule did find it, I discovered that the plugin had not remembered what was loaded into it.

Therefore, in order to avoid a serious problem down the road, I think that we would be wise to save Multis/Combis for each VI used in Bidule and resave them whenever we modify them. That way if anything goes haywire after a software upgrade, we can still get back to where we were. Unfortunately, what this means is that every Bidule template will require Multis/Combis to be reloaded in the event of a softare upgrade... and that is going to be a serious annoyance when the number template variations start to increase.

As much as I would like to have only ONE template to maintain, I know that there are going to end up being tweeks to some VIs which are specific to each song. Song specific templates will be similar enough to the main template and so they won't have to be loaded everytime, but they will have to be updated whenever they are loaded. So that is going to result in a lot of work after an upgrade.

Makes me hesitant to load anything into the Bidule template that isn't always intended to sound the same.

Perhaps it doesn't always happen this way? It would be great if someone could report that they upgraded a VI and the loaded instruments were remembered.

[KEVORKIAN]

I've just encountered a potential complication with the Bidule method. Fortunately it is not too complicated at this point because I am still building my main template, and have not started saving song specific templates.

But I upgraded one of my VIs, and found that Bidule did not automatically identify the new AU and flagged that VI in my template with a red colour to show that it was missing. I had to manually rescan the plugins for Bidule to recognize it. When Bidule did find it, I discovered that the plugin had not remembered what was loaded into it.

Therefore, in order to avoid a serious problem down the road, I think that we would be wise to save Multis/Combis for each VI used in Bidule and resave them whenever we modify them. That way if anything goes haywire after a software upgrade, we can still get back to where we were. Unfortunately, what this means is that every Bidule template will require Multis/Combis to be reloaded in the event of a softare upgrade... and that is going to be a serious annoyance when the number template variations start to increase.

As much as I would like to have only ONE template to maintain, I know that there are going to end up being tweeks to some VIs which are specific to each song. Song specific templates will be similar enough to the main template and so they won't have to be loaded everytime, but they will have to be updated whenever they are loaded. So that is going to result in a lot of work after an upgrade.

Makes me hesitant to load anything into the Bidule template that isn't always intended to sound the same.

Perhaps it doesn't always happen this way? It would be great if someone could report that they upgraded a VI and the loaded instruments were remembered.

I've upgraded tons of VIs and don't recall seeing this behavior in Bidule so I wouldn't worry too much. Bidule is one of the most solid apps I've used for audio.

[KEVORKIAN]

Okay. So my tests have revealed about a 20 sample jitter when using the Jack method. This is not a huge deal honestly, especially considering CPU usage seems to be less than half using Jack. That's a big deal.

The Live mixdown and the Stem mixdown don't null, but there's no feel difference. I expected there to be a feel change, but it was just sonic. Which makes sense, I guess. I'm gonna try this method for a minute, as the CPU gain is huge.

For anyone who's curious, I found the MIDI latency to be about 1050 samples (256 buffer, 24bit/48k). You just have to be sure to bypass the Time Shift plug when you print tracks

This mirrors my past experience with Jack and is why I have been reluctant to leave my Rewire setup. I'm in love with the timing accuracy.

I'm not sure that I'd like a 20 sample variance when dealing with drums though. For orchestral and synth pad instruments I don't think it would be an issue.

Seems like there should be a way to get sample accuracy with Bidule/DP when using Jack? Possibly using Bidule's sync settings??? I have to find time to experiment...

[zed]

Perhaps it doesn't always happen this way? It would be great if someone could report that they upgraded a VI and the loaded instruments were remembered.

I've upgraded tons of VIs and don't recall seeing this behavior in Bidule so I wouldn't worry too much. Bidule is one of the most solid apps I've used for audio.

Okay, I'm relieved. That's good news. Thanks Kevorkian.

I will just carry on with my template construction and continue observing and learning. I'll have an opportunity to do another upgrade very soon, so I'll see how it behaves the next time.

My plan is to NOT save any sub-templates for at least a couple of weeks until I've really constructed and developed my ultimate template which contains my bread and butter instruments as close as I can get them to being "mixdown ready". It is a lot of hours of work, but it should pay off nicely in future months and years.

[Tripi]

I've just encountered a potential complication with the Bidule method. Fortunately it is not too complicated at this point because I am still building my main template, and have not started saving song specific templates.

But I upgraded one of my VIs, and found that Bidule did not automatically identify the new AU and flagged that VI in my template with a red colour to show that it was missing. I had to manually rescan the plugins for Bidule to recognize it. When Bidule did find it, I discovered that the plugin had not remembered what was loaded into it.

Therefore, in order to avoid a serious problem down the road, I think that we would be wise to save Multis/Combis for each VI used in Bidule and resave them whenever we modify them. That way if anything goes haywire after a software upgrade, we can still get back to where we were. Unfortunately, what this means is that every Bidule template will require Multis/Combis to be reloaded in the event of a softare upgrade... and that is going to be a serious annoyance when the number template variations start to increase.

As much as I would like to have only ONE template to maintain, I know that there are going to end up being tweeks to some VIs which are specific to each song. Song specific templates will be similar enough to the main template and so they won't have to be loaded everytime, but they will have to be updated whenever they are loaded. So that is going to result in a lot of work after an upgrade.

Makes me hesitant to load anything into the Bidule template that isn't always intended to sound the same.

Perhaps it doesn't always happen this way? It would be great if someone could report that they upgraded a VI and the loaded instruments were remembered.

You know, even with my huge Bidule template, I still load VI's into DP on a per song basis. There are always going to be sounds that you want to you for only one cue or one song or whatever you're working on. So, I'd say just put it in DP. It's safe to have one instrument in there

[zed]

You know, even with my huge Bidule template, I still load VI's into DP on a per song basis. There are always going to be sounds that you want to you for only one cue or one song or whatever you're working on. So, I'd say just put it in DP. It's safe to have one instrument in there

True enough. But I was thinking more of those cases where the bread and butter sound is what I want to use, but I want it to have a different reverb, or to be mono instead of stereo, or a special treatment on my favorite go-to drums, etc.

I can imagine wanting to do variations on most of my regular instruments from song to song. So while I will put exclusive VI instruments within DP if I don't think they belong on the Bidule template, there will still be some variation from song, requiring the saving of additional templates.

I suppose I would be wise to set up more than just 2 Bidule inputs/outputs, so that I could save some of my FX modifications of instruments within DP itself on the Aux track. Is that the way some of you work? Should I create separate Aux tracks for my Bass, Piano, Drums, and Horns, etc. so that I can treat them differently within DP and just save those different treatments within the DP project file? That is starting to look like a sensible option.

[zed]

Anyone know if it is possible to create clippings of Aux tracks? I have a feeling that it can't be done. If not, what would be the most efficient way to quickly create 5 or more Aux tracks (with disabled effects on them) in an existing project? Or is doing it manually the only way?

[KEVORKIAN]

You know, even with my huge Bidule template, I still load VI's into DP on a per song basis. There are always going to be sounds that you want to you for only one cue or one song or whatever you're working on. So, I'd say just put it in DP. It's safe to have one instrument in there

True enough. But I was thinking more of those cases where the bread and butter sound is what I want to use, but I want it to have a different reverb, or to be mono instead of stereo, or a special treatment on my favorite go-to drums, etc.

I can imagine wanting to do variations on most of my regular instruments from song to song. So while I will put exclusive VI instruments within DP if I don't think they belong on the Bidule template, there will still be some variation from song, requiring the saving of additional templates.

I suppose I would be wise to set up more than just 2 Bidule inputs/outputs, so that I could save some of my FX modifications of instruments within DP itself on the Aux track. Is that the way some of you work? Should I create separate Aux tracks for my Bass, Piano, Drums, and Horns, etc. so that I can treat them differently within DP and just save those different treatments within the DP project file? That is starting to look like a sensible option.

You can also use the "Import" option from the File menu in Bidule to load one template into another.

If I create a cool routing or have a few instruments that I'd like to add to my current Bidule layout I just import the saved template and Bidule will only add the missing instruments etc. Then you just make the needed connections.

I would give yourself as many outputs as possible for routing back to DP, definitely.