Bidule/Jack

[PMortise]

@Tripi: Are you using the 64-bit version of Bidule? I am, but my 7 Plays and 4 K4's were getting to be too much, so I moved the K4s into the V-rack and everything eased up. You're obviously doing much better with that than I am, and I'd love to know what you're doing that I'm not!

@mjmoody: If there is a was to actually assign what cores are used/for what, then I haven't heard of it (other than MP Assign in Bidule, but that's a PITA that doesn't seem to always work). As far as seeing what cores are being used, just open: Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor. From the Windows menu select CPU Usage. That'll show you core activity.

As for pops and clicks, you could try Rax like Armegeddon suggested (I'm planning to give Rax as well as VE Pro trials this weekend just to compare for price vs usable features) Have you tried Bidule not in ReWire mode with JackPilot? Like I said, it wasn't intuitive for me to set up Jack, but I've got now. PM me if you need help setting it up.

ALSO, there is a Rax/Bidule feature already built into OSX that I've found works ok as long as you don't use too many VIs. It's called AU Lab. It's in: Macintosh HD > Developer > Applications > Audio. I remember playing with that a couple of years ago. It wasn't enough for what I was I doing, but depending on how stream-lined your live set up is...it's free so why not try it as well? NOT on stage though!

[mjmoody]

I just tried the demo for Rax, and it didn't work for me. I wonder if it is not compatible with Lion or something. Is Bidule compatible with Lion?

[PMortise]

I'm not on Lion yet so I can't say first hand, but you can check their forum: http://plogue.com/phpBB3/index.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I would guess that if all the plugins you use are Lion compatible, then it shouldn't be a problem.

[Armageddon]

I've never tried Rax, but I'm curious if it has the same limitation as Bidule in REwire mode? That is - only able to use one core of a multi core machine. As simple as Rewire is in Bidule, the huge drawback is only being able to use a fraction of your processing power (at least on my 8-core machine). I can't remember if this was a limitation of Rewire or Bidule, but I suspect its a Rewire thing. If that's the case with Rax also, it seems to be a very difficult thing to work around, and it's the reason that most of use Jack with Bidule..... so we can use all of our multi cores. This is especially important when you're hosting big instruments like Trilian or Omnisphere in Bidule. I have one of each + 10 Kontakt instruments and 5 Play instruments. As beefy as my computer is, it would never hang with just using the single core to play back all of these instruments at once.

I tried this out and it seems to use all cores on my machine (bear in mind, I also only have a 2-core machine and it's only 32-bits). I think it's less of a ReWire issue and more of a plug issue -- for example, Kontakt is designed to use multiple cores, but something like SampleTank isn't. Rax is also a Cocoa app and designed for Macs only, whereas Bidule has been around for a while and it's multi-platform.

Also, not sure why it doesn't work in Lion -- it's supposed to, and the main suggestion seems to be rebooting after installing.

[PMortise]

I just tried the demo for Rax, and it didn't work for me. I wonder if it is not compatible with Lion or something. Is Bidule compatible with Lion?

Forget what I said about trying Rax.

It doesn't work for me either, and I'm not on Lion. I'm on 10.6.8, and it ignores all of my plugins and won't launch. I've been trading emails with their tech support guy since Tuesday. I guess 1 email per day equates to "unparalleled technical support" over there.

I wanted to give Rax a shot, but Bidule is working fine for me, and when I have a problem Seb@plogue has always had it solved in a day or less. Imagine if you were on a deadline?

[Armageddon]

Forget what I said about trying Rax.

It doesn't work for me either, and I'm not on Lion. I'm on 10.6.8, and it ignores all of my plugins and won't launch. I've been trading emails with their tech support guy since Tuesday. I guess 1 email per day equates to "unparalleled technical support" over there.

I wanted to give Rax a shot, but Bidule is working fine for me, and when I have a problem Seb@plogue has always had it solved in a day or less. Imagine if you were on a deadline?

That's really bizarre; I've never had any kind of a problem with it. The only thing I can think is that the plug validator munged up something. I know I've had to run AU Validator every time I update Waves or Rax/Wave Editor won't recognize or load certain plugs. Did you try Trashing User>Library>Application Support>Audiofile>au_db.plist/vst_db.plist and then launching Rax?

[PMortise]

Did you try Trashing User>Library>Application Support>Audiofile>au_db.plist/vst_db.plist and then launching Rax?

Yeah, that was the first thing I tried.

[Armageddon]

Did you try Trashing User>Library>Application Support>Audiofile>au_db.plist/vst_db.plist and then launching Rax?

Yeah, that was the first thing I tried.

Very bizarre. Like I said, it runs fine on my machine, and I have plenty of things that could potentially conflict with one another, including Wave Editor and Fidelia, which share Rax's AU and VST database ... never had a problem, though, when I run Rax and then run Wave Editor, it sometimes re-runs the validation process. Short of what I suggested above, or trashing Rax's actual Prefs (you can also try running Onyx to see if its prefs are just damaged in some way), or initiating plug validation (press "V" during the program start-up to force an AU/VST validation or press "S" to skip it), you can try your luck with their latest beta version: http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/su ... hp?page=rx (I haven't tried it yet).