# Struggling with VE Pro 7 utilization with Cubase 11 Pro



## Chaosmod (Apr 15, 2021)

Can someone point me towards a tutorial for setting up (and utilizing) VE Pro with Cubase on a single machine? 

I have VE Pro 7 and Cubase 11. 

The stuff I have found on youtube is just not clicking with me. I have it installed, and from there I'm just lost. 

I may be a bit daft when it comes to tech, I'm about to give this computer a proper viking funeral in the nearest dumpster fire.


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## Evans (Apr 15, 2021)

It's such a big topic, especially since VEPro has a ridiculous amount of configuration options. So, I'll cover _one_ way to get started, but know that there are configuration options I'm not covering here, and there are also _alternative_ ways of doing things that I won't cover.

Here's a good, *recent* video on VEPro and Cubase, which is nice since many I found when I picked up VEPro were quite a few years old:


>




But, if you prefer written instructions, here's an attempt at that:

Start your VEPro application.


Click on the + (plus) sign near the top-left. This will add a new Instance named "Untitled". For now, think of an Instance as just a way to group your plug-ins.


In the left side of your screen, you'll see a new thing that now says "Master Bus". Underneath that area, in the blank space, right click to open a context menu and choose "Insert Plugin". note that there are also controls in the bottom left to achieve the same thing.


Choose Kontakt, or whatever you'd like to insert. In my example, I'm inserting Kontakt.


You should now see the middle of the screen populated with an empty plug-in with no instruments loaded.


Load a couple of instruments. Depending on which ones you load, it may look garbled instead of the normal UI you are used to. This is normal, as the scripting won't pop into place until your VEPro instance is activated in Cubase. We'll get to that later.


Ideally, if you were using Kontakt, your Kontakt is set up so that new instruments in a single Kontakt instance are assigned different MIDI channels. If not, make sure that this is the case.


Look back to the left. You should see something under Master Bus that now reads "Kontakt 1". In this space, you'll see something like "1 1" in that same little box. Click on the second "1" and select "All." This will allow this plug-in to support multiple MIDI channels.


Open Cubase.


Now, there are a couple of ways to do this, but I'll only cover one: insert an Instrument track in Cubase, similar to how you would insert an instance of Kontakt, but instead choose Vienna Ensemble Pro.


You'll see a weird, little window pop up, where you can connect Cubase to your "Untitled" VEPro instance. Do that.


If this track is selected in Cubase, you should be able to play on your keyboard and hear the first instrument you loaded. If not, then that's something we can look into.


Want to get that second instrument loaded? Right click on that VEPro "instrument" track and choose Add Track > MIDI. It will automatically create one called something like "MIDI 01" but your Inspector in Cubase should show that you're using channel 2 for "Vienna Ensemble Pro - MIDI In 1".


Hooray! You should now hear your second instrument.
That's just the start. Big topics to look into are Preserve, Decouple, and how to set yourself up so that VEPro allows for a unique output per instrument, if you wish. There is also a lot of discussion online about the right number of plugins to create per Instance, and how many Instances per "project" are best.

But again, hopefully, this at least gives you some sound.


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## heisenberg (Apr 15, 2021)

Here is another one that is good, as well. He has done a series of them that are worth exploring.


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## zolhof (Apr 15, 2021)

Lots of inspiration to be drawn from Jason Graves' series:




He is very knowledgeable and a real nice fella, too!


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## Chaosmod (Apr 15, 2021)

Evans said:


> It's such a big topic, especially since VEPro has a ridiculous amount of configuration options. So, I'll cover _one_ way to get started, but know that there are configuration options I'm not covering here, and there are also _alternative_ ways of doing things that I won't cover.
> 
> Here's a good, *recent* video on VEPro and Cubase, which is nice since many I found when I picked up VEPro were quite a few years old:
> 
> ...


Thank you so much, this was incredibly useful!

I am at the point shown in the attachment. When I the VE Pro instrument track in Cubase, will everything I have in VE Pro suddenly appear?

It seems I'm missing something small... but I can hear my Noire/Alicia's Keys piano in Cubase, but not the FM8 electric piano.


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## Evans (Apr 16, 2021)

Chaosmod said:


> When I the VE Pro instrument track in Cubase, will everything I have in VE Pro suddenly appear?


Nothing really "appears" in Cubase. The plug-in UI will only be visible within VEPro. In your DAW, you'll only see the Track "references" to the VEPro instance plug-ins that you have manually set up.

If you can hear the acoustic piano and not your electric piano, check your routing in Cubase. Since your electric piano is on MIDI port 2, you need to ensure that you select the equivalent in your Cubase midi track, which needs to be a separate one than the acoustic piano.











Note that each subsequent plug-in and/or instrument you set up in VEPro will need its own MIDI track in Cubase, routed appropriately. For the _first_ instrument in each VEPro Instance, you can cheat and use the "Vienna Ensemble Pro" Instrument track. But, many people will drop all those tracks in a folder at the bottom of their template and create a dedicated MIDI track for it. I'll attach an example in a bit.

And, each new Instance you setup in VEPro will need its own "Vienna Ensemble Pro" track (and then subsequent MIDI tracks for each plugin or instrument in that instance).


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## Evans (Apr 16, 2021)

Okay, here's a more detailed example, in which I've loaded up a Synchron piano and two Afflatus Strings patches. Were I to load up something into Test Instance 02, I'd need a corresponding new MIDI track in Cubase routed to TestInstance02 instead of TestInstance01 on the left side of the second screenshot.











After this, I strongly encourage you to look at how to route audio to different outputs.


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