# LogicPro + VEP and AU3



## Dewdman42 (Jun 10, 2019)

I just sat down to test out the new AU3 plugin in VEPro7. I wanted to report my experience, which is overall very favorable, though there are still some rough edges for Apple to work out in LPX.

Was able to play perfectly a 90 track score into a single VEP instance, using 8 ports. *YAY!*
First, just want to say, performance skyrocketed to supremely better using the VEP-AU3 plugin, compared to the multiport macro approach from before into a single VEP instance. I will be retiring the multiport macros for good soon. See new performance graph, this beats everything I have tested to date! https://vi-control.net/community/threads/daw-performance-test-results.82659/
As of now, Apple has limited LogicPro to 127 midi channels through AU3 instrument channels, per VEP instance. Hopefully they improve that in the future, but I'm not hopeful due to ancient code in the enviornment.
The easiest way right now to use this feature is to start out with VSL's AU3 templates. For now. The reason is because you have to manually create some mixer channel strip objects in the environment in order to have multiple ports. At least for now. Hopefully Apple will come up with a more elegant way to configure that. _EDIT: I have provided some improved templates and instructions to easily create your own templates here_: Templates and Instructions
All Notes off doesn't work right in LogicPro now, it doesn't send allnotesoff to all ports, only to 16 midi channels, I guess on port 1. _EDIT: Not sure now if this was fixed in 10.4.6_
When I create track stacks of some of these multiport tracks, it gets a little confusing because basically a completely useless VCA fader or BUS strip is created for the folder. Its useless because in this case we're grouping midi tracks into a folder, but not the actual audio output. Hopefully Apple will think that through a little more since its confusing and clogs up the mixer with useless channels. But basically the overall mismatch in my opinion is the disconnect between the source midi tracks and the returning audio channels from the instrument. In this case you can have up to 127 source midi tracks feeding a single VEP plugin instrument, which then can bring back audio through up to 16 stereo return channels of its own. Those are the only busses of any usefulness in LogicPro/VEP scenario. When you put hte source midi tracks into folders for organizational purposes, that's great, but LPX assumes you want them either summed or not, creating either a bus or a VCA fader channel in each case...but in either case those faders have no effect on anything whatsoever. So this is where the LPX paradigm in general is a bit of a mismatch from the reality of multiport AU3 instrument plugins and using large multi's in general.
Anyway that's all I have time to write at the moment. If anyone has questions for how to get AU3 working, I think I have it figured out. You need High Sierra and Vepro7 in order to try it.


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## fiestared (Jun 10, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> I just sat down to test out the new AU3 plugin in VEPro7. I wanted to report my experience, which is overall very favorable, though there are still some rough edges for Apple to work out in LPX.
> 
> Was able to play perfectly a 90 track score into a single VEP instance, using 8 ports. *YAY!*
> First, just want to say, performance skyrocketed to supremely better using the VEP-AU3 plugin, compared to the multiport macro approach from before into a single VEP instance. I will be retiring the multiport macros for good soon. See new performance graph, this beats everything I have tested to date! https://vi-control.net/community/threads/daw-performance-test-results.82659/
> ...


Thank you for the time you spent to try it !


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## Synetos (Jun 10, 2019)

Is Cubase sucking air on the test because the tests are running on a Mac OS? 
Is it that bad on Windows 10 machine? 
How about Reaper alone?

Thanks for taking the time to do the tests. It sparked my interest in maybe firing up my Mac with LPX


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 10, 2019)

Put this question on that other thread...but people tell me Cubase runs better on windows, but I have no way to test or confirm that. It does suck wind on my mac. Not sure when I will have time to setup a reaper-alone test...leaving town in the morning for a week, so after that. i will do it eventually, but I don't expect it to be much better. Note that in all cases except DP9, adding VEP improved overall performance compared to using the DAW alone.


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## Synetos (Jun 10, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Put this question on that other thread...but people tell me Cubase runs better on windows, but I have no way to test or confirm that. It does suck wind on my mac. Not sure when I will have time to setup a reaper-alone test...leaving town in the morning for a week, so after that. i will do it eventually, but I don't expect it to be much better. Note that in all cases except DP9, adding VEP improved overall performance compared to using the DAW alone.



Well, I do scratch my head sometimes as to why Cubase eats so much resources, even on my fairly beefy Windows 10 machine. Certain VSTs, like Omnisphere bring my machine to its knees unless I offload to VEP...or run with too high of latency.


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## rhye (Jun 10, 2019)

Thanks so much for the report Dewdman.
I still wonder if there would be any performance advantage of using a complex setup of multiports instead of using multiple instances. I know that you are not a fan of this approach, but I honestly have never detected any hit in performance by using multiple instances.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 10, 2019)

One of these days I will do a multiple instance comparison, but may be a while. I do not expect it to perform better but hey you never know. Mainly I prefer the workflow of a single (or a few) instance. I prefer mixing stems there also. I actually don’t see much the point of using vep at all in one instance per instrument unless it’s in order to use a slave machine and you just want to mix all tracks in your daw’s Mixer. The main perf issue I see with multiple instances is that each instance is essentially a separate complete set of resources, so there fundamentally must be more overhead for that. On top of that you have the thread preference that needs to configure vep as number of threads to create per instance. Even if you set that to a value of 1, with 100 instances you will have a lot of threads competing with each other for core time, and probably at the OS level rather then managed by vep itself. As opposed to if you use one instance and you set that instance to the number of threads you want it to use, maybe double your code count minus a few; and vep will manage those threads more intelligently. As soon as you go to two or three instances, that preference becomes very difficult to set ideally. Because you may have to set that thread preference lower to handle multiple instances, but then at any given time if any instance is not making sound, the other active instances would be underutilizing threads due to that setting.


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## Soundhound (Jun 10, 2019)

My reason for using VEP is just to save cpu headroom. I find the workflow a pain in the neck, but that's probably because I'm not getting the benefit of using templates. If everything were always in the same place, VEP would be fine in that regard. But I wind up using a lot of different instruments all the time (there are staples, sure...) and having to go back and forth between Logic and VEP to deal with the instruments is just another step, or steps, every time. 

It streamlines things a bit with VEP to be able to choose a track in Logic and have the VEP instance come up as well, which is why I usually do one channel per instance (I think there's a long standing consensus about VEP working better with Logic using one instruments per instance). 

But it stands to reason that the more instances you have, the more work must be going on...

Btw I tried your suggestion about the AU3 version, thanks for that! I put a few patches of Spitfire's Kepler Orchestra to compare (it's a real cpu murderer) and AU3 seemed to be saving about 15% I'd say! Probably differs depending on what kind of processing the instrument is doing...


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 10, 2019)

Soundhound said:


> (I think there's a long standing consensus about VEP working better with Logic using one instruments per instance).



I do not agree that this is the “consensus” I have searched the Internet much in this topic and found many debates and strong opinions on the matter both ways but in my estimation it is not a proven case either way, nor is there consensus. It depends on the workflow you like. I do not like having a buzzillion vep instances and don’t even see the point of it. Some people got into that mode because setting up logicpro multi’s requires a bit of logicpro expertise and sometimes throws people off. Also some third party articulation management solutions are much easier to use with one instrument per instance. And if you want to mix every instrument in logic that is the easiest way to route every instrument back to logic’s Mixer, but you give up a lot of what vep is able to do by doing that. Mainly I think logic’s Weirdness with how multi-instruments work is what sends some people to avoid using multi’s and one instrument per instance, but I just don’t see the point of even using vep at that point.


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## Soundhound (Jun 10, 2019)

As I said, I use VEP because it gives me way more cpu headroom that I need with the mac that I have. Without VEP a typical session for me will max out fairly quickly. 

And I guess the consensus I'm referring to is here on vicontrol. After first learning to set things up efficiently a few years ago with much input from people here, and some other sources as well, I got used to doing it that way, and don't even think about it much anymore, just take it as a given when maybe it's not.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 10, 2019)

There are plenty of people here on vicontrol doing it, and vouching for it, both ways. The only "consensus" is that you should follow the work flow that works best for you. I've heard passioned reasoning on both sides of this issue on vicontrol.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 11, 2019)

I don’t get it. The multi port AU3 just doesn’t show up if I insert it. It shows a red ! meaning that it’s missing. 

The stereo one works fine.


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## azeteg (Jun 11, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I don’t get it. The multi port AU3 just doesn’t show up if I insert it. It shows a red ! meaning that it’s missing.
> 
> The stereo one works fine.


Did you uncheck the "AU3 Mode" checkbox?


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## samphony (Jun 11, 2019)

Synetos said:


> Is Cubase sucking air on the test because the tests are running on a Mac OS?


It runs smooth on my Vader Helmet (mac pro 2013)


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 11, 2019)

Define smooth


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## Soundhound (Jun 11, 2019)

Jesus, calm down. I take back the word 'consensus'. 



Dewdman42 said:


> There are plenty of people here on vicontrol doing it, and vouching for it, both ways. The only "consensus" is that you should follow the work flow that works best for you. I've heard passioned reasoning on both sides of this issue on vicontrol.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 11, 2019)

All calm here


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 11, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I don’t get it. The multi port AU3 just doesn’t show up if I insert it. It shows a red ! meaning that it’s missing.
> 
> The stereo one works fine.



I haven’t tried the multi out yet. I will next week, out of town now. I was getting the orange button too before and now I’m not, not sure why but check the thing azeteg mentioned, it’s a column in the plugin manager window


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## Ashermusic (Jun 11, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> I do not agree that this is the “consensus” I have searched the Internet much in this topic and found many debates and strong opinions on the matter both ways but in my estimation it is not a proven case either way, nor is there consensus. It depends on the workflow you like. I do not like having a buzzillion vep instances and don’t even see the point of it. Some people got into that mode because setting up logicpro multi’s requires a bit of logicpro expertise and sometimes throws people off. Also some third party articulation management solutions are much easier to use with one instrument per instance. And if you want to mix every instrument in logic that is the easiest way to route every instrument back to logic’s Mixer, but you give up a lot of what vep is able to do by doing that. Mainly I think logic’s Weirdness with how multi-instruments work is what sends some people to avoid using multi’s and one instrument per instance, but I just don’t see the point of even using vep at that point.



All I can say is that Peter Schwartz, George Leger III and I did extensive testing when it came out and we _all_ concluded that VEP worked better with Logic using one instruments per instance.

I prefer it anyway because I like my Logic project workflow to resemble composing on a full score page.


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## dbudde (Jun 11, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> As of now, Apple has limited LogicPro to 16 ports through AU3 instrument channels, which means 256 midi channels per VEP instance. That's still plenty for me, but folks wanting thousands of template tracks will still need to use multiple instances.



I can see all 48 ports (VE Pro limit) in Logic Pro. Do you have your VE Pro preferences set to 16 ports?

I am running MacOS Catalina. Maybe that is a difference.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 11, 2019)

Ashermusic said:


> I prefer it anyway because I like my Logic project workflow to resemble composing on a full score page.



By that I assume you mean you want one track per instrument? You can do that without having to use one vep instance per instrument.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 11, 2019)

Oh maybe you’re right! Paul mentioned something about not being able to do 768 channels, but maybe I misunderstood. Out of town for the rest of the week to try again after that


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 11, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> I haven’t tried the multi out yet. I will next week, out of town now. I was getting the orange button too before and now I’m not, not sure why but check the thing azeteg mentioned, it’s a column in the plugin manager window



The AU3 mode checkbox is supposed to be unchecked. That's what the VSL developer said a few weeks ago, anyway.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 11, 2019)

Correct


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 11, 2019)

azeteg said:


> Did you uncheck the "AU3 Mode" checkbox?



I did, but... stop the presses... IT'S LOADING NOW!

What?! Yesterday - and for about three months before - it didn't!


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 11, 2019)

Yea it didn’t work for me before either and this time it did and I have no idea why either.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 11, 2019)

And now it's not working.

I may have figured out some of it - you insert a 5.1 plug-in first, then it may work. But nah, not worth playing with.


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## Saxer (Jun 11, 2019)

Ashermusic said:


> All I can say is that Peter Schwartz, George Leger III and I did extensive testing when it came out and we _all_ concluded that VEP worked better with Logic using one instruments per instance.


That's my experience too but maybe this changes with AU3?
@Ashermusic Did you try the VEPro AU3 beta? Would be interesting if this will change the overall behaviour.


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## Soundhound (Jun 11, 2019)

As far as CPU management, doesn't VEP use blocks of CPU (if that's a way to describe it) per instance? So for example if you have a few channels of CPU hungry instruments (looking at you Herr Kepler) in a single instance, you'll hit a wall faster than if you were using separate instances?


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 11, 2019)

dbudde said:


> I can see all 48 ports (VE Pro limit) in Logic Pro. Do you have your VE Pro preferences set to 16 ports?



When you say you see 48 ports, where do you see them? I think maybe it does not work right if you try to use that completely. The VEp plugin might show 48 ports, but the Logic UI will not be showing you all 48 ports in the track inspector. it can only show up to 16 ports there as far as I can see.

In order to use this properly with more than 16 channels you have to use the AU3 templates that VSL provided, or else you have to manually create some objects in the environment yourself, which is essentially what they did in that template. 

If you put the AU3 plug on the Inst1 channel, then you create a bunch of channel strip objets based on Inst1 and you can set the port and midi channel for each one. This is generally how multis are handled in LPX. However, right now the environment and the track inspector will only let you define ports 1-16.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 11, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> And now it's not working.
> 
> I may have figured out some of it - you insert a 5.1 plug-in first, then it may work. But nah, not worth playing with.



Make sure you are using the AU3 templates as a starting point provided by VSL. They are acually using the multi-out version of the plugin already by default.


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## azeteg (Jun 12, 2019)

Soundhound said:


> As far as CPU management, doesn't VEP use blocks of CPU (if that's a way to describe it) per instance? So for example if you have a few channels of CPU hungry instruments (looking at you Herr Kepler) in a single instance, you'll hit a wall faster than if you were using separate instances?



VEP will distribute the load optimally within an instance, using the assigned threadcount. The secret sauce in the performance of VEP's audio engine lies in the audio graph's thread synchronization scheme.


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## dbudde (Jun 12, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> When you say you see 48 ports, where do you see them? I think maybe it does not work right if you try to use that completely. The VEp plugin might show 48 ports, but the Logic UI will not be showing you all 48 ports in the track inspector. it can only show up to 16 ports there as far as I can see.
> 
> In order to use this properly with more than 16 channels you have to use the AU3 templates that VSL provided, or else you have to manually create some objects in the environment yourself, which is essentially what they did in that template.
> 
> If you put the AU3 plug on the Inst1 channel, then you create a bunch of channel strip objets based on Inst1 and you can set the port and midi channel for each one. This is generally how multis are handled in LPX. However, right now the environment and the track inspector will only let you define ports 1-16.



You're right about the multi version of VEP. I was using the stereo version and I can see all 48 ports in the Logic track inspector. I haven't really looked into all the issues using the multi.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 12, 2019)

Hmm, that's interesting. I'ma way from home and my main DAW machine, but here on my laptop (running High Sierra), I can't seem to see more then 16 ports available in either the track inspector or inside the enviornment when inspecting the channel strip objects. I wonder how you're getting 48 to show up? I'd be curious if they all work! Paul had mentioned in his video about AU3, that we would not be able to get 768 midi channels per instance for some reason.


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## azeteg (Jun 12, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Hmm, that's interesting. I'ma way from home and my main DAW machine, but here on my laptop (running High Sierra), I can't seem to see more then 16 ports available in either the track inspector or inside the enviornment when inspecting the channel strip objects. I wonder how you're getting 48 to show up? I'd be curious if they all work! Paul had mentioned in his video about AU3, that we would not be able to get 768 midi channels per instance for some reason.



There are internal limitations in Logic that makes it impossible to create more than 768 channels for one target object. One may set the port for a track to #48 - but you will not be able to assign anything more than 768 individual port/channel combinations.

*EDIT: The max limit is 127 channels, not 768.*


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 12, 2019)

I thought Paul said we could not get even 768, which is 16 channels x 48 ports; and I thought 768 was the max number of channels per instance in VEP period...across all DAW's. I may not be remembering correctly, but I thought LPX was even more limited then that as of now. I know for my part, here on my laptop I can only see 16 ports available in the LPX inspectors. Dbuddle says he sees 48 which is great news but I don't know why I can't see that. I don't have a VEP server on my laptop to be able to run it and see if changing the number of midi ports there would somehow reconfgure LPX to think there is more. I already tried changing the number of midi ports in the VEP plugin itself to 48, but still the LPX inspector shows a list of port 1-16 for each track/channel.


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## dbudde (Jun 12, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> I thought Paul said we could not get even 768, which is 16 channels x 48 ports; and I thought 768 was the max number of channels per instance in VEP period...across all DAW's. I may not be remembering correctly, but I thought LPX was even more limited then that as of now. I know for my part, here on my laptop I can only see 16 ports available in the LPX inspectors. Dbuddle says he sees 48 which is great news but I don't know why I can't see that. I don't have a VEP server on my laptop to be able to run it and see if changing the number of midi ports there would somehow reconfgure LPX to think there is more. I already tried changing the number of midi ports in the VEP plugin itself to 48, but still the LPX inspector shows a list of port 1-16 for each track/channel.



As I mentioned in my initial post, I am running macOS Catalina. Maybe that is the difference.


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## azeteg (Jun 12, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> I thought Paul said we could not get even 768, which is 16 channels x 48 ports; and I thought 768 was the max number of channels per instance in VEP period...across all DAW's. I may not be remembering correctly, but I thought LPX was even more limited then that as of now. I know for my part, here on my laptop I can only see 16 ports available in the LPX inspectors. Dbuddle says he sees 48 which is great news but I don't know why I can't see that. I don't have a VEP server on my laptop to be able to run it and see if changing the number of midi ports there would somehow reconfgure LPX to think there is more. I already tried changing the number of midi ports in the VEP plugin itself to 48, but still the LPX inspector shows a list of port 1-16 for each track/channel.



Ok - it looks like the absolute limit was 8 ports and 16 channels minus 1. In total 127 channels possible. Creating the object for port 8 and channel 16, causes the environment to break down, all channels losing their GUI.


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## Ashermusic (Jun 12, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> By that I assume you mean you want one track per instrument? You can do that without having to use one vep instance per instrument.



No I want one Channel Strip per instrument, not separate tracks feeding through the same one. Violinists in an orchestra don't sit on each others laps.


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## Ashermusic (Jun 12, 2019)

Saxer said:


> That's my experience too but maybe this changes with AU3?
> @Ashermusic Did you try the VEPro AU3 beta? Would be interesting if this will change the overall behaviour.



I tried an early beta and it totally screwed up my system in a way that Paul said didn't happen to anyone else 

To be candid, I just don't really have a problem with having a bunch of separate VE Pro instances so while I don't rule out trying it, on my top 100 list of "ooh, I want this!" things its #347


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 12, 2019)

azeteg said:


> Ok - it looks like the absolute limit was 8 ports and 16 channels minus 1. In total 127 channels possible. Creating the object for port 8 and channel 16, causes the environment to break down, all channels losing their GUI.



I see thanks for the clarification. Now that you mention that, I did notice the template was missing port 8 channel 16 and wondered wy and when I tried it add it, the GUI broke down, so there you have it. 

So anyway from my end, the track inspector shows 16 possible ports, not 48. But now I see that what you are saying we should not use more than 127 mid channels, probably nothing past port 8 either. For now.

it doesn't surprise me that the enviornment breaks down at 127 and it will not surprise me if that is very difficult for Apple to fix. Its in the guts of the enviornment which was coded decades ago using low level stuff to make it perform in real time. I would presume lots of bit operations on 8 bit bytes.. 

Still, 127 channels into a single instance of VEP is still an improvement compared to before, and like I said, it played back 90 tracks for me perfectly that way. 

I hope Apple can improve LPX to be better than 127, but we shall see, I won't hold my breathe on that, but they are increasing the channel count to 1000, so who knows...


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## Ashermusic (Jun 12, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> I Its in the guts of the enviornment which was coded decades ago using low level stuff to make it perform in real time...



That statement is out of date.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 12, 2019)

Ashermusic said:


> No I want one Channel Strip per instrument, not separate tracks feeding through the same one. Violinists in an orchestra don't sit on each others laps.



So if you want to do all the mixing in the LPX mixer, you could still use 16 channel multis with up to 16 instruments per VEP instance and get a mixer channel for each instrument, all in LPX. 

for more mixer channels then that, you'd ahve to mix the stems in VEP, which some of us actually prefer. This is where it comes down to workflow choice more than anything and I don't think there is a right or wrong answer her, its personal preference.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 12, 2019)

Ashermusic said:


> That statement is out of date.



yea ok, well I don't work at Apple so how could I possibly know you are right about that, but still we can see its evident in the enviornment all the numerical limitations it has that this is most likely the case. I will love to see them bump up the limits on things like that, particularly as the enviornment is concerned, but as I said, I'm not holding my breath and will continue to have my hypothesis as to why.


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## Ashermusic (Jun 12, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> This is where it comes down to workflow choice more than anything and I don't think there is a right or wrong answer her, its personal preference.



Of course.


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## Ashermusic (Jun 12, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> yea ok, well I don't work at Apple so how could I possibly know you are right about that, but still we can see its evident in the enviornment all the numerical limitations it has that this is most likely the case. I will love to see them bump up the limits on things like that, particularly as the enviornment is concerned, but as I said, I'm not holding my breath and will continue to have my hypothesis as to why.



You can, but you might consider the possibility that someone has info you do not. Either way, it is what it is, right?


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Jun 12, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I don’t get it. The multi port AU3 just doesn’t show up if I insert it. It shows a red ! meaning that it’s missing.
> 
> The stereo one works fine.


Are you using the latest version of the plugin Nick?
I had this issue as well, which I mentioned to Dewdman42 earlier on this thread
Not sure whether it was installing the application again, an update or a re-validation of my plugins, but I eventually got it to work...


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 12, 2019)

Ashermusic said:


> You can, but you might consider the possibility that someone has info you do not. Either way, it is what it is, right?



What makes you think I haven’t? And yes it is irrelevant about why, simple truth is that there are many aspects of LPX Limited by small numbers. I have my theory about why you don’t have to agree with me


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 12, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Make sure you are using the AU3 templates as a starting point provided by VSL. They are acually using the multi-out version of the plugin already by default.



They give me the red ! thing. No use on my system.

The stereo one works absolutely fine.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 12, 2019)

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> Are you using the latest version of the plugin Nick?
> I had this issue as well, which I mentioned to Dewdman42 earlier on this thread
> Not sure whether it was installing the application again, an update or a re-validation of my plugins, but I eventually got it to work...



That occurred to me too. Thanks.

I've never been confident the installer was replacing it with the latest one, in fact I'd considered asking someone to email me the AU3 plug-in on its own.

But while the version is 7.0, it was created May 23 - same date as the VE Pro program - so I think it's the current one.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 12, 2019)

Very strange. I had the same problem a few weeks ago when I tried it, then this week I tried it again, it flashed orange briefly and then started working, have no idea why it would not work before and now it does. Well it’s still beta and probably not worth spending a lot of time on it now but I do think It works very well when it works and I like the future direction once all the kinks are worked out


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 13, 2019)

dbudde said:


> I can see all 48 ports (VE Pro limit) in Logic Pro. Do you have your VE Pro preferences set to 16 ports?
> 
> I am running MacOS Catalina. Maybe that is a difference.



So after I reconfigured the VEP plugin to 48 ports AND RESTARTED LPX, I see 48 ports also. But note Martin's comments above...LPX is limited to 127 midi channels, which means don't use more than 8 ports, and can't use channel 16 on port8 either.


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## studioj (Jun 13, 2019)

I am quite fond of my Pro Tools VEP template where I can easily have separate instrument tracks / io for EVERY instrument/ MIDI channel coming out of VEP into PT. I generally use multi out kontakt instruments within VEP and create input objects in VEP to route to separate instrument tracks in PT. So I may have 6 VEP instances but hundreds of stereo instrument tracks in PT receiving the audio signal and sending the MIDI. 

Is there a way to achieve this with Logic and VEP7 now using only a few instances? Does it feel like something like this will be possible? Or is the only way to use multi ports in VEP / Logic still with just MIDI tracks? (as opposed to instrument tracks plus aux objects). Hopefully I'm making sense! thx!


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## dgburns (Jun 13, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> So after I reconfigured the VEP plugin to 48 ports AND RESTARTED LPX, I see 48 ports also. But note Martin's comments above...LPX is limited to 127 midi channels, which means don't use more than 8 ports, and can't use channel 16 on port8 either.



Here’s a crazy thought-has anyone thought of using the old multiport with the au3 to get 8x16 ports?


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 13, 2019)

dgburns said:


> Here’s a crazy thought-has anyone thought of using the old multiport with the au3 to get 8x16 ports?



The old multiport relied on functionality built into the AU2 plugin to intepret cc99 message and convert them into port assignments. No I don't thinking combining the two would work, nor makes any sense. Just send feature requests to Apple to get more than 127 midi channels!


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 13, 2019)

studioj said:


> I am quite fond of my Pro Tools VEP template where I can easily have separate instrument tracks / io for EVERY instrument/ MIDI channel coming out of VEP into PT. I generally use multi out kontakt instruments within VEP and create input objects in VEP to route to separate instrument tracks in PT. So I may have 6 VEP instances but hundreds of stereo instrument tracks in PT receiving the audio signal and sending the MIDI.
> 
> Is there a way to achieve this with Logic and VEP7 now using only a few instances? Does it feel like something like this will be possible? Or is the only way to use multi ports in VEP / Logic still with just MIDI tracks? (as opposed to instrument tracks plus aux objects). Hopefully I'm making sense! thx!



LPX is limited to 16 stereo channels coming from any instrument plugin. So you'd be limited to 16 stereo channels per VEP instance.


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## agarner32 (Jun 13, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> The old multiport relied on functionality built into the AU2 plugin to intepret cc99 message and convert them into port assignments.


Is this the method you are referring to? So far it seems to work okay although I do get some glitches like losing core audio once in awhile. I got this off a youtube tutorial.

Thanks,
Aaron

Edit: I forgot the screenshot and a typo.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 13, 2019)

more or less yes. I have done extensive work on this, you can read more here: https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=9

The CC99 macro can work ok and I have been using it, but every once in a while there can be issues, dropped midi events sometimes. Its also more complicated to setup and use. The new AU3 is going to be the way to go as long as you can live with 127 midi channels per VEP instance. If you want bigger templates into a single VEP instance, then by all means the CC99 macro might still work for you, or if we're lucky Apple will update LPX to handle more midi channels but somehow I doubt they will do that anytime soon.

In any case, I do not think the CC99 trick can be combined with AU3 because the AU3 likely does not have the ability to convert CC99 messages into VEP port assignments, nor would it make any sense to do that, when it can do its own port assignments, but unfortunately Logic can only assign up to 8 ports. I can't think of any way the two approaches could be combined.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 13, 2019)

also, I got MUCH better cpu performance with the AU3 plugin compared to using CC99 trick into AU2. FWIW.


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## gsilbers (Jun 13, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> They give me the red ! thing. No use on my system.
> 
> The stereo one works absolutely fine.




sorry.. im a bit behind .. but can someone tell me if with the new VEP AU3 is suppose show something like this image but 48 tracks instead of 16 (au limit)? 
i see several folks referencing the environment tinkering the ports vs tracks is gtting to me.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 13, 2019)

I don't really understand your question, but Nick's screenshot also looks funny. This is what it looks like for me using VSL's AU3 templates, which you need to do:






You can use up to 8 ports x 16 midi channels currently.


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## gsilbers (Jun 13, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> I don't really understand your question, but Nick's screenshot also looks funny. This is what it looks like for me using VSL's AU3 templates, which you need to do:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



oh.. but each port is still limited by 16 midi channels?

so what are the advantages that wherent there before? 

i thought it was like in cubase that each port (one VEP plugin insert) would be able to load up to 64 midi channels (max of instruments in kontakt). thus, reducing the amount of port connections to just 4.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 13, 2019)

There are only 16 midi channels per port. The same is true on Cubase and all other hosts. Cubase let's you use up to 48 ports, so 768 total channels. LPX is limited to 127 total midi channels on 8 ports, as of now.

Before AU3, you could only do 16 midi channels per VEP instance on a single port, so its quite an improvement to have 127 channels per VEP instance on 8 ports. You could set up some fairly large templates with just a couple of VEP instances, which was not possible before without using the CC99 hack.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 13, 2019)

newsflash. LPX 10.4.5 just hit with the 1000 tracks, etc. I notice they updated multi-out plugins to 25 stereo channels.. compared to 16 before. So that's something... Seems to have broken VEP multi midi port, but still checking it out...

1000 inst channels aren't showing up for me either... so dunno...


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## fiestared (Jun 13, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> newsflash. LPX 10.4.5 just hit with the 1000 tracks, etc. I notice they updated multi-out plugins to 25 stereo channels.. compared to 16 before. So that's something... Seems to have broken VEP multi midi port, but still checking it out...
> 
> 1000 inst channels aren't showing up for me either... so dunno...


Good news, thanks!


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 13, 2019)

it broke VEP AU3 though. FYI.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 13, 2019)

gsilbers said:


> oh.. but each port is still limited by 16 midi channels?
> 
> so what are the advantages that wherent there before?
> 
> i thought it was like in cubase that each port (one VEP plugin insert) would be able to load up to 64 midi channels (max of instruments in kontakt). thus, reducing the amount of port connections to just 4.



MIDI Ports are always 16 Channels. That's part of the original spec from 1983.

But you can access multiple Ports. I can access 16, by the way - 256 MIDI channels.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 13, 2019)

you can't use more than 8 ports in logic, its limited internally to 127 midi channels, so you can't use channel 16 on port 8 either. If you try to add that 128th channel, then the GUI in logicPro gets all messed up and confused. So while you can choose port 9 or 16, its not going to work, you are limited to 127 channels feeding a single VEP plugin and instance. For now.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 13, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> If you try to add that 128th channel



That's the least of the issues I'm seeing with the AU3 plug-in in 10.4.5.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 13, 2019)

yea I agree, 10.4.5 broke the AU3 plugin period. Particularly what I think it broke is not hte plugin as much as the template we are supposed to use. I think 10.4.5 broke many existing templates and project files becuase of the way they are handling the 1000 channels. Now it creates the underlying inst object on demand...and somehow that has broken things. Im getting wierd results when I use existing templates. If you start an empty project and load the AU3 plugin then it seems to work properly.

Update: Changing the VEP preferences to 50 audio outputs seems to get the Au3 plugin working again in LPX 10.4.5


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 13, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> If you start an empty project and load the AU3 plugin then it seems to work properly.



For me, only the stereo one. I still have never loaded the multiport one.


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## agarner32 (Jun 13, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> more or less yes. I have done extensive work on this, you can read


Thank you for all the detailed information.


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## studioj (Jun 14, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> LPX is limited to 16 stereo channels coming from any instrument plugin. So you'd be limited to 16 stereo channels per VEP instance.


Thanks. Its too bad that this number isn't variable based on the setting in VEP preferences like in other DAWS. I see that in today's update they bumped it up to 25? In PT/VEP I have this set to 64 stereo inputs. I don't always use all 64 inputs but I do often get up to more than 40. I feel like the multi port availability becomes less useful without audio i/o to correspond.


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## dbudde (Jun 15, 2019)

For those still having problems loading the AU3 plugin, make sure you have enough audio outputs per instance allocated in VE Pro Server preferences. For instance, for the 25 output multi version, you need to allocate 50 outputs.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 15, 2019)

dbudde said:


> For those still having problems loading the AU3 plugin, make sure you have enough audio outputs per instance allocated in VE Pro Server preferences. For instance, for the 25 output multi version, you need to allocate 50 outputs.



Good point, but it didn't solve my problem.


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## agarner32 (Jun 16, 2019)

This is probably way too much to ask, but would anyone be willing to explain how to use AU3 version of VEP7? I've tried multiple ways and can't get it to work. I'm coming from Cubase so the process is different. You just create a VEP instrument in Cubase and MIDI channels after that. The MIDI channels can be assigned to any instance of VEP on the server side.

I did get AU3 to work on 1 port, by creating a VEP multi-port instrument along with aux channels, but when I create another one and choose port 2 it doesn't work. Yes, I'm a complete dummy. I'm sure it's an easy process.

Again, if this is too much to ask I understand. I am missing some key steps or concept.

Thanks,
Aaron

Note: I have gotten multi-ports to work using the Environment as shown in a really clear step by step youtube video.


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## dbudde (Jun 16, 2019)

agarner32 said:


> This is probably way too much to ask, but would anyone be willing to explain how to use AU3 version of VEP7?



I'm guessing you are having difficulty getting more than one port connected to the server. Here's the easiest way I have found to do all this. 

1. Create a new track with an AU3 instrument. 

2. Set it's midi channel to 1 in the inspector (leave the port number as 1)

3. Duplicate that track while incrementing the midi channel (control-return is the shortcut) and do this until you have 16 channels on that port.

4. Create a new instrument with an empty instrument.

5. In the environment, reassign the instrument to instrument 1. then close the environment window.

6. Change its port number to port 2.

7. Repeat step 3 for all the channels in port 2.

8. Repeat steps 4 - 7 for ports 3 through 8 or until you've got all the tracks you need.

9. Note that you need to stop at channel 15 for port 8 currently due to a Logic limit of 127 channels.

10. At some point you need to connect to the server. Can be done at any time.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 16, 2019)

Vsl has also provided some AU3 templates which basically have 127 channels precreated for you across 8 ports as described above. It’s a very simple template but uses exactly the same process as outlined above manually to set it up. So ready to go with 127 tracks and they have some multi instance templates with 254 and 381 tracks respectively


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 16, 2019)

It’s useful to go through the manual process though so that you can understand how logicpro multi’s work in general.


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## agarner32 (Jun 16, 2019)

Wow, I just got home to see these super helpful posts to my question. Thank you very much dbudde and Dewdman. I tried one of the VSL templates and it works perfectly. I'd like to recreate it though so I understand the concepts.

As far as audio routing goes, I'm not sure it I'm doing this the best way, but it works. I just created X number of outputs for a Kontakt instance on the VEP slave 1-2, 3-4, 5-7 etc. On the Logic side I created aux tracks and named them appropriately. As an experiment I tried it with a CSS - Vln1, Vln2, Va, etc. So 5 aux tracks set to inputs 1-2, 3-4, 5-7 etc.

So 127 tracks per VEP7 instance? That's a start. I'm used to having templates in the 2k track range, but this might force me to downsize.

As a side note, it might be nice to pay someone for a Skype lesson on setting things up with the audio routing. Tobias from OT gave me several lessons on setting me up in Cubase and he was great. It would have taken me a long time to learn what he showed me in a few weeks.

Thanks,
Aaron


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## agarner32 (Jun 16, 2019)

dbudde said:


> I'm guessing you are having difficulty getting more than one port connected to the server. Here's the easiest way I have found to do all this. And it doesn't require dealing with the environment at all.
> 
> 1. Create a new track with an AU3 instrument.
> 
> ...


Okay, I tried these instructions and I'm not getting the second port to work. It's step 5 that breaks down for me. I must be missing something. Port 1 and the corresponding MIDI channels works perfectly. I right-clicked on the second instrument and reassigned it to instrument 1. What happens is that it changes instrument 1 to port 2. I can't get two separate ports for some reason.

Thanks,
Aaron


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 16, 2019)

its probably step #3 you're not getting right. You have to duplicate it IN THE ENVIRONMENT.


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## dbudde (Jun 16, 2019)

agarner32 said:


> Okay, I tried these instructions and I'm not getting the second port to work. It's step 5 that breaks down for me. I must be missing something. Port 1 and the corresponding MIDI channels works perfectly. I right-clicked on the second instrument and reassigned it to instrument 1. What happens is that it changes instrument 1 to port 2. I can't get two separate ports for some reason.
> 
> Thanks,
> Aaron



You don't need to duplicate anything in the environment. Make sure in step 4 that you create a new instrument with an empty channel strip. If it is not empty it won't work. Then reassign it.

Edit. OK, I am wrong about that. You do seem to need to duplicate it in the environment. Sorry about the confusion.


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## dbudde (Jun 16, 2019)

So to clarify, just step 5 needs to be done in the environment, every other step is OK as is.

I've updated the original post.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Jun 16, 2019)

I have not used the Environment at all for this. I simply created a Multiport 25 AU3 VE Pro track and selected to have 5 multi-timbral tracks included. I set the first track to MIDI Channel All and Port 1, then I just changed the ports of the other 4 channels. Only issue that in my mixer I only get one track with the plus sign for multi out audio. But I am fine with that for now


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 16, 2019)

If you only need 16 or less parts you don’t need to go into the environment. If you want more then 16 then you need to copy and paste some of those initial 16 strips in the environment before you can reassign tracks to them and set their channel and port.

Vsl already did it for you in their templates.

LPX Multi’s all work the same way, there is a single underlying object called inst1, inst2, etc. when you create a 16 part instrument with the new tracks wizard, logic does this for you, it creates 16 instrument channel strips in the environment, all of them referencing the same underlying instrument channel ( ie, inst1, inst2, etc) then it automatically creates 16 tracks in the sequencer and reassigns them to point at the 16 env channel strips it just created. Each one is funneled to the same instrument channel but with its own track settings such as channel, port, delay, etc

Likewise if you have? Let’s say, 5 tracks already using midi channels 1-5, then you can select the last one and choose new track to next channel, and it will basically copy and paste the last of those internal env channel strips, create a new track and reassign it to that new env channel strip and you will have the ability to adjust channel and port and it’s pointing at the same underlying inst channel object (ie, inst, inst2, etc). 

The reason we have to go into the environment now is because the new tracks wizard will only create up to 16 parts, and the create track next channel menu command won’t go past channel 16 to the next port channel 1. (Please submit feature requests to Apple for that). So we have to manually set up the underlying environment objects and reassign new tracks to them.

It’s actually pretty easy to copy and paste 16 channels at a time to create them and then create 16 new empty tracks and reassign them. But this is how to understand what logicpro is doing under the covers.

You can also just start out with VSL’s templates reassign all the tracks to no output and then delete them. That will leave all the underlying env objects ready and waiting and you can create whatever new tracks you need and assign them to those on an as need basis. You can also organize them in the environment in separate pages which will make the reassign menu have sub menus and easier to find the right one, etc. I will make a couple different templates like that later tonight.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Jun 16, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> You can also just start out with VSL’s templates reassign all the tracks to no output and then delete them.


Have VSL made any new templates? Or are these the old templates they were issuing out before?


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## agarner32 (Jun 16, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> If you only need 16 or less parts you don’t need to go into the environment. If you want more then 16 then you need to copy and paste some of those initial 16 strips in the environment before you can reassign tracks to them and set their channel and port.
> 
> Vsl already did it for you in their templates.
> 
> ...


Man you know this stuff at a high level. Now I know what my college music theory/composition students go through because even the most basic concepts and terms elude most of them until third or fourth semester.

I'm going to print this stuff out and study it. The problem for me is that sometimes I can't figure out something someone says that is to them extremely basic because I don't quite have the concepts down like I do in Cubase. I'm getting there with all this generous help. Damn, I wish you gave Skype lessons Dewdman - haha. Anyway, thanks again for the information. I shall study it after I enjoy a glass of wine in this great California weather!!

Aaron


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 16, 2019)

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> Have VSL made any new templates? Or are these the old templates they were issuing out before?



New ones for au3


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## agarner32 (Jun 16, 2019)

Okay, I just downloaded the VSL AU3 template with 8 ports and 3 VEP instances for a total of 381 tracks - 127 x 3 = 381? It think that is correct.

Is there an easy way to just copy and paste more of these multi-port folders? It would be nice if I could do that for another 127 or 254 tracks or even more if I want.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Jun 16, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> New ones for au3


Hey man, do you by any chance remember how to move your Instrument tracks to another Layer in the Environment window?

Say I wanted layers below the Mixer Layer like:
01 WIND SECTION
02 BRASS SECTION
03 PERC SECTION

etc.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 16, 2019)

open two environment windows ,then just create or change to the other layer and drag them over.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 16, 2019)

agarner32 said:


> Okay, I just downloaded the VSL AU3 template with 8 ports and 3 VEP instances for a total of 381 tracks - 127 x 3 = 381? It think that is correct.
> 
> Is there an easy way to just copy and paste more of these multi-port folders? It would be nice if I could do that for another 127 or 254 tracks or even more if I want.



LPX is limited to 127 midi channels per VEP instance at the moment, so in order to add more then 381, you will need to create a new instrument track with a new instance of VEP, then copy all the underlying environment stuff we've been talking about to add 127 more channels.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Jun 16, 2019)

My gosh, I remember when I tried to rack my brains about how this all works 3 years ago...
Things have not changed it seems.

So I am trying to work out the best way to get this to work that is closest to Cubase, for instance.
I have Composer Tools Pro to manage my keyswitches and for that I am now using Articulation ID scripts either with Skiswitcher/ARTzID(many added features compared to the Apple ones) or now I am finding the they (Apple ones) are working better though.

So in my VE Pro setup I have an instance and then each of my instruments is assigned a single Port.
Example:

HWS Violins 1 - Port 1
HWS Violins 2- Port 2
HWS Violas - Port 3
HWS Cellos - Port 4
HWS Basses- Port 5

All the articulations loaded in the patches into a single Play instance for each instrument.
Then there is a single VE Pro instance for Solo and Section. Screenshots below:












The only issue I am having compared to Cubase I notice, is that I get one single instrument track in the Mixer and therefore I cannot independently control the tracks from the Mixer...

Any thoughts on how this could be solved?

Thanks


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 16, 2019)

LPX multi's are not as straightforward as many other daw's, I understand your frustration. I hope they will improve it in the future. For now its really confusing and laborious to setup large multi based templates, no doubt about it. LPX of course brings other advantages so it may be worth it. VEP AU3 makes things considerably better then before, but still LPX multi handling is a bit of a PITA, which is why VSL is calling it "beta" even though it appears to be working perfectly fine and very well. I think once you setup some multi's or get used to the process of how to setup each instrument track it won't be that bad.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 16, 2019)

Regarding the audio coming back from VEP that is another issue. With 10.4.5 you can return up to 25 stereo returns from VEP, which is quite good, but the AUX returns are completely separated from the midi tracks you see on the template. By default they will all be coming back in stereo and if you want separate mixing in LPX, then you have to configure VEP to send to other outs and you'll see those coming back into LPX through the AUX channels so you can mix there or bounce stems.

The other day I setup an orch mockup, 90 channels in VEP.. but a lot of those are different versions of violins, for example. So I setup my instance in VEP so that its returning all violins through outs 1/2, all violas through outs 3/4, etc.. This ended up giving me almost all the instruments of the orch coming back to LPX through the 25 AUX returns and I can further mix those in LPX or bounce stems, etc.. Even though its 90 tracks of midi feeding all the 90 instruments in VEP, etc.. There are lots of possibilities and 10.4.5 has expanded those possibilities quite a lot.

But just remember midi tracks are entirely separate from the multi-out audio coming back from the instrument. There is no garauntee that they will be related. You can set it up that way to a point, but they are really separate things.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 16, 2019)

regarding articulation management, beware, there is going to be some chaos for a while under AU3. As far as I know, Artzid is not port-aware. so its not going to work well as-is with the new AU3 setup. The articulationSet feature of LPX is also not port-ware yet. 

Scripter does appear to be port-aware, but when I tried to see if I could get my own home-brew articulation script to work it was not sending over the ports properly, but I'll still working on it, I did a simple test script could do so, so I may figure it out. Bottom line, custom articulation scripting should be able to send keyswitches over ports and such, but hte solutions that are out there do not appear to be ready for that yet, including Artzid, Logic's articulationSet's and probably AG's stuff too, though I imagine AG will get his in line with that pretty quickly.

The problem is that AG and artzid, (and my home-brew solution), all rely on Scripter to do a lot of stuff...and with AU3 you're funneling up to 127 channels of instruments through a single Scripter script, which means the script has to be much more complicated to keep track of what needs to happen on each channel/port.


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## Gaffable (Jun 16, 2019)

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> Hey man, do you by any chance remember how to move your Instrument tracks to another Layer in the Environment window?
> 
> Say I wanted layers below the Mixer Layer like:
> 01 WIND SECTION
> ...



Logic offers a number of ways to move objects between layers.

The easiest and fastest way is:
(1) Select the objects you want to move; and then
(2) Hold down the Option key, then choose a layer from the Layer pop-up menu. The selected objects will be instantly moved to the chosen layer.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Jun 17, 2019)

Gaffable said:


> Logic offers a number of ways to move objects between layers.
> 
> The easiest and fastest way is:
> (1) Select the objects you want to move; and then
> (2) Hold down the Option key, then choose a layer from the Layer pop-up menu. The selected objects will be instantly moved to the chosen layer.


That was the one I was trying to remember.
When I tried it the way I thought it was, I ended up with 16 tracks with no output!!


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Jun 17, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> regarding articulation management, beware, there is going to be some chaos for a while under AU3. As far as I know, Artzid is not port-aware. so its not going to work well as-is with the new AU3 setup. The articulationSet feature of LPX is also not port-ware yet.
> 
> Scripter does appear to be port-aware, but when I tried to see if I could get my own home-brew articulation script to work it was not sending over the ports properly, but I'll still working on it, I did a simple test script could do so, so I may figure it out. Bottom line, custom articulation scripting should be able to send keyswitches over ports and such, but hte solutions that are out there do not appear to be ready for that yet, including Artzid, Logic's articulationSet's and probably AG's stuff too, though I imagine AG will get his in line with that pretty quickly.
> 
> The problem is that AG and artzid, (and my home-brew solution), all rely on Scripter to do a lot of stuff...and with AU3 you're funneling up to 127 channels of instruments through a single Scripter script, which means the script has to be much more complicated to keep track of what needs to happen on each channel/port.


Thanks for all the info man. Lots to digest here and pay attention to


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## agarner32 (Jun 17, 2019)

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> Thanks for all the info man. Lots to digest here and pay attention to


Yes, thank you for all the information to everyone.

By the way, I opened the VSL AU3 template (the one setup for 3 instances) and highlighted a group of folders for ports 1-8 and just duplicated them a few times and it seems to work perfectly. So far I am setup for 5 instances which is 635 tracks. I don't see any issues so far.


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## Ashermusic (Jun 17, 2019)

While I am certainly open to changing my mind, for those of us who use the ArtZ ID extensively, I just am not seeing how incorporating AU3 is going to improve on it.


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## agarner32 (Jun 17, 2019)

Ashermusic said:


> While I am certainly open to changing my mind, for those of us who use the ArtZ ID extensively, I just am not seeing how incorporating AU3 is going to improve on it.


Do you think ArtZ ID works better than Logic's Articulation ID? I'm not sure the question is even a good one.


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## Ashermusic (Jun 17, 2019)

agarner32 said:


> Do you think ArtZ ID works better than Logic's Articulation ID? I'm not sure the question is even a good one.



Well it works WITH Logic's Articulation ID system and yes, better with it than without it by a good deal at this point in time.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2019)

They are all good solutions.... there is no single right or wrong solution. AU3 has the potential to improve all of them by enabling us to reduce the number of VEP instances, perhaps even to only one. However, None of the articulation management solutions today right now are port-aware. The built in ArticulationSet feature may work as long as you don't need to channelize events across ports, it might send keyswitches to the right AU3 port, not sure yet I haven't tried it, but it generally has other "bugs" that preclude me from wanting to use it. The other 3rd party solutions will not be able to take advantage of AU3 until they are updated to be port-aware IMHO. My own home-brew Scripter solution also has to be updated, which I am in the process of doing, then it will work across ports completely.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2019)

agarner32 said:


> Yes, thank you for all the information to everyone.
> 
> By the way, I opened the VSL AU3 template (the one setup for 3 instances) and highlighted a group of folders for ports 1-8 and just duplicated them a few times and it seems to work perfectly. So far I am setup for 5 instances which is 635 tracks. I don't see any issues so far.



Make sure and verify what you're doing when you duplicate them. I tried to do this and ended up duplicating the actual VEP plugin many times, which is not what you want. You want to duplicate just once the Inst3 channel to have inst4, then you need 127 channel strips that point to Inst4. When I tried to duplicate tracks I ended up with Inst4,Inst5,Inst6, etc.. not what you want.. when you start connecting to all the VEP instances I think you will see...


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## agarner32 (Jun 17, 2019)

Thanks Jay. I'm coming back to Logic after a few years of using Cubase so I consider myself an advanced beginner. Is it a pretty intuitive setup? I will search out youtube videos and their site for more information. Even just Logic's Articulation ID feature is way easier than Cubase's expression maps in my opinion.

One more quick question and hopefully I'll ask it in the right way. Let's say you have 8 tracks on different MIDI channels each with a different articulation for a particular instrument like horn 1 - legato, staccato etc. Can you assign each articulation to a different MIDI channel and switch them from one track? With some instruments the articulations aren't balanced so having separate tracks is nice rather than having one patch with all the arts together. For me it depends on the library. I sure hope this is not a stupid or confusing question.


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## Ashermusic (Jun 17, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> They are all good solutions.... there is no single right or wrong solution. AU3 has the potential to improve all of them by enabling us to reduce the number of VEP instances, perhaps even to only one. However, None of the articulation management solutions today right now are port-aware. The built in ArticulationSet feature may work as long as you don't need to channelize events across ports, it might send keyswitches to the right AU3 port, not sure yet I haven't tried it, but it generally has other "bugs" that preclude me from wanting to use it. The other 3rd party solutions will not be able to take advantage of AU3 until they are updated to be port-aware IMHO. My own home-brew Scripter solution also has to be updated, which I am in the process of doing, then it will work across ports completely.




I know Dewdman feels that I am always peeing in his cornflakes, but I agree with him that there is no right or wrong solution.

But I guess that for me I am just so happy with my approach with a lot of VE Pro instances with the ARtZ ID that my attitude is it isn';t broken so I am not going to spend much time trying to fix it. y.

And for my "Quick Compose" template, with the ability to power/on/off dynamically that I am exploring, which sadly is sufficient for the work I am getting hired to do, I am thinking I am not going to have to open VE Pro 7 much at all, and that is a BIG change. Also, I have saved every single instrument as a "patch" in the Logic library so adding them to a project is quick and easy.

So for me, AU 3 is just not a dog scratching at the kitchen door that I think I need to let in.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2019)

Not entirely sure I understand your question. You want one LPX track feeding 8 channels in VEP that are hosting 8 different articulations on different midi channels.. yes? Certainly you can do that with the articulationSet feature as well as the third party ones, but as far as I know you cannot presently channelize them across ports and I'm not sure right now what will happen with AU3 and channelizing like that, I need to test it. Most likely Apple will need to improve ArticulationSet stuff along with some other things related to AU3. That's why VSL is still calling it "beta"


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## Ashermusic (Jun 17, 2019)

agarner32 said:


> One more quick question and hopefully I'll ask it in the right way. Let's say you have 8 tracks on different MIDI channels each with a different articulation for a particular instrument like horn 1 - legato, staccato etc. Can you assign each articulation to a different MIDI channel and switch them from one track? With some instruments the articulations aren't balanced so having separate tracks is nice rather than having one patch with all the arts together. For me it depends on the library. I sure hope this is not a stupid or confusing question.



Yes. At the risk of self-promoting, you can hire me fore one hour over Skype or Facetime and I will talk you through setting it up, and then you will be good to go.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2019)

So one way to organize all the hundreds of AU3 channel strips is by using ":" in the layer name which ends up organizing them with submenus which makes it easier to find a channel if and when you're reassigning tracks. For example, if I create a layer for each VEPinstance/port, with a ":" in the name, for example one layer would be called "VEP 1: Port 1", then you get this in the reassign menu:






I still haven't found a quick and relatively easy way to copy 127 channels from one VEP instance to add another 127 channels under a new instance. Just about anything I've tried so far requires you to go in and manually edit all 127 channel strips in the environment after the fact one by one, which is a PITA. Guess I'll save that for later..

*EDIT: The above trick is interesting, but I ran into a LogicPro limit where it can not have more than ~60 environment layers. So never mind for this.*


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2019)

*Here's a 508 track template, using 4 VEP instances and 635 tracks in 5 VEP instances.

I did figure out a reasonably quick way to add 127 channels and an instance to any project. I may outline it in a future post, but its kind of complicated to explain, the environment is not easy to explain around

EDITED, see later post*


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## agarner32 (Jun 17, 2019)

I'm curious how people deal with VSL instruments. Since Vienna Instruments is not multi-timbral, the only way I can do it is to have one VEP7 instance per instrument. I'm doing the woods so it's about 11 in total. There has to be a way to do this in one VEP instance.

Edit: I'm an idiot! I figured it out. Just use the same port and set the MIDI channels in ascending order on each track in Logic. Duh!


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2019)

Read some of the earlier posts about how to set it up. If you try to duplicate the track in the arrange view it will often create a new instrument plugin instance. So yes you need same port, different midi channels, but if you don't create them right you will notice either you end up with one instrument per VEP instance, or you end up where changing the midi channel changes all of them to the same midi channel... In order to make it work you have to do the fiddly environment stuff I've been talking about, but only if you're going more than 16 parts.

If you only need 11 parts, the easiest way is to use "New Tracks" menu item which will bring up the new track wizard. Make sure to check the 16 parts multi-timbral, and you'll end up with 16 tracks on 16 channels to one VEP instance


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2019)

Here is a VEP AU3 template with 762 tracks feeding 6 VEP instances. Delete the tracks you don't need. I will probably not be making any bigger then this

*EDITED: This template has been replaced with a newer and better one that has 1270 tracks. See later in this thread.*


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## agarner32 (Jun 17, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Read some of the earlier posts about how to set it up. If you try to duplicate the track in the arrange view it will often create a new instrument plugin instance. So yes you need same port, different midi channels, but if you don't create them right you will notice either you end up with one instrument per VEP instance, or you end up where changing the midi channel changes all of them to the same midi channel... In order to make it work you have to do the fiddly environment stuff I've been talking about, but only if you're going more than 16 parts.
> 
> If you only need 11 parts, the easiest way is to use "New Tracks" menu item which will bring up the new track wizard. Make sure to check the 16 parts multi-timbral, and you'll end up with 16 tracks on 16 channels to one VEP instance


I'll have to read this a few more times, but it makes sense. I'm sure your way is superior.

I ended up with 13 woodwind instruments. What I did (and it seems to work) is to just use one of the ports already configured in the VSL template with 16 MIDI channels. In VEP7, I just created 13 Vienna Instruments all within the instance I cleverly called "Woods." Each instrument is routed to an aux track in Logic - Flutes, Oboes, Clarinets etc.

This is pretty close to how I did it in Cubase only I'm limited to 8 ports which is fine actually. As you mentioned, I'm not crazy about how they did the folders. I go back and forth between grouping by library and by instrument. Mostly I like by library, but that's for another discussion.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2019)

You don't have to leave them organized in those folders, just drag the tracks out and put in other folders, it will not change anything about how it functions with VEP.


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## agarner32 (Jun 17, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Here is a VEP AU3 template with 762 tracks feeding 6 VEP instances. Delete the tracks you don't need. I will probably not be making any bigger then this


This is fantastic - thank you for sharing this. I think 762 should be enough. I'm tired of templates 2000 plus tracks.

The one thing I do miss coming from Cubase is the ability to show/hide tracks with key commands. I used my iPad and MetaGrid which allowed me to just show all of VSL woods as an example. Either way, I just have always felt more comfortable in Logic overall even as a relative beginner now.


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## Gaffable (Jun 17, 2019)

agarner32 said:


> Let's say you have 8 tracks on different MIDI channels each with a different articulation for a particular instrument like horn 1 - legato, staccato etc. Can you assign each articulation to a different MIDI channel and switch them from one track? With some instruments the articulations aren't balanced so having separate tracks is nice rather than having one patch with all the arts together. For me it depends on the library.



If the sample library is a Kontakt instrument then you can create an instrument bank in Kontakt and place each individual articulation in a separate slot inside the bank. It's easy to set up:
(1) Click on the Files Menu in Kontakt's main control panel and select "New instrument bank";
(2) Click on the wrench icon of the bank to reveal the slots;
(3) Go to Kontakt's browser, select all the instrument files for all the articulations and then drag and drop the files to the very first slot in the bank. Kontakt will automatically add each instrument file to a sequential slot in the bank.

The slots in the bank can be selected by MIDI CC Program Change messages, so you just need to set up your Logic articulation set so that it transmits Program Change messages.

In order to balance the volume of the individual articulations, double click on a slot in the bank and you will be taken to the Kontakt editor where you can adjust the volume for the articulation using the fader in the top right-hand corner of the editor.


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## agarner32 (Jun 17, 2019)

Gaffable said:


> If the sample library is a Kontakt instrument then you can create an instrument bank in Kontakt and place each individual articulation in a separate slot inside the bank. It's easy to set up:
> (1) Click on the Files Menu in Kontakt's main control panel and select "New instrument bank";
> (2) Click on the wrench icon of the bank to reveal the slots;
> (3) Go to Kontakt's browser, select all the instrument files for all the articulations and then drag and drop the files to the very first slot in the bank. Kontakt will automatically add each instrument file to a sequential slot in the bank.
> ...


Wow, how much do I owe you for all this? I seriously need to buy you a drink - if you live anywhere between Sac and the Bay Area that is haha! Thanks again.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2019)

Just a little explanation about Logic Multi-timbral operation...which admittedly...is not as elegant as other DAW's, its one of my few gripes about LogicPro. Anyway its not likely to change... so here's a brief explanation...

When you create a new non-multi-timbral instrument track, Logic creates three things for you and links them together behind the scenes.

It looks for the next available Inst object (up to 1000). They are named Inst 1, Inst 2, etc. These are internal instrument handling objects. 
It creates a mixer channel object in the environment to host that Inst object, and assigns the instrument plugin of your choice to it. This mixer channel appears both in the environment and in the actual mixer window. That is where the plugin resides, using the inst object, see below, in this case its using "Inst 7"
It creates a track on the arrange page and links it to this mixer channel.










So that is typical easy non-multi-timbral case.

When you want to setup a multi-timbral instrument, the instrument has to sit in one and only one instrument object... Inst 7, Inst 8, etc. Which will sit in a mixer channel, but we need multiple tracks feeding it. The easiest way to setup a simple multi-timbral situation in Logic is using the "New Tracks" menu command, which calls up the New Tracks wizard. In there you can specify you want it to be multi-timbral and how many parts you want, up to 16.






After you do that, you will see a couple of interesting things. In the arrange page you will see 16 tracks created, and they will be set to midi channels 1-16... They will all be pointing to the same one and only one mixer channel using the "Inst 8" object to handle the plugin in this case.






In the mixer window you will see only one mixer channel with that new plugin on it, however in the environment you will see that LogicPro created 16 channel strips..






All of those channel strips are actually pointing to the same internal "Inst 8" instrument handler object, which in this case is hosting a single instance of VEPAU3. These are not really channel strips, they are more like an interface to the track information. You can see in the inspector to the left, each one will be pointing to Inst 8, but they each have their own midi channel, midi port, delay and other "track" settings. The tracks that were added above, basically are assigned to these environment objects and all the track settings you normally see for each track on the arrange page, is actually referencing this internal object and whatever settings are here. 

In this way you have 16 tracks all pointing to one Inst8 object. but each one having its own midi channel and port.

Meanwhile, the mixer window will not display all 8. The mixer window will only display one channel for Inst8. 

Many people also complain also, when you mute or solo the track headers, all parts of a multi-timbral instrument are muted or solo'd together. They are not independent. This is unfortunately true, because you are muting or soloing the whole Inst8 channel...not the track itself. The track header fader also effects the entire Inst8 instrument, all parts.

Now what if you want more than 16 parts feeding your 127 channel VEP multi-timbral instrument? Unfortunately LogicPro does not currently provide an easy way to set that up. Anything you try to do through the arrange view will do all kinds of automatic stuff under the covers to create these various objects and link them up, but all of them assume you will never have more than 16 multi-timbral parts, and so it basically doesn't do what we want right now.

But in the environment you can take those 16 objects shown in the last image above, and copy and paste them. Then you will have 32 mixer channel strips, all pointing to Inst8. And you can go into each one of them and set the midi channel and port to whatever you want.

Again, you will not see these appear on your mixer window. And you will not see them in tracks either. In order to get them in the tracks you can drag and drop them from the environment onto the arrange page and tracks will be created for them. or you can create 16 tracks and manually reassign them to whatever environment objects you want using the right click reassign command(image shown in earlier post).

It can get a little complicated dealing with Multi-timbral instruments in Logic, it is not that easy and now with AU3 its made more complex and convoluted unfortunately, but still i am extremely pleased to be able to have 127 tracks going to 127 channels in one VEP instance and with these templates I made, you don't even need to worry about it that much, just use the template or use the smaller ones from VSL and delete the tracks you don't use.

You can rearrange the tracks any way you want, the folders have no impact on how they work, they are are only arranged in folders for organizational reasons. You can drag them around to different order and put them in different folders as you wish. But once you do that, the only way to tell which port and midi channel each one is assigned to, is to select it and look at track properties, that's all. Pretty much how all DAW's do that.

If you delete a track, the underlying environment objects are deleted along with it, so... then you'll either need to start over again with a large template, or mess around with creating them manually, as described above...


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2019)

One last point, since you're coming from Cubase... All of the above is mostly talking about how to direct MIDI to the VEP plugin, up to 127 channels of it. But what about the audio? 

The audio by default comes back as mixed stereo from VEP. Remember when I said above that Logic will put one and only one mixer channel on the mixer window for Inst8. That channel is where the audio will be coming back into your mixer from VEP.

If you use additional audio outs in VEP (up to 25 stereo), then you can hit the little "+" button on the side of the above mentioned mixer channel, and you will see additional AUX channels show up in the mixer which will be getting those additional outputs from VEP.

So basically you can have 127 midi channels feeding into one VEP instance...and you can have up to 25 stereo channels coming back. There is absolutely no built in correlation between the input tracks and midi channels....to the returning audio on those 25 stereo returns. You can keep it simple in stereo, mix it in VEP, route them from VEP over whatever outs you want...up to 25 stereo. But the point is there is absolutely nothing automatic that will route the first track to the audio outs 1/2, the second track to outs 3/4, etc.. You can setup that in VEP and with the above mentioned AUX's..but its not automatic.


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## samphony (Jun 17, 2019)

agarner32 said:


> The one thing I do miss coming from Cubase is the ability to show/hide tracks with key commands. I used my iPad and MetaGrid which allowed me to just show all of VSL woods as an example. Either way, I just have always felt more comfortable in Logic overall even as a relative beginner now.


You can get a workflow going to show/hide certain food groups by making use of the 32 available groups in logic.

Hit command+G to open the floating groups window.
(Make sure to have a look into the key commands window = option+K and search for groups and get familiar with the available group related key commands)

You can now select tracks and use key commands or the cog wheel icon in the top right of the groups window to add or remove these tracks to a selected group. Since at least logic 10.4 you can multi select group 1-32 to change their behavior like volume/editing etc.

Once you’ve set up your groups you can use the 32 available key commands to show/hide groups. These key commands are toggle key commands.

Logic also lets you select/add/remove members = tracks of groups. 

I for example have a group for all tracks and then for each food group like strings, brass etc even groups for stems, vca, sketching etc

You can also get more granular like grouping all short articulations or all celli etc

Also don’t forget that logic has select tracks by type key commands like select all instrument tracks or all summing stacks or all vcas or all audio tracks etc


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## samphony (Jun 17, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> So basically you can have 127 midi channels feeding into one VEP instance...and you can have up to 25 stereo channels coming back



You can then create tracks for each of the 25 aux channels and use them as “instrument “ tracks. Aux channels added to the tracks view allow to send midi and have articulation sets attached to them. That way one can have kontakt or vep added as a plugin and use the seperate available aux channels to have independent control over volume, pan, audio fx and sends. I don’t use that workflow often but it is possible. Keep in mind aux tracks/channels cannot use midi fx plugins like scripter etc.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2019)

the aux channel trick doesn't seem to work with the AU3 plugin across ports. Let me know if you are able to test that out and get it working, but when I tried it, it didn't work.


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## garyhiebner (Jun 18, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Here is a VEP AU3 template with 762 tracks feeding 6 VEP instances. Delete the tracks you don't need. I will probably not be making any bigger then this



Thanks for sharing this @Dewdman42. Takes the hassle out of us trying to put it all together. really Appreciate it. Hopefully VSL fix this and provide a fully functional template to use soon.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 18, 2019)

Vsl did actually provide very good fully functional templates! I just added more tracks and organized it into environment layers a little bit. What we really need are improvements from Apple in LPX so that templates like this aren’t even needed and we shouldn’t have to monkey around in the environment for this


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## agarner32 (Jun 21, 2019)

samphony said:


> You can get a workflow going to show/hide certain food groups by making use of the 32 available groups in logic.
> 
> Hit command+G to open the floating groups window.
> (Make sure to have a look into the key commands window = option+K and search for groups and get familiar with the available group related key commands)
> ...


This works great. Thank you very much for the detailed post.


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## samphony (Jun 21, 2019)

agarner32 said:


> This works great. Thank you very much for the detailed post.


Anytime


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## agarner32 (Jun 22, 2019)

I'm a bit confused on something in Logic and the template Dewdman suggested from VSL. I'm missing something fundamental in how Logic works with tracks and the mixer.

On the first track which is port 1 in the mixer I connect to VEP7 and it works as expected. I can also add aux tracks with the plus and minus buttons for routing various instruments from VEP7. Why do I not have the plus and minus buttons on port 1 of the second set of 8 ports?

The template comes with 3 sets of 8 ports with 16 MIDI channels for each port. I would think the second two sets would behave the same.

Thanks,
Aaron


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 22, 2019)

Yes they should... but its possible that the templates provided by VSL accidentally didn't use the multi out version fo the VEP plugin. Go to those channels, and add that plugin again and make sure its using the version with 16 stereo outs (or 25 stereo outs if you're on 10.4.5). Then you should see the +/- button appear on the mixer channel.


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## agarner32 (Jun 22, 2019)

I just had figured that out and then read your post. You are of course correct. I'm bummed that I didn't start my template with the one you graciously provided because it's organized really well. I really wish I understood how you built and organized it. Is there a way to just copy a set of 8 ports to get more tracks? I tried highlighting the last set of 8 ports labeled VEP 6 and dragging with the alt key. It worked, but it looked funky in the mixer. I'm not worried about the numbers being the same but something happened in the organizational part.

Thanks,
Aaron


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 22, 2019)

Not sure I understand what you need to do, are you wanting to extend the VSL ones or the one I made?

In general, if you need more tracks than what are there, then you'll have to get your hands dirty in the environment. The one I did has 762 tracks.. if you need more then that, I will have to send you instructions for the easiest way to do that, which I can't do tonight.

You can re-organize the tracks in the arranger view any way you want, they don't need to be grouped in the folders as they are in order to function. VSL only did that for clarity, but the underlying track-channel links will work regardless of how they are organized in folders. So just drag the tracks around in any order you want and using any folders you want, it will all be fine.

The only other change in my version of the Template is that I organized the environment objects into layers which is not that important really...but might make it a little easier to add another VEP instance compared to VSL's templates. But its still not trivial, will take 15 minutes of manual labor to add another 127 tracks and a 7th VEP instance.


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## agarner32 (Jun 22, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Not sure I understand what you need to do, are you wanting to extend the VSL ones or the one I made?
> 
> In general, if you need more tracks than what are there, then you'll have to get your hands dirty in the environment. The one I did has 762 tracks.. if you need more then that, I will have to send you instructions for the easiest way to do that, which I can't do tonight.
> 
> ...


Yes, I'm interested in adding more tracks with the template you did. I opened the environment and felt like what my theory students go through when I teach 3rd semester chromatic harmony - a complete idiot, clueless and like a deer in headlights.

Well I seriously would pay you for the time. You have been incredibly generous with advice and sharing your hard work as others have as well.

Also, it seems to have worked on VSL's template when I dragged a set with the alt key, but maybe it won't work as intended when I actually start using it to compose.

Thanks,
Aaron


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## samphony (Jun 22, 2019)

Also don’t forget if you have tracks in the tracks view you want to assign to environment objects you can open tracks view and environment side by side and drag multiple selected channel strips from the environment onto tracks


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 22, 2019)

Yep, great point!


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 22, 2019)

One last point I want to make. Why all the mumbo jumbo you ask, why can't we just duplicate the tracks in the arrange page for god's sake!?!?!?!

I agree. Make sure and send a feature request to Apple for this.

Here is why. When you do the duplicate tracks thing from the arrange page, it doesn't do that important step of changing the channel parameter to Inst7, in the above instructions. So all the new tracks end up with underlying environment objects that are still all pointing to Inst6. Duplicating multi-timbral tracks only works for up to 16 tracks for the first 16 midi channels. After that LogicPro is not currently programmed to know what to do, its still stupid about multiport AU3 capabilities, it doesn't know how to increment things properly across ports, as well as channels and even Inst objects. It could be made a lot smarter and avoid all this mumbo jumbo. Wouldn't be hard for them to do at all, but sometimes I wonder if they actually use LPX over there in Cupertino.

We need LPX to have at least two or three features added to make this easier. One would be so that from the new tracks wizard, we can specify 127 parts and LPX should create 127 of those channel strips with the port and midi channel set consecutively for each one. Bam, problem solved.

Also we need the Create Track->Other->Next Channel, to be smart enough to roll across from port 1, channel16 to port2, channel 1, etc..

Also if duplicating tracks, maybe assume we want to new Inst channel, so rather then assuming we want more tracks as Inst6, how about duplicate will create the same set of tracks but pointing at inst7.. something like that..


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## samphony (Jun 22, 2019)

Haha exactly what I suggested as well. So yes sending feedback via the logic pro menu is a must for anyone who is serious about enhancements.


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## agarner32 (Jun 22, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> I am by NO means an environment guru.


I would beg the differ.

Dewdman42, all I can say is WOW! I really do appreciate all the detailed instructions. Your instructions are great because they don't assume anything which is really good for someone who doesn't know a program very well yet.

Guess what I'm doing all day Sunday?

And thanks for the tip Samphony.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 24, 2019)

Alright, here is an updated VEP AU3 template with 1270 tracks feeding 10 VEP instances. Thanks to @agarner32 for contributing some time to work on it also.

*Notes*

The VEP plugins are instantiated in their stereo mode, in order to make sure they will open in LPX 10.4.4 without problems. If you plan to use multi-audio-outs, just swap the plugins on each of the 10 instrument channel strips to the 16 or 25 stereo channel multi-out modes.


Note that the tracks can be rearranged in any order you like and moved in or out of folders in any fashion you wish


Note also that if you DELETE a track, the inner environment underpinnings will be deleted along with it and its _difficult_ to get back. So don't delete tracks unless you really plan to not use them. You can however, reassign them to NO OUTPUT and then delete them, which will not delete the inner underpinnings.


If you want a smaller template to start out with, just delete some tracks and presto you'll have a smaller template.


I have added a so called MIDI version per @dgburns suggestion. This makes the tracks as raw midi tracks. There are pros and cons, let me know which version of hte template you like working with better.
Let me know if any questions. I will shortly provide a short tutorial for how to expand to more tracks if 1270 is not enough.

Download found here now: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/logicpro-vep-and-au3.82898/page-8


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## Kent (Jun 24, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Alright, here is an updated VEP AU3 template with 1270 tracks feeding 10 VEP instances. Thanks to @agarner32 for contributing some time to work on it also.
> 
> *Notes*
> 
> ...


Thanks for all your work!


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## agarner32 (Jun 24, 2019)

A big thanks to Dewdman42 for all this work. All I actually did was the tedious job of assigning MIDI channels per his instructions - grunt work! I did not do any actual brain work that's for sure. About all I can do in Logic is open it at this point.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 24, 2019)

If 1270 tracks is not enough, Here are steps to expand the above template, you will have to get your hands dirty a little bit in the environment, but it shouldn't be too bad.

This may require a few posts due to all the pictures..

Start out with the template, open the MIDI environment. Navigate to the last layer, for now called "VEP 10".


From the environment's Options menu choose Import Environment->Layer.







You will be given a dialog to find a logic project to import the layer from. Go find this template project. You will see a dialog box confirming the import. There is a field to specify the layer to import. Choose one of the VEP layers, in this case we'll use VEP 10.







A new layer will be added to your LPX project with a duplicate name of VEP10. So let's rename it, use the Layer control of the environment to choose the VEP10 layer and then the same control to rename it. Let's call it something original like VEP 11.










This concludes Part 1.... more in next post....


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 24, 2019)

continued from last post....


Now make sure VEP11 is the current layer in the environment and do a SELECT ALL from the Environment edit menu. This will select all objects in the layer, their labels will turn blue. Note that all the objects on this layer are configured to use Inst10, we will change it to use the next available unused instrument channel, in this case Inst11.










The above operation unfortunately changes all the midi channel assignments to channel 11 also, we will fix that later.


Now go to the normal mixer window, you will see that a new channel strip has shown up next to VEP10. It does not have a VEP plugin yet, so add one instance of the VEP AU3 plugin there and rename the channel strip if you like.










The first channel strip object on this layer is also named VEP10. Let's rename it as VEP11 now. Select that channel strip object and edit its name in the inspector to the left.







This concludes this section. More in the next post. Note at this point its mostly ready to add new tracks, but note that the midi channel assignments are still wrong, we'll fix that in the next section.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 24, 2019)

Continued from last post...


Let's create some tracks now... Get the arranger window and the environment window side by side on your display, more or less like this:







Scroll the arranger track list to the bottom so that you can see some blank space below the last track header. This is where we are going to add new tracks and we will be doing it in a careful way to make sure the correct ordering is preserved. Now select the top row of 16 channel strips in the environment window by dragging a lasso around them. Their labels will turn blue.







Now drag these selected items over to the arrange window in that blank space below the last track header. You will see a yellow grid appear there, indicating that the tracks are going to end up there. Release the mouse button. You will be given a confirmation dialog to create the tracks, click Create.







Now scroll the track-list to the bottom again and go back to the environment, select the next row of 16 channel strips by dragging the lasso around them and drag them to the empty area at the bottom of the track-list to create 16 more tracks. Repeat this for all 8 rows of channel strips in the environment window.


You should now have 127 new tracks, they are all pointing to the 127 environment objects in the environment layer called VEP11, using Inst11 as the instrument channel. The midi channels are still incorrect, but the port assignments should be ok.


At this point there is something weird about LogicPro after doing this drag operation the track-list is in a weird state with multiple selected tracks and I can't figure out how to correct it, so save the project, close it and reopen it to reset the state of LogicPro to normal


If you desire to group these 127 new tracks into a folder, then select them all and create a track stack and name it VEP11 if you wish. 


Unfortunately, all 127 tracks have been tagged as midi channel 11 (in this case) and there is no way I know of to avoid that. So now you will need to go through every single track one by one and set the midi channel to the appropriate channel. You do this by selecting the track header and use the track properties in the inspector on the left. 






The midi channel and port most likely should match the track name when you are done. In the end you should end up with 127 tracks that are spread across 8 ports, channels 1-16, except port 8 only has 15 midi channels.
That's it, it should be ready to use with 127 additional tracks into a new VEP instance.

LogicPro does some squirely things with the track names sometimes but you can get through it, just name the tracks how you want and set the midi channel and ports to whatever you want and it should all function fine. You can reorganize them however you like too, they don't have to be in folders the same as the template, just move them around freely.


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## dgburns (Jun 24, 2019)

@Dewdman42 so any reason why you aren’t just connecting a multimidi object to each ‘port’ . Yes I know there are some downsides, but it would be so much less ‘environment’ screen real estate, not to mention so much less work. imho.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 24, 2019)

Absolutely. The operation of tracks and mixer functions completely differently when you use environment instrument and multi-instrument objects. For many people this is not the preferred approach. The way this is done is how Apple handles Multi-timbral instruments, and also how VSL arranged the templates, which I have merely expanded upon.

There are pros and cons to using multi-instruments. It turns all the tracks into genuine midi tracks, which some people prefer and other people get confused. I personally like that the mute/solo buttons function as midi mute/solo rather then the brain dead way mute/solo work on normal multi-timbral instruments (globally for the instrument). Same for the fader on the track header, which becomes a CC7 fader with this approach.

I think I might make this variation and people can decide for themselves which way they'd rather work. In the future I hope that Apple is going to improve LPX to be more convenient working with Multi-timbral instruments _their_ way...without having to mess around in the environment. But _their_ way will be with a buzzillion of those channel strips I imagine, not that we care if LPX is managing it for us.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 24, 2019)

So actually you got me thinking about it. There would only need to be one channel strip per AU3 port, combined with a midi multi-instrument. And yes this would clean up the environment a lot. This is interesting and something I will play around with as another alternative. Not everyone likes using midi tracks that way.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 24, 2019)

@dgburns, thanks for the idea I'm going to make a template based that way all the way through for comparison.

First impression, one thing that is less then ideal is that when the tracks are based on multi-instruments, the AU3 port parameter disappears from the track inspector. This doesn't matter if you use the template exactly as is, but if you ever want to easily reroute tracks to a different port and channel you have to go into the environment or use reassign to get the track pointing to the right port/channel. 

The existing way, using the channel strips directly to the tracks, they can configure each one to be whatever port/channel they want without going into the environment.

Anyway, when I get some more time I will make a complete template with 1270 tracks using the multi-instrument approach and everyone can choose whatever they prefer. I actually do like using old-school midi tracks. 

Oh another thing that just occurred to me, with the old-school multi-instruments, bouncing tracks is a P-I-T-A. Its really easy with the AU3 channel strips and non-real time too.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 24, 2019)

alright, per @dgburns suggestion, here is a version of the template with midi multi-instruments as the track assignments. Please let us know which you prefer. There are pros and cons


Midi tracks can't be bounced without a lot of hassle. Multi-timbral version can be bounced even in non-realtime, very easily.


Midi tracks have better mute/solo buttons and track fader that effect midi rather then audio, while the multi-timbral track controls are global for the whole instrument, which is useless.


Its definitely easier to expand that MIDI version if you want to make a template bigger then 1270 tracks.


There is MIDI mixer which you might find useful for controlling various CC controls if you use the MIDI version of the template


The MIDI approach is not how Apple is currently handling multi-timbral instruments, that is the so called "old-school" approach. The original template i made is based on Apple's current approach to handling Multi-timbral instruments and the way VSL also setup their initial AU3 templates.


Probably more pros and cons that some of you will think of. The entire interaction is different each way which can be confusing for some. Pick the way that makes sense for you and use it, I don't see a clear winner either way.
_PS - after trying it for a bit I can honestly say I don't like working with the midi multi-instruments at all, much prefer using the original multi-timbral template (the one without the word MIDI in the name)._


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## dgburns (Jun 25, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> alright, per @dgburns suggestion, here is a version of the template with midi multi-instruments as the track assignments. Please let us know which you prefer. There are pros and cons
> 
> 
> Midi tracks can't be bounced without a lot of hassle. Multi-timbral version can be bounced even in non-realtime, very easily.
> ...



One REALLY great thing about using multi midi objects is that you can populate tracks without cabling them to actual intruments. In theory you could populate every conceivable lib you own without much overhead inside Logic. Also, you can use many single midi objects instead of the multi midi objects.

One other trick - move any midi up to the ‘mother’ instrument track and then do an offline bounce that way ( make sure the midi is flattened to the proper midi channel ). So it is in fact possible to offline bounce using the multi-midi object approach, albeit one track at a time. But sure, not elegant.

Not pounding the table that everyone needs to work this way, but it’s damn convenient if you (like me) bounce out to stems in real time.

-edit-

This reminds me that we can grab an object in the environment and drag it into the arrange page and create tracks that way. You can populate the arrange page quickly with many tracks this way, fyi.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 25, 2019)

But in this case we’re using vep to host all the instruments so I don’t see any difference there or benefit to using midi tracks.


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## garyhiebner (Jul 5, 2019)

I'm having no luck with the AU3 Beta Template. I have Logic 10.4.4 installed on High Sierra, and have made sure VEPro 7 has the latest update installed.

But when I open up the AU3 beta template from the VSL site it doesn't find the VEPro plugin. Im guessing it's not finding the AU3 version of it. What am I doing wrong. Is there a step I have missed. Or should I try build it up from scratch instead of using the template.

How do you know you loading up an instance of AU3 instead of AU2?


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 5, 2019)

It will be named like this in the plugin list:






If you don't see it you might not have had it checked when installing VEP7


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## garyhiebner (Jul 6, 2019)

OK, yeah that is the problem. It didn't install AU3. So I went in and removed all the VEPro files and components so could do a fresh install. But when I do the instal, it doesn't give me the option to install AU3. It is greyed out, and skips it. But I'm meeting all the minimum requirements, which are High Sierra or higher, and Logic 10.4.4 Any idea why I cant install AU3?


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 6, 2019)

no idea. Maybe try VSL forum or their support line, they are usually pretty helpful.


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## agarner32 (Jul 6, 2019)

Did you try restarting your computer?


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## garyhiebner (Jul 6, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> no idea. Maybe try VSL forum or their support line, they are usually pretty helpful.



Thanks I have posted on the VSL forum and sent a support email to them


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## A.G (Jul 6, 2019)

garyhiebner said:


> But I'm meeting all the minimum requirements, which are High Sierra or higher, and Logic 10.4.4 Any idea why I cant install AU3?


You need High Sierra 10.13.6 or later OS to install AU3.


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## garyhiebner (Jul 7, 2019)

A.G said:


> You need High Sierra 10.13.6 or later OS to install AU3.


Thanks @A.G. Yeah I figured this out. ON the system requirements it just says 10.1 or higher. But I did the system upgrade to 10.3.6 and now all working. Thanks so much.

Figure it out cos I tried it on my MacBook and that was all working and then saw what the differences were, and saw that the MacBook was 10.13.6 while the iMac on 10.13.4. So after the update it is recognising AU3.


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## Kent (Jul 7, 2019)

VEP Update 7.0.851 from July 3 fixed the AU3/audio ports bug.

Does this fix the whole AU3 template thing? Or were there other problems noticed?


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 7, 2019)

what AU3/audio ports bug are you referring to?

AU3 templates were working fine for me before with the previous VEP7. ??


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## Kent (Jul 7, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> what AU3/audio ports bug are you referring to?
> 
> AU3 templates were working fine for me before with the previous VEP7. ??


Not in 10.4.5 they weren't - 



Dewdman42 said:


> yea I agree, 10.4.5 broke the AU3 plugin period. Particularly what I think it broke is not hte plugin as much as the template we are supposed to use. I think 10.4.5 broke many existing templates and project files becuase of the way they are handling the 1000 channels. Now it creates the underlying inst object on demand...and somehow that has broken things. Im getting wierd results when I use existing templates. If you start an empty project and load the AU3 plugin then it seems to work properly.
> 
> Update: Changing the VEP preferences to 50 audio outputs seems to get the Au3 plugin working again in LPX 10.4.5



Thus, the new bug fix:






So that officially takes care of that issue.

Are there any other issues that anybody has noticed?


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 7, 2019)

That's interesting. i didn't know about the crashing, they have not been crashing for me. I did have weird problems though_ if audio outputs was not set high enough_, but once i set that high enough it was all working fine.

Glad to hear they fixed that!


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## garyhiebner (Jul 7, 2019)

So I finally got AU3+VEP+Logic working. Quick question with using the VSL Beta and setting up your instruments, how do you send volume amounts from your tracks in Logic to VEP instruments in the Mixer. I thought if I sent a CC7 MIDI volume message from a track in Logic to VEP, that Instrument channel's volume would change as well. But it seems you can have individual CC7 volume midi messages sent to VEP. Seems like the Logic Multitimbral instrument can only store one CC7 volume change. Even though it is multimbral.

This was quite easy in Cubase. You'd simply just draw in a CC7 volume change and it would be sent to the instrument on that port and MIDI channel.

Am I missing something here in Logic?


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 7, 2019)

Yes CC7 works as expected. You are probably not sending CC7 when you think you are. What are you trying to use to send CC7?

Note that the volume slider on the track arrange page is not CC7. That is the connected to the mixer fader for the entire VEP instance (the audio coming back to LPX). 

Note that when you enable automation on the track, there is a parameter called "Volume", that is not CC7 that is the same as above, the channel fader...and all the tracks are attached to the same volume fader by the way.

In the the piano roll editor there is automation also, and that is where you can do CC7 automation for each track or region.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 7, 2019)

Another way you can do it is to use VEP7 automation mapping, and then you can have an automation lane in LPX that connects to the fader in VEP7 for any channel you want. But you have to manually setup the automation mapping for that. It ends up looking like this in LPX:







PS - one of the advantages of using environment multi-instruments as the wrapper around the mixer channels...as suggested by others, is that then the track fader actually effects CC7 and you can automate CC7 as a track lane, ends up looking like this:






Pros and cons either way. When you set it up with the midi multi-instruments then you have more direct access to the CC7 controller of the instrument on the channel, but you lose access from the track lanes there in LPX to the non-midi mappable automation as described above, such as the VEP mixer fader or other non-midi parameters within your instrument. 

Also notice if you look carefully, the volume fader in VEP7, has MUCH more resolution then CC7. CC7 only has 128 possible values, while the VEP7 mixer fader has more resolution and is represented as an actual DB value in steps of .1 DB from -69.1 to +6 db, so that is something like 700-800 possible volume level values., rather than meaningless CC7 values from 0-127

confused yet?

My preference is to map to the VEP7 mixer fader using the automation mapping. If you want to actually automate the CC7 controller of the instrument beyond that (and sometimes you very well might do both), do it in the piano roll or step editor section of LPX, rather then in a track lane.


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## garyhiebner (Jul 8, 2019)

Yeah I think I will map to VEPro's automated volumes, cos I was setting it to MIDI Volume CC7 in the automation on the region, not the track volume and still wasn't sending volume back to the instruments right


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 8, 2019)

CC7 messages will go through through to the instrument listening on the port and channel. If that instruments responds to CC7 messages for volume, which is usually the case, then it should work. If you were using Region automation and actual MIDI volume, then I don't know why it wasn't working for you, it works for me here, I only tried on port 1, maybe I will try some more tests on other ports to make sure its not a bug.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 8, 2019)

Yea Region automation of CC7 works for me on port 2 also. Not sure why it wasn't for you.

Anyway, using the VEP mixer automation is probably a better way to go, but ultimately you will need and want to send CC's across to VEP, so guess you better figure that out.


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## garyhiebner (Jul 8, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Yea Region automation of CC7 works for me on port 2 also. Not sure why it wasn't for you.
> 
> Anyway, using the VEP mixer automation is probably a better way to go, but ultimately you will need and want to send CC's across to VEP, so guess you better figure that out.


So I tried to VEP Volume automation mapping. But when I choose this and draw in some automation its automating the volume on the instrument, not the volume fader of the VEP instrument. Is there a way to do this? Cos I want to be able to see the level amounts through the mix in Vepro, and not have to jump to each Volume CC7 on each Kontakt instance


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## A.G (Jul 8, 2019)

garyhiebner said:


> But when I choose this and draw in some automation its automating the volume on the instrument, not the volume fader of the VEP instrument.


Go to the Logic Project Settings => MIDI => General and deselect the "Control Change 7/10" checkbox.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 8, 2019)

I thought the purpose of that preference was to determine how CC7 and CC10 will effect the LogicPro mixer... not really related to VEP mixer as far as I can see.

This is how it works for me @garyheibner.


In VEP7, create a channel and put some instrument on it.







Note the instrument is on VEP channel 2. Go to the automation pane and setup an automation parameter that points to volume on channel 2:







Go back to LPX, In this case we're talking about the track in Port 1, channel 1, so go to automation mode and configure that track for controlling the above automation map that was just setup.







Draw in some automation on the lane. 






That's it, press play and watch the VEP mixer fader move around.


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## A.G (Jul 9, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> I thought the purpose of that preference was to determine how CC7 and CC10 will effect the LogicPro mixer... not really related to VEP mixer as far as I can see.


Your thought is not correct. Here are the rules:
• If the Logic Project Settings =>MIDI CC7/CC10 checkbox is enabled then CC7 & CC10 affect the Logic Channel Strip Volume/Pan. In this case CC7 & CC10 are blocked and cannot travel to the Software Instrument (old Logic behavior).
• If the CC7/CC10 checkbox is disabled then CC7 & CC10 can travel to the Software Instrument.
In this case CC7/10 do not affect the Logic Channel strip Volume/Pan.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 9, 2019)

That's what I just said, so my thought was "correct"

he is not trying to send CC7 to VEP at this point he is trying to automate the VEP mixer.


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## garyhiebner (Jul 9, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> I thought the purpose of that preference was to determine how CC7 and CC10 will effect the LogicPro mixer... not really related to VEP mixer as far as I can see.
> 
> This is how it works for me @garyheibner.
> 
> ...



Yeah that's exactly what I did, but its moving the Volume fader in Kontakt, not the VEP volume fader. Very strange


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 9, 2019)

Not sure, maybe send me your project and I'll have a look at them to see what is getting mixed up.

The above steps should not effect Kontakt's volume level.

Make sure you look at that automation mapping step exactly, to choose the correct parameter to automate...which is the channel volume. Do *NOT* use anything under the "kontakt" instrument submenu as shown here:








*Rather it should be this one, which refers to the channel fader:*


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 9, 2019)

And in logic make sure to also not choose a mapped parameter from inside the kontakt instrument, but rather the above mentioned channel volume parameter.. I relabeled the VEP channel to try to make this more clear


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## A.G (Jul 9, 2019)

garyhiebner said:


> Yeah that's exactly what I did, but its moving the Volume fader in Kontakt, not the VEP volume fader. Very strange


I provide a complete "Learning" procedure in the animated gif below.
CC7 automates the Kontakt Ch1. fader at first. After the VEP Instrument Volume learning CC7 affects both faders (maybe there is a solution) - I use the VEP Multi KSP "Volume/Pan" filter button in the Video. You can use some neutral CC# such as CC13 for example to "Learn" the VEP Instrument Volume etc.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 9, 2019)

@garyheibner, BTW the instructions I gave above should be using the _parameters_ tab on the VEP automation pane....NOT the _midi controllers _tab.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 12, 2019)

Figured out a pretty easy way to setup 127 tracks feeding into VEP AU3 without having to start out with one of the available templates; and without having to use the LogicPro Environment or even think about it! 

This is so easy, a very large empty template could be created in a few minutes, or you could just easily create VEP tracks on demand as needed in LogicPro without starting in a large template. Add VEP tracks to existing projects, for example. 

Thanks to *debudde* on the VSL forum for helping me figure this out (https://www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/t52861-Building-LogicPro-AU3-templates-from-scratch#post286685).


Start by using the *Track->New Tracks* menu command to pull up the new Tracks wizard. Create a new instrument track with VEP AU3. Make sure to check the multi-timbral checkbox. This could be configured up to 16 parts but for the sake of learning right now, specify just 1 part.







Select the track header for the track just created. Select *Track->Other->New Track with Next Channel *(_ctrl-return_) to duplicate the track on midi channel 2. Do this 15 times until you have 16 total tracks, the last one being midi channel 16.







Select the last track that is on midi channel 16. Go to the track inspector on the left and configure the port and midi channel to port=2, channel=1.







The track label should change a bit to indicate its now on midi channel 1.







Now select the track above that one, which is currently channel 15 and select *Track-Other->New Track with Next Channel* (_ctrl-return_), to create a new track for channel 16.







Now select the last track again, the one that is port 2, channel 1. Now you can repeat steps 2-5 above to create 15 more tracks for port 2.


You can repeat the above steps until you get to port 8, channel15, you can't go above that as LPX is currently limited to 127 midi channels per AU3 plugin. After that if you want more tracks, you can start at Step#1 above to create a new VEP AU3 plugin for a new VEP instance and repeat all steps to create up to 127 more tracks, etc..


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 12, 2019)

I dare say the above is easy enough it might be possible to use Keyboard Maestro to automate the steps for a single VEP instance so that one key command would quickly create 127 tracks feeding a single new VEP AU3 plugin instance. I'm not KM user to say for sure, but seems possible. Then you could literally create a template with thousands of tracks or however many you need in blocks of 127, literally in seconds.


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## studioj (Jul 16, 2019)

Testing AU3 and VEP7 for the first time today... is it possible to have AUXes coming off of your VEP instance (for outputs 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, etc) sending MIDI on different ports for each AUX? I only see the port setting for the main instrument track channel. for each successive AUX, only MIDI channel appears to be available for changing (no port setting). This seems like a silly limitation, yes? or maybe I'm missing something... can I only use regular old MIDI tracks for sending on multi port channels? Thanks for insight!


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 16, 2019)

yes absolutely you can. set the preference in VEP that establishes how many audio outs. Set it to 50 for AU3 on LPX 10.4.6


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## studioj (Jul 16, 2019)

I had this set to 64... which works great in PT, but I understand I'm limited to 25 stereo outputs using Logic. I changed it to 50, but you can see in the screen shot that the first Aux I'm using for outputs 3-4 (and also sending MIDI data with) called VLN2 does not have a port setting unlike on the VLN1 track which is the main inst channel with VEP instantiated. I'd like to have each instrument send on its OWN port using the ALL channel setting (so that each instrument can receive messages from my iPad sending on ch 16 as well as note messages on ch1. make sense? am I missing anything? thanks much!


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 16, 2019)

You need to create the track as multi-timbral. When you use the new Tracks wizard, there is a checkbox for that.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 16, 2019)

so first of all I think you can leave VEP set to 64 and Logic SHOULD work ok...but don't try to use more than 25 return channels.

Secondly, when you create the track in LogicPro there is a checkbox to select for multi-timbral. since you didn't do that, then in the track inspector, change the midi channel to something between 1-16. When its set to ALL, then its not multi-timbral mode.

Then you can create track 2, track 3, etc, by selecting the track and using *Tracks->Other->New Track with Next Channel*, or (crtl-return) (see my instructions above).

Once you have done that, then in the mixer view you will see +/- buttons on the mixer which you hit to add the AUX channels to the mixer. Once you have the AUX channels on the mixer you can add them to the tracks view if you want, but with AU3 you can't put midi on the AUX tracks, it doesn't work like it used to before with AU2 plugins.


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## studioj (Jul 16, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> Once you have the AUX channels on the mixer you can add them to the tracks view if you want, but with AU3 you can't put midi on the AUX tracks, it doesn't work like it used to before with AU2 plugins.


Yes this was what I was looking for... seems like an unnecessary limitation to me, hopefully they will expand the functionality when this feature is fully baked. Just looking for parity with VEP functionality when used in Pro Tools.

Thank you for your confirmation!


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 16, 2019)

Well in fairness, the way it worked in AU2 was an undocumented feature. I doubt they will ever bring that in, but you can always submit a feature request to Apple, I already asked for this last week myself. Its a bit more complicated with AU3 because there are so many possible tracks per instrument, and way more then the 25 channel audio limit coming back. 

In AU3, you just need to have a normal mullti-timbral set of tracks...and then the AUX comes back to the mixer, but not necessarily to the tracks pane. You don't really need them in the tracks pane. 

There was another problem with the old AUX track trick, it did not support midi delay per track... but with the multi-timbral mode it does. Pros and Cons. In any case, Apple's documented approach for multi-timbral instruments is as I spelled out in my instructions above..using multi-timbral instruments...and the ol' AUX tracks for midi simply does not now work in AU3 and if they ever do add it, you'd only be able to use 25 tracks that way, vs the 127 tracks that are possible right now, as long as you mix those tracks down to 25 or less stereo AUX returns.


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## studioj (Jul 16, 2019)

yeah makes sense. Also bothers me that you can't use a MIDI FX plug like scripter on Auxes. BUT i think Apple fleshing this out would make sense for them in the long run. I think anything that helps us minimize track count is a plus. Using a combination of multi timbral and Aux/MIDI hybrid tracks is a great workflow. Thanks for your feedback!


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 16, 2019)

what you are wanting is not a crazy idea, but it will probably not happen because of the fundamental way that Logic works in terms of midi and audio signal flow. 

AUX's are not midi channels, they are audio channels. the little hidden trick you were wanting to use basically let's midi regions on those tracks get automatically channelized into the instrument channel that the AUX is stemmed off of. I think probably this will all go through the midiFX slot on the instrument plugin you are sending it to. The thing is you can't have a separate midifx plugin for each track at all, its in the mixer...and basically you can only have it globally for all tracks feeding that one instrument instance. So basically if you have 29 tracks feeding a single VEP AU3, then you have the midifx slots of that one VEP AU3 plugin mixer channel...and you have to do whatever you are going to do globally for all those tracks through that plugin chain. 

I seriously doubt Logic will change in this regard as the signal flow its using now has been around a very very long time. PDC happens in the mixer too...so anyway, its a nice wish, I don't digree, but that just isn't how LogicPro works now and in my opinion will probably not change. you get one midifx lane per instrument channel.


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## studioj (Jul 16, 2019)

Yes I hear you for sure. I will be experimenting with dropping VEP as well once new mac pro is out. Between more power and this new template resource management feature there may be some sans VEP possibilities that previously were too weighty on resources.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 24, 2019)

Started a new thread with new VEP AU3 template. https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=143416


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## Ashermusic (Jul 25, 2019)

studioj said:


> Yes I hear you for sure. I will be experimenting with dropping VEP as well once new mac pro is out. Between more power and this new template resource management feature there may be some sans VEP possibilities that previously were too weighty on resources.



Maybe, but Logic or any other DAW for that matter, simply doesn't distribute the load of software instruments between the cores as well as VE Pro.


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## studioj (Aug 5, 2019)

FYI I'm having pretty severe stuck notes issues using the multi port AU3 setup. hanging notes after stopping which require hitting the panic button in the VEP kontakt instances. Anyone seeing similar behavior?


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 5, 2019)

I didn’t have that problem so far but it doesn’t surprise me. Which version of logic are you using? It’s probably only when you hit stop while notes are playing yes? In my view the problem is that logic by design sends a note off message to all channels when you hit stop but as of now it may not be sending it to all 8 AU3 midi ports. Actually they may have fixed that in 10.4.6, I reported it as a bug in 10.4.5. I haven’t t been having that problem with 10.4.6.

When I get some time I can share a scripter script to work around the bug, but make sure to file a bug report. You basically need a script that listens for the all notes off messages that logic sends on STOP to 16 midi channels and then you echonthem to other ports too


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 5, 2019)

studioj said:


> FYI I'm having pretty severe stuck notes issues using the multi port AU3 setup. hanging notes after stopping which require hitting the panic button in the VEP kontakt instances. Anyone seeing similar behavior?



StudioJ, try this script as a workaround, but make sure to submit a bug report to Apple about this. Let me know if this gets rid of your hanging notes for now.



```
// AllNotesOffAU3.js
// Version 1.0
// Helper script to work around a bug in LPX AU3
// multiport regarding hanging notes when the transport is stopped

var NeedsTimingInfo = true; //only needed to detect play state

var usedChannelPorts = new Array(17);
for(var i=0;i<17;i++) {
    usedChannelPorts[i] = new Array(9);
    for(var j=1;j<=8;j++) {
        usedChannelPorts[i][j] = false;
    }
}

//=============================================================
// Actual HandleMIDI function
//=============================================================

function HandleMIDI(event) {

    //=================================================================
    // If all Notes Off for channel, handle specially,
    // forward to all ports, received from double click transport
    //=================================================================

    if (event instanceof ControlChange
            && event.number == 123
            && event.value == 0) {

        AllNotesOffByChannel(event.channel, true);
        return;
    }

    // All other Events

    usedChannelPorts[event.channel][event.port] = true;
    event.send();
}

function Reset() {
    for(var i=0;i<17;i++) {
        for(var j=1;j<=8;j++) {
            usedChannelPorts[i][j] = false;
        }
    }
}

//===================================================
// Prcoess MIDI is used to detact transport STOP
// in order to send AllNotesOff to all ports/channels
// todo, sometimes this happens before handleMIDI has
// processed everything.  Need to figure out something
//===================================================

var playState = false;

function ProcessMIDI() {
    var ctx = GetTimingInfo();

    if (ctx.playing) {
        playState = true;
    }

    else {
        if (playState == true) {
            // stop recently happened
            AllNotesOff();
            playState = false;
        }
    }
}


//=======================================
// Propagate AllNotesOff to all ports
// for a given midi channel
//=======================================

var ccOff = new ControlChange;
ccOff.number = 123;
ccOff.value = 0;

// forceFlg is used for double clicking transport PANIC to make sure
// all 768 channel/ports receive the CC123 message for all notes off.
// But actually do we really need that?  TODO, think it through more.
function AllNotesOffByChannel(channel, forceFlg) {
    ccOff.channel = channel;
    for (var port = 1; port <= 8; port++) {
        if(forceFlg || (!forceFlg && usedChannelPorts[channel][port])) {
            ccOff.port = port;
            ccOff.send();
            usedChannelPorts[channel][port] = false;
        }
    }
}

//====================================
// AllNotesOff all Channels
//====================================

function AllNotesOff() {
    for (var chan = 1; chan <= 16; chan++) {
        AllNotesOffByChannel(chan, false);
    }
}
```


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## studioj (Aug 10, 2019)

Hi Dewdman42, thanks for the reply. Oddly, it is not just when I stop while notes are playing. it sometimes happens in middle of a empty area, if there were preceding notes, perhaps related to sustain pedal but I'm unsure. I'll will check out your script!! Thanks so much. I am wondering if it has something to do with the fact that I'm setting some kontakt instruments to receive on OMNI, so that lemur can send cc messages on ch16. I did just start experimenting with your channelizer script to circumvent this issue. and I'm wondering if you have a version of this script that I can set source port to ALL, since I'm now messing with the AU3 VEP and using VEP on ports other than 1. And since there is only one scripter available per instrument track (or rather one MIDI FX channel strip, I could load multiple scripters I guess), your channelizer script only works on a single port at a time. Does that make sense? thanks much!


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

my channelizer script, the latest one, works on all 8 ports not just one. There is no way in LPX to set the port to ALL, there is a midi channel track parameter that can be set to ALL, but generally that isn't what you want for multi-timbral operation.

Getting hanging notes in the middle of an empty area? That is strange. Can you send me a project to look at?


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

Make sure you're using this channelizer: Channelizer Script


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## studioj (Aug 10, 2019)

Thanks! I'll make sure I have the latest version. Here's a screenshot to help explain. I have all vln1 on port 1 in this project. and vln2 on port 2. These are both using the same instance of VEP on the same Instrument channel. Lemur send cc's on ch 16. So lemur CC's work on the vln1 track, but VEP will not receive the MIDI when I'm recording on the vln2 track (which is running on port 2). Does that make sense?


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## studioj (Aug 10, 2019)

I believe I wasn't using the latest version, the new one you linked to should do the trick! Thank you-

Update: hmm, even with this new channelizer version, the VLN2 track you see in screen shot (port 2, ch 1 in kontakt...VEP port set to 2, ch ALL) will not respond to cc messages from lemur (sending on ch16). Should it? If I use your old version of this script and set source port to 2, it works on this VLN2 track (and then the VLN1 track on port 1 stops receiving cc's).


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

I would need to poke around in your project a lot more to try to get the bottom of it, I can't tell anything from the screenshot, sorry.


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## studioj (Aug 10, 2019)

I think I'm possibly not using this script for its intended purpose. Really my goal is to copy incoming cc messages from one channel to another. So that I can use Lemur keyswitches and cc faders on ch 16, but have my kontakt instrument receiving on ch1. I'll see if I can simplify the session a bit to share.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

correct, that is not the intended purpose. But it would probably not be hard to write a small custom script to do what you need.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

why does the lemur stuff have to be on channel 16?


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

if you just need to duplicate CC events from channel 16 to channel 1, then here is a script:


```
function HandleMIDI(event) {
    event.send();
    if(event instanceof ControlChange && event.channel == 16) {
        event.channel = 1;
        event.send();
    }
}
```


But you mentioned multiple ports, so I don't know if you want to duplicate channel 16 to midi channel 1 of all 8 ports or what? Then something like this:


```
function HandleMIDI(event) {
    event.send();
    if(event instanceof ControlChange && event.channel == 16) {
        event.channel = 1;
        for( port=1;port<=8;port++) {
            event.port = port;
            event.send();
        }
    }
}
```


You can edit the script your specific need.


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## studioj (Aug 10, 2019)

For instance the spitfire chamber strings have over 40 articulations available at once. sending keyswitches on the same ch as my instrument results in some overlap between pitches on cellos and basses and keyswitches. I'm using the babylon waves sets, and he recommended this. I suppose I could use another switching method in the articulation set, but that would require some time intensive reprogramming!


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## studioj (Aug 10, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> But you mentioned multiple ports, so I don't know if you want to duplicate channel 16 to midi channel 1 of all 8 ports or what? Then something like this:
> 
> 
> ```
> ...


this worked for me, thank you!!


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

Use the updated one, I edited that script a few times after i posted it originally. The final one is simpler and better.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

studioj said:


> For instance the spitfire chamber strings have over 40 articulations available at once. sending keyswitches on the same ch as my instrument results in some overlap between pitches on cellos and basses and keyswitches. I'm using the babylon waves sets, and he recommended this. I suppose I could use another switching method in the articulation set, but that would require some time intensive reprogramming!



Why do your cellos and basses need to be on the same midi channel?


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## studioj (Aug 10, 2019)

I'm experimenting with multi port, so I have Cellos on port 4 ch1, and Basses on port 5 ch1. so they are technically on different channels. If i have C1 set to change to a minor second trill for instance, this C1 will also trigger the NOTE C1 if I am recording basses. by sending the articulation switch on a different channel, this is avoided. make sense? there are other ways to circumvent this but requires more customization per instrument.


----------



## studioj (Aug 10, 2019)

So your script above copies the ch16 cc events to ALL ports all the time, rather than just the port you're recording on, right?. That is of course a problem because I'm recording different events on different ports. Maybe a kontakt script is a better option for me since I can have a different KSP script for each kontakt instance? hmm.

update: so the first version above that you posted is the right one, that seems to do what I'm looking for! It only copies the cc on the port I'm recording on at the time. woot! thank you-


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

no it still doesn't make sense to me. C1 on port 4, ch1 should not go to port5, ch1. If it is then there is something wrong with your routing.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

if you have a complex setup, as it sounds like you do, then you might need to learn some javascript and program the script exactly to your needs. I'm afraid there isn't an easy solution here, you're doing something out of the box that I don't completely understand, but anyway, you seem to have something worked out, but as far as the routing and scripting it sounds like it may get more complicated.


----------



## studioj (Aug 10, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> no it still doesn't make sense to me. C1 on port 4, ch1 should not go to port5, ch1. If it is then there is something wrong with your routing.


oh i think i see the misunderstanding. I was just saying Cellos and Basses individually... not both at once. ie if I'm recording cellos, and send a C1 keyswitch as defined in the art editor and its sending on the same channel the instrument is receiving on then I will also hear that pitch on the instrument (vs violins since it is out of range). and it is more of an issue with basses since the range moves lower. This is not a problem with the vast majority of libraries since most keyswitch setups don't extend beyond 12 notes, and often just use C-2 through B-2 for switching. But anyway your last edited script did the trick! thanks for your help. I would like to learn some of this scripting, perhaps eventually...


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

quick tutorial about Scripter....

You can write a script that will take any Event from any port and channel and you can hard code it to go wherever you want. Duplicated as many times as you want.

For example:


```
function HandleMIDI(event) {
    
    // first send the event thru no matter what it is
    event.send();
    
    // if its a CC on ch16, then send it other places as you desire
    if(event instanceof ControlChange && event.channel == 16) {

        event.channel = 1;
        event.port = 1;
        event.send();
        
        event.channel = 1;
        event.port = 5;
        event.send();
        
        // etc
    }
}
```

The above copies CC's from ch16 to port1, ch1 and port5, ch1. You can hard code it to whatever you want. If you want a fancy Script with a GUI, then its not a trivial script anymore.


----------



## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

I think probably there is a way to route things and use the articulation Set in a better way that you shouldn't have to do all this, but its still not entirely clear to me what you're trying to solve or how you're solving it right now...so.. nor why you have been getting hanging notes, but the hanging notes could also be related to exactly the situation you just described where key switches are getting sent to the basses as non-keyswitches at some point somehow... Anyway, its not very clear to me right now, so i will duck out of the discussion for a bit and see if you can figure it out.


----------



## studioj (Aug 10, 2019)

PS before VEP7 and multiport this all worked swimmingly, so I am chasing down where the shortfalls are. I think using this short script and getting the instruments out of "OMNI" might have done the trick. No stuck notes so far this evening. anyway, thank you again!


----------



## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

EDIT: _never mind what I said here before...._


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 10, 2019)

ok I do maybe have a clue about why you've sometimes gotten hanging notes. 

The way the articulationSet works is that it sends the keyswitch NoteOn....and it doesn't send the NoteOff right away, in fact it waits until there is a different articulation ID with a different keyswitch then it finally sends the NoteOff for the keyswitch. It basically means its as if the keyswitch is HELD DOWN for the duration of a sequence of notes that are using it. And I'm not sure what happens if you have some notes in there without articulationID, if it will continue to sustain that keyswitch note until there is a new keyswitch or what. But anyway, that is what the articulationSet does.

If some of your keyswitches are bleeding into other channel/ports and hitting real notes instead of keyswitches in the instrument, then they would be sustained (ie, hanging), until there is a new articulation keyswitch, then finally the note off would come through.

I think that is why you were getting hanging notes before. Not sure how that script will help you to prevent that, but anyway, maybe the above explanation will help you figure it out.


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## studioj (Aug 10, 2019)

Interesting! I will keep a look out for this. 

I think I was getting the illusion of hanging notes happening in the middle of nowhere only because cc11 had faded to 0, and didn't pop back up until I hit play, and so the note had been hanging the whole time I just wasn't hearing it. 



Dewdman42 said:


> ok I do maybe have a clue about why you've sometimes gotten hanging notes.
> 
> The way the articulationSet works is that it sends the keyswitch NoteOn....and it doesn't send the NoteOff right away, in fact it waits until there is a different articulation ID with a different keyswitch then it finally sends the NoteOff for the keyswitch. It basically means its as if the keyswitch is HELD DOWN for the duration of a sequence of notes that are using it. And I'm not sure what happens if you have some notes in there without articulationID, if it will continue to sustain that keyswitch note until there is a new keyswitch or what. But anyway, that is what the articulationSet does.
> 
> ...


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## animatione (Nov 12, 2019)

HELLO, is it well known issue? It is a disaster for me as I spent many many hours on my template!
Does VEP7 work Properly with th AU3 plugin? It seems it stops sending MIDI to the VEP after some time of playing! Is it any well known problem? I use Logic and VEP on another computer! Please desperately help! Then all I can do is to restart the VEP7 because it freezes it sometimes.


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## Kent (Nov 12, 2019)

animatione said:


> HELLO, is it well known issue? It is a disaster for me as I spent many many hours on my template!
> Does VEP7 work Properly with th AU3 plugin? It seems it stops sending MIDI to the VEP after some time of playing! Is it any well known problem? I use Logic and VEP on another computer! Please desperately help! Then all I can do is to restart the VEP7 because it freezes it sometimes.


At what frequency do you note this issue? Once an hour? Once a day? Once a week?


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## Dewdman42 (Nov 12, 2019)

I haven't been having crash issues with the AU3, but I haven't been pushing it that hard either. It would be helpful if you can figure out the exact steps and/or plugins you're using when it happens.


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## rlw (Dec 2, 2019)

I started building a template for Spitfire SSS Strings using VEP7 and Lemur for articulation and mic automation. In my template, I created separate outputs for Longs, Shorts and Legatos from VEP7 so that I could route to Aux Tracks and handle reverbs separately. One Issue I found when experimenting is that I can not freeze tracks. I have played around with bouncing a midi track in lieu of freezing however that has left me some issues. Because my projects get so large and I don't have enough slaves currently so I still need to use Track Freeze. Any ideas @Dewdman42 how I might handle this.


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 2, 2019)

Unfortunately Track Freeze only works with non-multi-timbral instrument tracks. That means one instrument per VEP instance. That is one argument in favor of using the single instrument per VEP instance approach, in order to use Track Freeze. There is no other way to use Track Freeze.

You can definitely bounce the tracks though. I haven't actually tried that with AU3 yet, so I'm not sure if it has to be real time bounce or can work non-real-time. 

what issues are you running into when trying to bounce?


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## rlw (Dec 2, 2019)

You can bounce but automation is an issue since volume on the midi track has no baring. I can put automation on the output track from VEP but the bounce will only record the output of the automation, you can't bring the automation over to the bounce easily. The bounce does not have to be realtime


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 2, 2019)

I think most likely since the audio is coming back through AUX you have to do real time bounce. But I'm gonna try a test shortly


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 2, 2019)

rlw said:


> You can bounce but automation is an issue since volume on the midi track has no baring. I can put automation on the output track from VEP but the bounce will only record the output of the automation, you can't bring the automation over to the bounce easily



Yea, right. This is unfortunate problem due to some of LogicPro's limitations. A few suggestions. One is to use Vep7's automation mapping and control the VepPro mixer through automation from the source tracks.

Note that those are not technically "midi" tracks, they are multi-timbral instrument tracks. But anyway, as you said, they are in a way disconnected from the AUX returns. So either you have to make AUX tracks corresponding to the turns from VePro, and automate those...or else use VePro automation mapping to have your source track automation actually control the faders inside VePro.


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 2, 2019)

The other thing you can do is to actually do a bounce the REALLY old school hard way...which is that you set up audio tracks that take their input from the AUX channels you're returning from VePro... and I think if you have automation on the AUX tracks...then that should bounce their results to the audio track. Kind of a PITA though. Its been a while since I bounced stuff, I can't remember if you can bounce AUX tracks more directly then that.. but that would get you done if the VePro automation mapping has any problems or you don't like working that way.


----------



## Dewdman42 (Dec 2, 2019)

but I don't think you should have to do the old school way. there are several different ways to bounce multi-timbral instruments including the AUX returns, so its not clear exactly to me what problem you're having with that...but anyway, maybe the VePro automation mapping will work if you aren't able to sort that out.


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## rlw (Dec 3, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> but I don't think you should have to do the old school way. there are several different ways to bounce multi-timbral instruments including the AUX returns, so its not clear exactly to me what problem you're having with that...but anyway, maybe the VePro automation mapping will work if you aren't able to sort that out.


Thanks for your help. I have more testing to do, however, bring volume and panning automation to a bounce track doesn't really work, since volume or panning automation now must be done on the Aux track. When you bounce, it will bounce the result of your automation rather than bringing the automation info over to the bounce track. You also have to reroute the output as it seems to always route to the Stereo Output rather than any aux routing that you have for the AUX return of VEP that you have set up. The bounce, however, does not have to be done real-time, and the issues of output routing or automation can be handled manually. It just takes more work than when bouncing a non-multi instrument track. I hope that makes sense.


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 3, 2019)

I was able to bounce an aux return, the result included copying the automation from the aux track to the bounced track.

pleaae give the exact steps you are trying to do and maybe we can spot something.


----------



## Dewdman42 (Dec 3, 2019)

So a couple things...

With multi-timbral instruments you can select one of the source tracks and use File->Bounce->Regions in Place or Tracks in Place. That is probably what you're doing now. When I just tested that, there is a checkbox to get multi-out audio, which captures the other used AUX returns...but its doing wonky things with the automation. As you said.

If I don't use extra audio outs from VePro, then it bounces correctly the stereo, but doesn't actually copy the automation events, it just bounces the effected sound with the volume changes burned into the audio track.

Another way to bounce is to create an AUX track. Go to the mixer, select the AUX channel(s) you want to bounce. right click on them and select *Create Track*. That will create a track corresponding specifically to the AUX return. You can then put automation onto that track... If you bounce that track, the automation events will be copied to the bounced audio track. Non-realtime. That's a good option, but you have to put the volume automation onto that other AUX track rather then the source instrument track...and you have to create extra tracks for the AUX channels.


----------



## rlw (Dec 3, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> So a couple things...
> 
> With multi-timbral instruments you can select one of the source tracks and use File->Bounce->Regions in Place or Tracks in Place. That is probably what you're doing now. When I just tested that, there is a checkbox to get multi-out audio, which captures the other used AUX returns...but its doing wonky things with the automation. As you said.
> 
> ...





Thanks, I had already Aux tracks from VEP in my template because I want to handle mics and reverbs differently for longs versus shorts. A few hours ago, I found after testing that the approach you recommended works very well. Yesterday, I was bouncing the track with the midi and while that does bounce it does not support bringing the automation over so that I can alter the automation in the final mix nor does it track with the outputs I have on the Aux tracks. But when I bounce the Aux track, it works very smoothly. If I want to bounce only a region (not the full track) , I just create a blank midi region in the Aux track that aligns with the midi instrument tracks that routes to the specfic Aux and bounce Region works great. Next, I must manually mute the midi track I just bounced. This approach works almost as smoothly as the single instance track approach with a couple of extra manual tasks. Thanks again for your insight and knowledge. I do appreciate your help.


----------



## rlw (Dec 3, 2019)

On a side note, I tried to add track stacks to my template but immediately found that for many years uses have been complaining about losing external Smart Control Mappings when they put the instrument tracks in Track Stacks. I have used Lemur external control of Smart Controls to adjust the mics in Kontakt in VEP instances using VEP parameters mapped to the Kontakt Mics. Sadly I am ditching Track Stacks because I need the ability to adjust mics with Lemur. Is there another solution to this problem with External Smart Control mappings and Track Stacks, or is there a way to circumvent Smart Controls and directly control Mic levels from Lemur to VEP/Kontakt Instances.


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 3, 2019)

I don't know anything about lemur and very little about smart controls. Please let us know what you figure out!


----------



## noah90210 (Dec 27, 2019)

@Dewdman42 I’m brand new to VEPro and you have turned my insanely frustrating day into an inspiring one.
Thanks a million for your generosity.
If you’re as good a composer as you are a teacher you’ve got an Oscar coming!


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## DSP (Feb 2, 2020)

studioj said:


> Interesting! I will keep a look out for this.
> 
> I think I was getting the illusion of hanging notes happening in the middle of nowhere only because cc11 had faded to 0, and didn't pop back up until I hit play, and so the note had been hanging the whole time I just wasn't hearing it.


I’m going through a MAJOR studio rebuild which includes the addition of a VEP7 slave but have not added or used articulation ids yet. I’ve been having the same hanging note issues with Play and Kontakt. Almost anytime I stop or rewind in the middle of held notes, usually Hollywood Strings. Panic will not clear, just a engine reset in VEP. Anyone else come across the same issue/solution. Thanks!


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## Dewdman42 (Feb 2, 2020)

I was having that problem with the old VSL macro based templates, but not with AU3. I have both play and kontakt, can you send me a simple project with the problem?


----------



## rlw (Feb 3, 2020)

I experienced the same issues with cinebrass.


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## Dewdman42 (Feb 3, 2020)

azeteg said:


> Ok - it looks like the absolute limit was 8 ports and 16 channels minus 1. In total 127 channels possible. Creating the object for port 8 and channel 16, causes the environment to break down, all channels losing their GUI.



I just want to comment about this with some recent discoveries I have made regarding this 127 midi channel limitation. This limitation appears to be related to LogicPro's tracks arrange view only. In other words, its not possible to create more than 127 tracks that feed into the same multi-timbral instrument. As Martin pointed out, when you try to create that 128th track, all hell breaks loose with the GUI in LogicPro. 

However...

I have also found that those 127 midi tracks do NOT have to be within 8 midi ports. They could be spread out across any of 48 midi ports supported by VePro. Its just that you can only have 127 source tracks (each with their own unique midi channel/port)...that feed into VePro.AU3. But those could be on ports 9, 10, 20....48 as you see fit, no problem.

So why does this matter? I mean if you can only have 127 source tracks per VePro instance, then that is what it is,...right? Well yes. But what if you're using channelizing from say an articulationSet to send articulations to different midi channels?

Well you could for example have a track in LogicPro that is on Port1, channel1, and an articulationSet setup for channelizing articulations up to channel 16. In VePro you would use all of port 1 for the articulations of that instrument on midi channels 1-16. At that point you will have used up port 1 on VePro, 16 midi channels, but LogicPro's tracks view is still only using a single midi channel there. 126 more to go!

So in other words, if you are using articulation-by-channel in any fashion, or perhaps using a Scripter script to re-channelize midi events...those could go well beyond the 127 midi channel limit as previously understood. You could easily use up all 768 total midi channels supported by VePro.AU3 across 48 midi ports. So long as your LogicPro tracks do not exceed 127 source midi tracks with no more than 127 unique port/channel combinations defined on each track...then it should work!

Unfortunately as you create a track template using port/channel across all 48 midi ports, its not easy to know how close you are to the 127 channel limitation as you go. You will only find out when you create that 128th track and the GUI and functionality goes to hell. So I still have to think of a good workflow to avoid that problem while creating templates, or maybe I will create a couple of pre-made templates with this in mind.

But this does open up some new ideas about having larger VePro.AU3 templates, particularly when articulations are being channelized from a single source tracks. For example, you could easily have 48 source tracks, each one with 16 articulations on different channels each.. (768 total articulations)...and that would not exceed the 127 channel limitation at all, not even close. 

You could have a template with say 96 source tracks, each one using 8 articulations on 8 midi channels...and again use up all 768 articulation midi channels in VePro with 768 instrument channels there in in one instance.

You could easily have a template with a mixed bag...some multi-articulation-channel, maybe some needing 16 articulations, some needing 8, and a bunch of instruments that don't channelize.... and easily come up with usable template with 127 source tracks....and all 768 VePro instrument channels being used in a single VePro instance.

So this might be a mind twister because of the weirdness with LogicPro in how you create 127 tracks feeding a single multi-instrument...but its possible and doable to increase the use of large VePro instances beyond even 127 instrument channels.


----------



## DSP (Feb 3, 2020)

Dewdman42 said:


> I was having that problem with the old VSL macro based templates, but not with AU3. I have both play and kontakt, can you send me a simple project with the problem?


Yes... thanks! I’ll send asap....


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## Dewdman42 (Feb 3, 2020)

So for example, here is an LPX project template I have modified a bit to use more VePro channels as I described above. This project template has 1270 tracks using 10 VePro instances. I only modified the first VePro instance set to use some additional midi ports with channelized instruments. 

In this case that VEP1 instance still has exactly 127 source midi tracks feeding it as limited by LPX, but the first 96 of those are normal single-channel instruments and the last 31 tracks are setup to use a dedicated higher midi ports for each one. That means each of those can use ArticulationSet or Scripter to re-channelize midi notes per articulation in those upper ports, using as many as *592 instrument channels* inside VePro in this case. 

I have attached this. I didn't modify the VEP2 through vep10 instances, this is just an example, (see attached). I also came up with a reasonably easy workflow for setting this up when desired, you can read the instructions here:









VEP7 AU3 Template and Instructions


In VSL's VEP7, an AU3 plugin has been introduced which provides for up to 127 midi channels over multiple ports per VEP instance. VEPAU3-1270-tracks.zip VEPAU3-1536-midi.zip Requirements OSX High Sierra or above LogicPro 10.4.5 or above Template Notes Due to bugs in LogicPro as of 10.6, the track...




www.logicprohelp.com





So this is pretty nice little expansion possibility. If you use a lot of multi-channel instruments like PLAY then this will greatly expand the number of instruments you can feed to a single VePro instance. Working multi-channel is a very good way to work because you can independently adjust the volume of each articulation for example. So even if your instrument supports keyswitching, sometimes its better to use re-channelizing for that and other reasons. This trick will come in handy for that if you want single large VePro instances.


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## herrmann (Mar 3, 2020)

Hello
I have hanging notes issue when using AU3 version of VEPro. Anybody else ?


----------



## Dewdman42 (Mar 3, 2020)

I’m not. Can you post a project with the problem


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## herrmann (Mar 3, 2020)

Here is what it does.


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## DSP (Mar 3, 2020)

Dewdman42 said:


> I was having that problem with the old VSL macro based templates, but not with AU3. I have both play and kontakt, can you send me a simple project with the problem?


So apparently ASAP meant much longer then I thought... but still having the same problem... what’s the best way to send file... even zip seems too big to attach here. 
Also, as you mentioned before All notes off doesn’t work but also the clock does not seem to be connected to the slave. Any Play patch that uses midi tempo does not work, ie. repeated notes, runs.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 3, 2020)

It’s a well known bug that host sync isn’t working with vepro AU3 plugin. It’s not clear yet if the bug is in logicpro or the plugin itself I’m more suspicious of the latter. In any case if you depend on host sync in your vepro instance, then don’t use AU3 period, for now. The tempo adjusts; but vepro does not appear to startup and actually play when the host starts playing. If you update the tempo in logicpro you can see visually that vepro is having its tempo updated to match it, but it’s not actually playing in vepro. 

if your project is huge you’ll have to use Dropbox or something; you can pm me. I will look at the other project this evening to see if I can figure out why notes are hanging


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 3, 2020)

@herrman,

I'm not getting any hanging notes from your simple example. I didn't have the same instruments available as you, so I had to substitute synchronized dimension strings...in case that matters in some way like the hanging notes are being caused by the instrument you're using perhaps?

What version of VePro and LogicPro are you using?


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## rlw (Mar 3, 2020)

I have experienced this same hung note issue with Vepro and Logic not using AU3. Both are latest versions and it occurs on an articulation change. I had this issue with cinebrass and Spitfire strings and Kontakt V5 and V6. I have never figured out what caused it but I finally elected to create a separate tracks to accommodate the different articulations whenever it happens to eliminate articulation switching on the problem track.


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## herrmann (Mar 4, 2020)

I thought first it was an articulation change issue, but in my example, I just use one articulation (I use the audio grocery thing to articulate). 
VEPro is 7, and Logic 10.4.8
In my example, I only have the issue when the audio track is on record.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 4, 2020)

Does the problem go away when you remove audio grocery and/or remove any and all articulation sets? Also, are you using the very latest version of VePro7?


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 4, 2020)

Regarding articulation sets, one "bug" I have noticed is related to the way Articulation Sets send keyswitches. They send the NoteOn for the keyswitch...and then it doesn't send the NoteOff until a new articulationID is detected, then it finally sends the NoteOff for the first articulation key switch, followed by the NoteOn of the new articulatioID keyswitch.

And.. if the last note plays....the closing NoteOff for the last keyswitch to be used...is never sent..... that note is left hanging.

Now if that is a keyswitch, it shouldn't matter because the instrument should not be producing sound anyway. but if you accidentally have a keyswitch defined that is not defined in the instrument as such and if that note is in the instruments range...then you could have hanging notes from the keyswitch note itself...

I don't know if that is the reason here, just pointing it out.. 

The example Hermann sent me also also overlapping notes on a region...perhaps some kind of legato section, I'm not sure, but again, I don't know how the instrument itself is programmed or whether that could be an issue. i don't have the same instruments, and I don't get any hanging notes when I tried to play it back as provided... But the project really wouldn't fully load for me because I don't have the same Kontakt or VSL libraries. I put in substitute instruments, but nothing hangs.


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## sbarrettmusic (Mar 4, 2020)

I also have been experiencing hanging notes in Logic Pro X when using VEP (without AU3, both programs are the newest version). I am still trying to figure out what is the cause of it, but it seems to only be happening with tracks that use articulation sets. The weird thing is that I will get hung notes when I hit play, but also sometimes by hitting a key command like command-C to copy. For example, I will playback a section, hit stop, then grab some notes and hit command-C and a note on a different track will start playing. Very strange.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 4, 2020)

very strange indeed, the last part..

we should try to see if we can isolate this problem even without VePro involved, in order to exclude it from the discussion. My gut instinct is telling me this is a bug in LogicPro Articulation Set, but we need to be able to replicate it reliably in order to report a bug to Apple that we expect to be fixed.

The part you said about hitting command-C causing other tracks to sound off notes is totally bizarre, I can't think of why that would happen but if you can find a simplified way to replicate it, please let us know so that we can try to replicate it also and bombard Apple with a bug report.


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## sbarrettmusic (Mar 4, 2020)

It is strange indeed. I will do some testing when I have a chance and see if I can isolate the problem. I'm with you, I think it's something to do with articulation sets but can't say for sure yet.


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## herrmann (Mar 4, 2020)

In the example, I even don't use any articulation system, just a unique legato patch (from VSL synchro SE). And I have this issue with other libraries, like EW. So I really think there is something wrong between Logic and VEP. I will open a thread on the VSL forum.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 4, 2020)

Might be related to the legato patches too. You said you are using AudioGrocery, which could also be the problem. I can't replicate it sorry.


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## A.G (Mar 4, 2020)

herrmann said:


> I even don't use any articulation system,


Thanks for clarifying that you do not use any articulation system! Obviously the big enthusiast Dewdman42 missed that detail and blames Audio Grocery.

To my opinion you have a sort of a local system issue.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 4, 2020)

Actually, this is what I said Ivan:



> My gut instinct is telling me this is a bug in LogicPro Articulation Set,



I did not "blame" AudioGrocery. Hermann did say he is using AudioGrocery. It will need to be eliminated from the equation temporarily in order to isolate the problem. The more complex the setup is, the more difficult it is to determine what is wrong.

The way to solve these kinds of problems is through a process of elimination. Hermann needs to eliminate ArticulationSet(which he has since said he wasn't using) and he should remove AudioGrocery, for now, and eventually remove VePro also from the equation if possible, trying to eliminate factors until the true reason for the problem can be identified. Even the specific instruments could be the cause, so they will have to be eliminated at some point also, one thing at a time.

He stated previously that he was using AudioGrocery, so that's all I'm saying. In order to determine the cause, have to eliminate factors until the bug is found. As long as AG is being used, then it is potentially the cause just as much as any of the other factors.

Also, if this is a bug in LogicPro, or a bug in VePro, or a bug in AudioGrocery, we don't know what it is, but its pointless to send a bug report to Apple with so many different factors involved, Apple will shrug their shoulders and say something similar as you did Ivan..."must be local system issue". Only if we can narrow down the cause to a simple case and replicate it reliably, can we then expect to get a bug fix from Apple, VSL or AudioGrocery.


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## rlw (Mar 4, 2020)

I experienced the hung note issue when using Artzid and then when just using Logic Articulation Sets. In my case I have come to believe it has something to do with Logics internal approach to reduce midi data by only sending data changes. Just a theory of course.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 4, 2020)

or it could have been artzid. The older version of it had unknown environment stuff going on. (hidden inside a locked macro). I'm much more suspicious of that then Logic filtering out NoteOff events in the name of data thinning, I find it hard to believe it would be doing that.


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## herrmann (Mar 5, 2020)

I redo my template without using AU3 and I have no issues anymore. So there is something wrong in the AU3 version of VEPro.
Way more instances, but as it works great, I'm happy.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 5, 2020)

That is not an accurate conclusion. Numerous people here have said that they get the same problem without AU3 and I personally am not having that problem with AU3, including with the LPX template you posted earlier. If you can provide more information so that we can get to the bottom of it that would be appreciated.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 5, 2020)

Also, If you are using ANY scripting at all, including tools such as artzid and audiogrocery; they may or may not be handling midi port information correctly. In other words, the script may or may not be compatible with AU3. There is a new event attribute in scripter called “port” that is used to detect or set the midi port of each event. This will be present whenever the instrument is AU3. It’s not hard for an older script without port awareness to do wrong things including hanging notes. And also the LogicPro environment is not port aware either really. It will pass the port attribute through, but if you do any transforms in the environment, its possible that NoteOff's could be missed across a multi-port solution such as AU3. Just two things to be aware of...scripting needs to be checked to be sure its compatible with AU3 multi-port, and the environment also needs to be handled carefully.


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## rlw (Mar 5, 2020)

Just a note to confirm my hanging note issue @Dewdman42. I no longer use ArtZid but have moved entirely to Logic Pro's Articulation Sets. I love the flexibility and functionality of ArtZid but I discovered that when using it in my very large templates, the scripts, no matter how well written, cause a massive degradation in my CPU performance. Stopping the use of ArtZid did not correct my hanging notes for me. The hanging note issue, however, may be caused by the midi chase issue that is broadly discussed in the thread "*CSS/ CSB Hanging Notes" . *I think the midi chase settings can have an impact on the hanging notes. I suggest that anyone experiencing this issue should read through the complete thread. The post also gives insight into using Stop rather than Pause in Logic Pro X. Very good info in that thread from Alex. https://vi-control.net/community/threads/css-csb-hanging-notes.82050/post-4395280


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 5, 2020)

I will check out that thread thanks. I need to learn more about chasing of notes and what the ramifications are. If we can pinpoint a replicatable scenario we can bombard Apple with a carefully worded bug report, so that LogicPro can potentially work right, if that is indeed the issue. As the other, if you have any small example project and/or instructions for how I can replicate it, please let me know!

Regarding Script efficiency, they do not have to hit the CPU hard. Just like any plugin they can be carefully coded or not and if not, then they might take more CPU then they should. I have been writing some pretty intense Scripter scripts and the CPU doesn't even blip at all because of the way I am handling things. I have never actually been able to make a Scripter script slam the CPU or cause a "Massive" degradation, as you say.

I would not disregard Scripter so easily its quite a powerful aspect of LogicPro, particularly for Articulation management and in many cases can make up for articulationset problems and deficiencies until such time Apple improves it. 

But Scripts do have to be carefully coded with performance in mind. The one script I remember from Artzid that caused CPU spikes was actually the CC Cloner and in that case I believe the problem was not the script or Scripter, but actually just the fact that it was bombarding the LogicPro midi processing engine with way more cc events then necessary. The same thing would have happened regardless of whether it was scripter or a C++ plugin doing the same thing. Hope that makes sense.. This is why in my own Channelizer script, I used a different algorithm that avoids creating all those extra events. AudioGrocery has allegedly done a similar approach.

Anyway I will have a look at that other thread and see if I can discern what might be happening with chasing.

Another thing is I could make a simple scripter script that would send out all Notes off at just the right time, if that is something that would solve everyone's problem. I actually had something like that before when using the old VePro6 macro templates, etc. And its not hard to do. But I haven't been able to replicate hanging notes and I deemed it unnecessary. But if its a matter of that, I can probably figure out a way to put a script that does nothing else but wait for the right moment and then send All Notes Off to all channels and ports, (like if you hit pause or something maybe).


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 5, 2020)

rlw said:


> suggest that anyone experiencing this issue should read through the complete thread. The post also gives insight into using Stop rather than Pause in Logic Pro X. Very good info in that thread from Alex. https://vi-control.net/community/threads/css-csb-hanging-notes.82050/post-4395280



So I read Alex's post, which basically said the problem is related to sustain pedal chasing. but then later someone else did further testing and really isolated that particularly problem inside the instrument CSS, and he did not feel it was related to the chasing as explained by Alex.

I will try to find some time to experiment with all of the things Alex noted to see if I can produce a hanging note. It may be possible to use a work-around script to catch this problem, if LogicPro is actually causing it, and avoid hanging notes, but I will need to replicate it and understand what is going on, which is still not confirmed from that thread you quoted, based on later replies.


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## sbarrettmusic (Mar 5, 2020)

Thanks for linking to the CSS thread. I have only noticed hanging note issues with CSS and CSB so I think the problem lies with those libraries in my case. I experience the exact same results that snattack posted in his video. It looks like Alex is going to be releasing an update to the CS libraries so it probably makes sense to wait for that and see if it fixes the issues on my system. It still doesn't explain the Command-C issue, however...


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## rlw (Mar 5, 2020)

Just last month, I experienced it once with Spitfire Symphonic Strings, but I had numerous hang note issues with CSB.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 6, 2020)

here is a scripter MidiMonitor script that might help people resolve what is going on. See attached. Copy this into the following folder:


```
~/Music/Audio Music Apps/Plug-in Settings/Scripter/
```

To use the script setup your project however you want and in the last midifx plugin slot, place this Scripter script. Open the edit window of Scripter to view the logging. This will show you exactly what is being sent to the instrument, in the correct order, including with midi timing information if you want, etc.


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## A.G (Mar 6, 2020)

To my opinion the problem could be in the software Instrument programming.
In this scenario all regular MIDI monitors (DAW or external ones) can show proper Note ON/OFF behavior which will not solve the problem.
Bear in mind that a specific software instrument can be programmed to ignore real Note events and generate new Note events according to the instrument tasks.
If there are any errors in the Instrument scripting then only the developer could fix those errors.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 6, 2020)

Its a process of elimination. If the midi looks always correct logged in front fo the instrument, then we can say with absolute confidence that the problem lies within the instrument.


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## A.G (Mar 7, 2020)

There is one more scenario...
MIDI Note hanging and similar problems can be caused by the Logic inbuilt Art Sets - KS Latching.
Logic Art system always latches the KS (it is a sort of Monophonic latching - one key is held at a time).
For example, there are some software instruments which need no-KS latching to be able to play the "Normal" instrument patch (in this regard Logic Art system is useless).

Some instruments (developed before Logic Art system for example) may use so called Voice counters in the instrument scripting. The voice counter could be programmed to reset some Note registration arrays when the voice counter is zero (for example). However the Logic KS latching keeps the counter always to 1 which can cause a mess in the Instrument.

For that reason I developed (in AG Art Pro Editor) KS "Latch" customization:
- *No Latch*. The KS is not latched - it is held for say 200ms (it is another custom setting).
- *Latch*. The KS always latches while Logic is running.
- *Auto-Latch*. Logic kills all latched (hang) keys during staring the sequencer. The "Auto-Latch" remembers the last "Polyphonic Latching KS" and triggers them after Logic running.

AG system offers another priority called "Polyphonic KS latching". This is important for some instruments which need multiple KS to be held (while you play) to recall the correspondent articulation(s).


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## DSP (Mar 7, 2020)

So I’ve just caught up on this thread(I’ve been dealing with an Unhandled exception, Play VST, in VEpro for the last few days). I have not been using any articulation sets. I have been using AU3 though. Also my hangin notes only occur after stopping so for me an All notes off script might work if it will do more than just send the standard All notes Off message, as that does not work(I think we discussed earlier.)


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 8, 2020)

All notes off works for me. So I’m not sure that will help you. I will try to provide a script later that does that you can try it, but I think we need to dig deeper into the issue.

If you can provide more information with exact details to replicate the hung notes I will try to replicate


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## DSP (Mar 8, 2020)

So here’s what I figured out today...
For me, stuck notes are occurring mostly in with AU3, I was able to get VST to hang but with some pretty severe scrubbing while playing(not really a real world situation). 
All Notes Off is sending but only on port 1 channel 1. If I switch the hanging instrument to P1 C1 while stuck it will clear with an All Note Off. I don’t know how I missed it before this was obvious when I saw the Midi indicators in VEP only lighting up on P1C1 when I send All Note Off. If this is the case what other messages are not getting sent to all channels?


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 8, 2020)

all notes off being sent how? By double clicking the transport? I spent several hours today trying to get an AU3 orchestral mockup to hang notes and I couldn't get it to hang notes at all. So first the question is why you're getting hanging notes at all. There is something about your setup causing that. I'm not convinced it has anything to do with AU3. I can't get it to hang here. 

All Notes Off message is sent in LogicPro when you double click on the transport bar on the In/Out area. Using the midi monitor script I shared earlier, it can be seen that when you double click there, LogicPro sends CC 123, all notes toff, to all 16 channels. I have tried this while the track playing notes was configured for Port1 and also I have tried when it was configured as Port 2. In both cases, logicPro was able to determine on its own that notes had been playing on either Port1 or Port2 respectively, and all notes off messages were sent to all 16 channels of the relevant port. Worked exactly as I would have expected.


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## DSP (Mar 10, 2020)

So... I think Ive figured out my stuck note problem. I use a fader controller to trigger controller assignments/key commands for transport. I discovered that using the spacebar on the keyboard for start stop resulted in no stuck notes. On my controller I had a separate starts and stop button assigned. When I switched the stop button to the toggle play/stop command... no more stuck notes!!!.....so far. Using the play only key command also caused stuck note so it needs to be a single Start/Stop toggle, like the space bar.
I also discovered that the All Notes Off CC is very inconsistent. To answer your question Dewdman, on that same fader controller I assigned a button for the All Notes Off key command. I did run your script. There were odd anomalies with which channel/port it would send to. It was pretty consistent with port 1 Channel 1-8 but it seems the higher up channels and instruments in a multi start dropping out. But if it was a port that wasn't receiving A.N.O., if I changed the port and channel # on an instrument that was receiving ANO and sent the message, that other instrument would start receiving the ANO message even after the other instrument channel was restored. I attached a screen shot vid with the monitor running of the stuck notes and the ANO being sent.... if you're interested.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 10, 2020)

If you're using All Notes Off from your controller, that is a separate problem. In that case, your controller doesn't know about the extra ports and that could be an issue. I will make a script for you that will cover that case. 

If you use the All Notes off feature of LogicPro (double click on the transport bar where it shows the midi in/out activity, then you'll see that LogicPro sends to all 16 channels of the current port, or possibly the ports that had activity, not sure.

however, I guess LogicPro is not echoing the All notes Off from your controller out to multiple ports..when you try to do that way. But we can do that with a script.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 10, 2020)

Try this script. It will monitor which channels and ports are being used and then if it receives an All Notes Off from anywhere (including your controller), it echos to all of those channels and ports.


```
// AllNotesOffAU3.js
// Version 1.1
// Helper script, keeps track of which channels and ports have had midi activity
// and will echo CC123 to all of those channels/ports

var NeedsTimingInfo = true; //only needed to detect play state

var usedChannelPorts = new Array(17);
for(var i=1;i<=16;i++) {
    usedChannelPorts[i] = new Array;
    for(var j=1;j<=48;j++) {
        usedChannelPorts[i][j] = false;
    }
}

//=============================================================
// Actual HandleMIDI function
//=============================================================

function HandleMIDI(event) {

    //=================================================================
    // If all Notes Off for channel, handle specially,
    // forward to all ports, received from double click transport
    // or from external device
    //=================================================================

    if (event instanceof ControlChange
            && event.number == 123
            && event.value == 0) {

        AllNotesOffByChannel(event.channel, false);
        return;
    }

    // All other Events
    usedChannelPorts[event.channel][event.port] = true;
    event.send();
}

function Reset() {
    for(var i=1;i<=16;i++) {
        for(var j=1;j<=48;j++) {
            usedChannelPorts[i][j] = false;
        }
    }
}

//===================================================
// Prcoess MIDI is used to detact transport STOP
// in order to send AllNotesOff to all ports/channels
// todo, sometimes this happens before handleMIDI has
// processed everything.  Need to figure out something
//===================================================

var playState = false;

function ProcessMIDI() {
    var ctx = GetTimingInfo();

    if (ctx.playing) {
        playState = true;
    }

    else {
        if (playState == true) {
            // stop recently happened
            AllNotesOff();
            playState = false;
        }
    }
}


//=======================================
// Propagate AllNotesOff to all ports
// for a given midi channel
//=======================================

var ccOff = new ControlChange;
ccOff.number = 123;
ccOff.value = 0;

// forceFlg is used for double clicking transport PANIC to make sure
// all 768 channel/ports receive the CC123 message for all notes off.
// But actually do we really need that?  TODO, think it through more.
function AllNotesOffByChannel(channel, forceFlg) {
    ccOff.channel = channel;
    for (var port = 1; port <= 48; port++) {
        if(forceFlg || (!forceFlg
                && usedChannelPorts[channel] != undefined
                && usedChannelPorts[channel][port])) {
            ccOff.port = port;
            ccOff.send();
            usedChannelPorts[channel][port] = false;
        }
    }
}

//====================================
// AllNotesOff all Channels
//====================================

function AllNotesOff() {
    for (var chan = 1; chan <= 16; chan++) {
        AllNotesOffByChannel(chan, false);
    }
}
```


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 10, 2020)

If this solves your problem, then I suggest you also submit a feature request to Apple explaining that when LogicPro receives an All Notes Off from your keyboard, its not being echoed to all relevant channels/ports when using an AU3 instrument.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 10, 2020)

Note, the above script also sends All Notes Off whenever you hit stop, which actually may not be necessary. I originally made this script to work with the old VePro6 multiport environment macro.. But with AU3, I think probably this is not necessary. I can make the script substantially more simple if we don't need to send All notes Off automatically on STOP.


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## DSP (Mar 10, 2020)

Dewdman42 said:


> If you're using All Notes Off from your controller, that is a separate problem. In that case, your controller doesn't know about the extra ports and that could be an issue. I will make a script for you that will cover that case.
> 
> If you use the All Notes off feature of LogicPro (double click on the transport bar where it shows the midi in/out activity, then you'll see that LogicPro sends to all 16 channels of the current port, or possibly the ports that had activity, not sure.
> 
> however, I guess LogicPro is not echoing the All notes Off from your controller out to multiple ports..when you try to do that way. But we can do that with a script.


No, I’m not sending CC from the controller, I’m triggering a key command in Logic, triggered from the controller


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 10, 2020)

hmm, that's a test case I haven't tried. I will have a look at that


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 10, 2020)

here is as more simple version of the script that only echos All Notes Off when it receives an incoming All Notes OFF, it does not send on STOP. Its smaller and more simple, and marginally less CPU this way.

```
// AllNotesOffAU3.js    
// Version 1.1
// Helper script, keeps track of which channels and ports have had midi activity
// and will echo CC123 to all of those channels/ports

var usedChannelPorts = new Array(17);
for(var i=1;i<=16;i++) {
    usedChannelPorts[i] = [];
    for(var j=1;j<=48;j++) {
        usedChannelPorts[i][j] = false;
    }
}

//=============================================================
// Actual HandleMIDI function
//=============================================================

function HandleMIDI(event) {
    
    if(event.port == undefined) event.port = 1;
    
    //=================================================================
    // If all Notes Off for channel, handle specially, 
    // forward to all ports, received from double click transport
    // or from external device
    //=================================================================
    
    if (event instanceof ControlChange 
            && event.number == 123 
            && event.value == 0) {

        //AllNotesOffByChannel(event.channel);
        AllNotesOff();
        return;
    }

    // All other Events
    usedChannelPorts[event.channel][event.port] = true;
    event.send();
}

function reset() {
    for(var i=1;i<=16;i++) {
        for(var j=1;j<=48;j++) {
            usedChannelPorts[i][j] = false;
        }
    }
}


//=======================================
// Propagate AllNotesOff to all ports
// for a given midi channel
//=======================================

var ccOff = new ControlChange;
ccOff.number = 123;
ccOff.value = 0;

// forceFlg is used for double clicking transport PANIC to make sure
// all 768 channel/ports receive the CC123 message for all notes off.
// But actually do we really need that?  TODO, think it through more.
function AllNotesOffByChannel(channel) {
    ccOff.channel = channel;
    for (var port = 1; port <= 48; port++) {
        if(usedChannelPorts[channel] != undefined 
                && usedChannelPorts[channel][port]==true) {
            ccOff.port = port;
            ccOff.send();
            usedChannelPorts[channel][port] = false;
        }
    }
}

//====================================
// AllNotesOff all Channels
//====================================

function AllNotesOff() {
    for (var chan = 1; chan <= 16; chan++) {
        AllNotesOffByChannel(chan);
    }
    reset();
}
```


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 10, 2020)

Found a couple bugs in the scripts I posted before, copy and paste them again, fixed now. Let me know if that solves the problem or what happens.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 10, 2020)

I think generally, Apple needs to improve how they are handling the ALL NOTES OFF message. It looks to me like its handling it slightly differently if received via key Command vs by double clicking on the header. 

I will just say that LogicPro does try to keep track of which channels and ports are being used so that it should only have to send as many ALL NOTES OFF messages as channels that were used. You wouldn't want it send 768 ALL NOTES OFF message every time you hit the panic button. 

So in theory that's fine, but it appears to me that this is one area where Apple has not made all approaches to ALL NOTES OFF completely aware of AU3 ports that have been used. It will hit 16 channels of the current port, but not any channels on other ports... Anyway, I leave it to you to figure out what Logic is or isn't doing properly with ALL NOTES OFF and report the bug to Apple please... 

but the script I posted above will basically keep track of which channel/ports have seen note activity since the last ALL NOTES OFF and then when an ALL NOTES OFF is received by Scripter, it echos it to all of those ports/channels. SO I think that should rescue you...but probably that script could be optimized a bit more, I'm not sure, I haven't really been using it, I had it saved in my scrapbook...but in theory..should solve your problem for now. But make sure to submit a bug report to Apple about this. I have already tried to submit a bug report about this quite a long time ago, but they never did anything about it.


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## Pixelpoet1985 (Feb 7, 2021)

@Dewdman42 

I can't unzip your templates from gitlab. It's always stuck in a zip-zipcpgz-cycle on my Mac. Could you make them available elsewhere? Thanks.


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## Dewdman42 (Feb 7, 2021)

get them here for now: 

https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=143416&p=743733#p743733

I will have to figure out best way to use gitlab for this later.


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## marclawsonmusic (Apr 4, 2021)

Question regarding MIDI clock sync with VEPro / AU3...

I noticed that VEPro itself (the instance) _does_ see tempo changes when I make them in the DAW. I see the correct tempo at the bottom right of the instance.

However, it doesn't appear to share this with Kontakt - it always shows 120bpm there. @Dewdman42, is this the same behavior you have been describing in your posts? Because if it was an AU3 issue, I would not have expected to see the correct tempo in VEPro at all. Just curious where the limits are...

Thanks!


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

A clarification..."midi clock sync" is not what we're talking about, that is technically speaking a different thing. We're talking about "Transport sync".

Yes VePro7.AU3 is able to transmit the tempo changes to VePro7 slave. As you found out. But VePro does not appear to get whatever notification it needs when the transport is actually started and stopped.

Regarding Kontakt, most plugins I know don't actually show the tempo of the host. They will sometimes provide a way to use their own tempo....and/or a "slave to host" option which just slaves to the host regardless of what the tempo is. Not sure what Kontakt is showing or not... My guess would be that somehow Kontakt decides the transport is not playing so use its own tempo.

but what we can say is that somewhere in the VePro.AU3 plugin interaction...complete sync with DAW transport is currently not realized. We do not really know for sure if the problem is a bug in LogicPro or perhaps VePro itself needs some better AU3 programming. Could be either or both...but bottom line, for now it doesn't work... Part of why VSL calls it "beta".


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## marclawsonmusic (Apr 4, 2021)

Thanks for the quick reply.

FWIW - the behavior in AU2 is this... The moment you update host tempo, it updates the Kontakt instance. But with AU3, it doesn't work that way. PS - This happens without engaging transport, pressing Play or whatever.

Thanks again for all your helpful posts!


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

yea, we can only speculate really, there is a lot that goes on under the covers and different plugins handle a lot of this stuff in different ways... so its really hard to say how and why Kontakt running inside VePro would not detect the tempo change... 

My advise is...just avoid Au3 if you need any kind of tempo sync... Use AU2 for that thing, put it on its own VePro instance... you can do everything else in a big AU3 instance.


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## marclawsonmusic (Apr 4, 2021)

Another question... is anyone here running a live orchestral template in Logic with only 3 or 4 massive instances in VEPro - let's say Woodwinds, Strings, Brass? (like they do with Cubase)

The reason I ask is because all the MIDI would funnel through only 3 or 4 multi-timbral instruments... and my understanding (at least in prior versions) is that Logic tends to perform better with more individual instruments. 

Just curious if AU3 really makes Logic more 'Cubase-like' or whether at its core Logic still prefers lots of individual instruments.

PS - I know VEPro likes bigger instances... just not sure if Logic does.

Thanks


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

FWIW, also....VePro.AU3 is the only actual AU3 plugin I know of on the market today (excluding iOS). So the truth is that its not completely vetted. Perhaps if more AU3 plugins come out, more attention will be given to sorting this kind of stuff out.


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

marclawsonmusic said:


> Another question... is anyone here running a live orchestral template in Logic with only 3 or 4 massive instances in VEPro - let's say Woodwinds, Strings, Brass? (like they do with Cubase)
> 
> The reason I ask is because all the MIDI would funnel through only 3 or 4 multi-timbral instruments... and my understanding (at least in prior versions) is that Logic tends to perform better with more individual instruments.
> 
> ...



I have been able to play 100+ orch tracks through 1 instance....or 4...they both work fine. Doesn't really matter that its funneling through one or 4 multi-timbral instruments in my opinion. I think there were problems related to this in the past when people were trying to use the old VePro6 multiport environment macro...which first of all had bugs in it...but anyway that was trying to cram a lot of midi data at once through a single environment pipeline...etc.. I dunno..

Anyway, like I said, my 5,1 Mac can definitely easily play a single-instance setup of 100+ orch tracks. (not talking about template size, talking 100 actual used tracks in typical orch score).

There really are pros and cons to the approach to use.. I like having one big instance because I use MirPro...and its integrated better into VePro that way. But its totally possible to seperate things...I personally don't see much benefit to using VePro at all in one instance per track...unelss you're using actual seperate slave machines... If you're using VePro on the same machine as LogicPro, then there is limited advantage to using one instance per track... I'd probably rather just keep it all in LPX at that point. But if you make a single instance, then you can develop the orch mix in VePro and save that for future re-use...pre-mixed orch template, etc... for that I see huge advantage..thus my interest in AU3


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## marclawsonmusic (Apr 4, 2021)

Dewdman42 said:


> I think there were problems related to this in the past when people were trying to use the old VePro6 multiport environment macro...which first of all had bugs in it...but anyway that was trying to cram a lot of midi data at once through a single environment pipeline...etc.. I dunno..


Thanks again for your help, @Dewdman42. 

I cut my teeth on the original multiport environment back in 2014. I actually reverse-engineered the whole damn thing and created my own version. But then I hit a big snag and reached out to tech support. I eventually got ahold of Martin and we discovered that the VEPro plugin couldn't process more than 127 simultaneous MIDI messages - due to a limitation in the AU spec itself. Probably a holdover from the old days.

I eventually got a template working with Jay Asher's approach - lots of individual multi-timbral instruments and VEPro instances. But I thought with AU3 I would revisit things because I know VEPro prefers larger instances.

It sounds like Logic has greatly increased capacity these days, so I'll give the big template a try and see how it works.


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

Martin knows what he's talking about. Its certainly still possible that LogicPro still has the 127 midi event bottleneck....including now and with AU3 too! Or they could have improved it who knows. 

but what I will say is this... Midi is handled with NoteOn and NoteOff messages. There is no concept of a sustaining note in midi. So basically what the limit would mean is that there would need to be a 127 track tutti with all the NoteOn's or all the NoteOff's happening exactly within one process block. A process block depends on your audio buffer size...with larger buffer sizes...that could mean within a few milliseconds.

If more then 127 midi events happen in that window of time...of a few ms....within a single multi-timbral instrument plugin...then I could see Martin's explanation being an issue...if its still the case. Hard to believe AU2 would have that limitation, sounds more like a limitation of very old school LogicPro internals to me. The environment in particular was originally coded a very long time ago when they were trying to cram as much data as possible into 7 bits for midi, etc. 127 is represented by 7 bits. The environment was most likely coded in assembly language...and hand coded to be hyper efficient on older hardware back then that needed special tricky programming to even accomplish that kind of stuff back then. Times have changed a lot since then, but I think probably some of the LogicPro internals are still using some of that old code..which could create some of those 7bit bottlenecks... I'm just theorizing now... we don't really know. In any case I would find it hard to believe that AU2 would be constrained to that limitation...but LogicPro certainly may have been...and still might be. 

The way to test it would be to play some 300 note chords, with all the notes quantized to exactly the same time and see what comes into a midi logging plugin....and even better...test that out through VePro.AU3 too... then we'd know. But I also think its not that common to hit 127 midi events within a few ms windows of time...


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## marclawsonmusic (Apr 4, 2021)

Seem like having more instrument tracks / VEPro plugins would actually work well with this feature:


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## marclawsonmusic (Apr 4, 2021)

Dewdman42 said:


> Martin knows what he's talking about. Its certainly still possible that LogicPro still has the 127 midi event bottleneck....including now and with AU3 too! Or they could have improved it who knows.


Again, that was 2014 so hopefully it's still not an issue.

In my case, I was sending MIDI init data to my entire template - e.g. default CCs for all instruments - and that's where I encountered this. I just copy-pasted the same CC1, CC11, etc. to about 200 tracks and when I hit play the data only got to the first 127


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

marclawsonmusic said:


> Again, that was 2014 so hopefully it's still not an issue.



If its true, according to what you just said from Martin, that the bottleneck is in the AU2 spec...then I doubt it has been improved since then.



marclawsonmusic said:


> In my case, I was sending MIDI init data to my entire template - e.g. default CCs for all instruments - and that's where I encountered this. I just copy-pasted the same CC1, CC11, etc. to about 200 tracks and when I hit play the data only got to the first 127



Interesting! That is very revealing. Some testing would be useful...I will have to put that on the laundry list to test out with AU3.

of course the work around would be to just offset some of that kind of stuff a little bit..literally could be offset by 20ms and would be more then enough to get it through.


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

marclawsonmusic said:


> Seem like having more instrument tracks / VEPro plugins would actually work well with this feature:



That feature would be less useful when using the single instance approach, because in that case you're only using one plugin instance in LogicPro. The VePro plugin itself also doesn't use much resources, so honestly I don't see that as being very useful for the one-track-per-instance-like-a-score approach either. I personally want them all on and connected to the VePro instance so I don't have to fuss around with that later.


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

marclawsonmusic said:


> Thanks again for your help, @Dewdman42.
> 
> But then I hit a big snag and reached out to tech support. I eventually got ahold of Martin and we discovered that the VEPro plugin couldn't process more than 127 simultaneous MIDI messages - due to a limitation in the AU spec itself. Probably a holdover from the old days.



Alright, I couldn't wait, I had to test this...


I used _BlueCatAudio_ *PlugNScript* with a custom script I wrote that can do midi logging within the plugin...to show what events get received by the plugin after passing through the AU plugin barrier.


I created a `type 1` midi file with 256 midi events on the first beat... Basically CC#'s 1-16 on channels 1-16. 256 total events.


imported that midi file to LogicPro into a single region


*Test # 1 *Monitored the midi received by `AU2` version of *PlugNScript*. result = only 127 events made it through into the plugin!


*Test # 2* Setup *VePro7.AU3*. Put *PlugNScript* inside *VePro7* so that I could see how many of those midi events made it through `AU3` plugin barrier and transmitted to VePro7. Result = 256 made it through!

Summary, AU3 spec apparently allows for more than 127 midi events per process block, which resolves the problem Martin mentioned, but only if you use AU3 plugin, the AU2 limit still persists today.


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

I don't know what the upper limit of AU3 is... I will generate a couple bigger tests to see if I can find a limit


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## marclawsonmusic (Apr 4, 2021)

Very cool, @Dewdman42! 

Sorry to hear that same limit still exists on AU2. I hope that AU3 can handle significantly more than that. Looking forward to hearing more about your tests.


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

running a test now with 2048 events (127 cc#'s with 16 midi channels each). Stay tuned...


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

Looks like the limit on AU3 might be 1039 events at once...


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## marclawsonmusic (Apr 4, 2021)

Well, that's a lot more than 127. Thanks for running the tests. This is great information to know!


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 4, 2021)

Here's the midi file I used to test in case anyone wants to try this at home, but be advised, not to send this to any real synth because its just using all the cc#'s without any regard to what they might do.


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## LeeThompson (Jul 18, 2021)

I feel like I’m being really dumb.

What I would like to do is use one VEP instance with my libraries - 16 ports x 16 midi would be more than plenty.

I’ve downloaded both of Dewdman’s Logic patches from Logic Pro Help but I’m stuck with either

On my system one only links to 8 ports (as does my own attempts)

The other appears to be based on Midi channel strips which I can’t manage to link to the Inst channel with the VEP AU3 plug in
The port options available are all hardware.

What am I doing wrong ?

Thanks for any input

Lee


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 18, 2021)

There is a preference in vepro to set how many ports you want per instance. 8 is the default


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## marclawsonmusic (Jul 18, 2021)

Yes, you have to go into the VEPro server and change the maximum number of ports in the preferences. Then restart everything and you should see 16 ports available in Logic.


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## LeeThompson (Jul 18, 2021)

Thanks for the replies guys.
I've set the prefs as per attachment (I think they're OK)

Unfortunately I think I've got a 'broken' AU3 plug
I've gone back to zero
Opened 'New' in Logic (last version from a couple of days ago)
New VEP (which says is the latest version - all on one Mac mini)
An AU VEP communicates normally - an AU3 does not !

Any ideas what I do next ?
Uninstall/Reinstall VEP ?

Thanks
Lee


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## marclawsonmusic (Jul 18, 2021)

I would do the following:

Restart your computer. When it's back up...
Start VEPro server
Start Logic
Create a new Logic project and add the AU3 plugin to a Software Instrument track
Connect to any instance on the VEP server
Confirm number of ports - should be 16 now
If that doesn't work, I'm at a loss.


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## LeeThompson (Jul 18, 2021)

Thanks guys

That's exactly what I've just done - that was my process as per my last post no. 315

The AU3 version does not work at all - no midi going to VEP from Logic - and as far as I can tell (by pressing the keys on the VI itself) no audio being returned
An AU (vanilla) version works as expected.

I guess the AU3 plug in his part of the VEP install
That's why I was thinking of trying to re-install that

The fact that AU (vanilla) works in Logic - does that suggest the Logic side of things is OK ?

Thanks
Lee


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## Saxer (Jul 18, 2021)

VEPro AU3 doesn't connect on my system either. Not even a single instance with a single plugin on one channel. The standard AU works fine and without problems. Catalina here, VEPro on the same machine.


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## marclawsonmusic (Jul 18, 2021)

Ouch. Might be a new glitch from this recent version of Logic, then? I am still on 10.5.1 so afraid I can't help troubleshoot that.

It's definitely worth a re-install of VEP to see if that solves something. Wish I knew more.


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## LeeThompson (Jul 18, 2021)

Yes I'm on Catalina on a Mac Mini with VEP and Logic on the same machine.
What's weird is I thought I'd got it working initially and got stuck trying to go further than the 8 ports.
I thought I had it working with 3 instances (woods/brass/strings) using AU3 ???
I was trying to move to one instance using AU3 with 16 ports
May be I fooled myself ???

Has anyone with a similar system managed to get it working ?

Thanks
Lee


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## marclawsonmusic (Jul 18, 2021)

I can confirm AU3 has been working for me for months now - with a single machine setup. However, I am still on Mojave and Logic 10.5.1.

Might be worth trashing the VEP preferences since it was working previously. I hope you find a solution.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 18, 2021)

LeeThompson said:


> Thanks guys
> 
> That's exactly what I've just done - that was my process as per my last post no. 315
> 
> ...



There is some stuff I remember when the AU3 plugin first came out and people were complaining that it wasn't working or wasn't showing up, I can't remember now, you can read the earlier posts of this thread for those posts if you're interested, but here is something to try, from vague memory....

Go into the Plugin Manager and make sure the plugin is there and that the AU3 mode checkbox is unchecked like mine:






Not intuitive to uncheck it, I know, but that is what works. I'm not sure what that checkbox does.

Seems like there was something else people were doing to get it working, but I honestly can't remember now. I had a slight blip with it when I first tried it too, but once I did whatever I did it has not stopped working since several LogicPro updates since then.

what version of LogicPro are you using by the way? And what version of VePro?

@LeeThompson, you can post an empty LogicPro project you are trying to use with this problem, this could be something about how you are trying to use it also.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 18, 2021)

LeeThompson said:


> Has anyone with a similar system managed to get it working ?



I am using Catailina and latest version of LogicPro. works fine. It has worked fine for a year or two across several versions of Mojave/Catalina and several versions of Logic Pro. There is a certain version of LogicPro you need, I think it was at least 10.4.5 if I recall correctly. And also a certain version of OSX was required (which you were fine on Catalina) and then VePro must be v7 also.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 18, 2021)

oh there is another thing @LeeThompson that I forgot to mention, LogicPro currently has a limitation that you can only have 127 multi-timbral tracks associated with a Multi-timbral instrument such as VePro.AU3. If you try to create a 128th track, then your project will literally explode, not kidding...

This is all mentioned on the LogicPro Forum where I posted those templates, you can read about that in detail there... its also mentioned earlier in this thread here.

Its still possible to use more than 8 ports, but only 127 actual source tracks that are pointing to 127 midi channels scattered across however many ports you want to use.

8 ports normally has 128 midi channels. So that's why VSL defaulted that to 8 I guess. And if you try to use the 128th track..it will still blow up...

but you could have 48 ports and scatter those 127 midi channels across any of it, but you cannot create more than 127 source multi-timbral tracks, or LogicPro will literally blow up.

Another work around is to use the old school environment method (I provided that template too), which basically uses the environment in a certain way to give you all 768 channels if you want.


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## LeeThompson (Jul 18, 2021)

Dewdman42 said:


> There is some stuff I remember when the AU3 plugin first came out and people were complaining that it wasn't working or wasn't showing up, I can't remember now, you can read the earlier posts of this thread for those posts if you're interested, but here is something to try, from vague memory....
> 
> Go into the Plugin Manager and make sure the plugin is there and that the AU3 mode checkbox is unchecked like mine:
> 
> ...


OMG

IT'S THE AU3 CHECK BOX !!!!

Thank you so much - Lord knows how it got ticked - but deselecting has fixed it all


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## LeeThompson (Jul 18, 2021)

@Dewdman42 
Thanks so much for all your comments
I'm on the latest Catalina / Logic / VEP

As a knock on from this fix I now have enough Ports
(I have noted your comments throughout the web re 127 channels - some of the ports will only have 4 midi tracks eg. SF ABO Woodwinds)


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## LeeThompson (Jul 18, 2021)

@Dewdman42 
One final question if I may
I'm thinking of building in some 'space' in my VE template (for if I add in the future)

So say I use Ports 1-4 for Woods
then leave 5-8 fallow
Then 9-12 for Brass
then 13-16 empty
then 17- 21 for Strings
then 22-24 empty

Does having more Ports open in VEP Preferences ie 24 rather than 16
and
Do the empty ports eg 5-8 with nothing on them (at present)
Put more 'strain' on my Mac Mini ?
Or are they empty and hence irrelevant to workload ?

Thanks
Lee


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 18, 2021)

no they won't cause any more strain.

Just be advised that if accidentally create more than 127 multi-timbral tracks to one instance of VePro, your project will become fubar, its possible to back it out, but not always straightforward.

What I recommend would be start with my 1270 template.. That has 127 tracks precreated to each of 10 VePro instances. 10 x 127 = 1270

You can go into any of those tracks and change the midi channel or midi port # to your heart's content. Just don't add any more tracks connected to this VePro plugin instances. They can point to any of port 1-48 and channels 1-16 though and will work fine and there is no performance loss from having unused ports and channels..they are just numbers...


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## marclawsonmusic (Jul 18, 2021)

@Dewdman42 to the rescue again! Nice!


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Nov 29, 2021)

Has anyone had a look into how this behaves with 10.7.1?


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## Kent (Nov 29, 2021)

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> Has anyone had a look into how this behaves with 10.7.1?


What, specifically, is “this”? 

Does Logic 10.7.1 work with VEP’s AU3 plug-in? Yes, no changes of note here!


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## Dewdman42 (Nov 29, 2021)

The interesting question would be whether LogicPro 10.7.1 still blows up after 127 channels per VePro instance. Also would be interesting to know if AU3 to Vepro7 still does not support transport function.


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## Saxer (Nov 29, 2021)

I use a breath controller which sends a lot of MIDI data and I like to stack instruments (like Samplemodeling + Infinite Brass for a single trombone). When I use one instance of VEPro for more than two instruments (which means three MIDI channels and up) I get hanging notes all over the place. Three trombones in one VEPro instance? No way! Not a single bar without playback mistakes. No matter if it's AU or AU3 (thanks Dewd for the AU3 check box trick!). I can't even think about using 127 MIDI channels per instance. I'm back to one VEPro instance per instrument.


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## PhilA (Nov 30, 2021)

Sounds like there’s some great expertise here.
I’ve been waiting for BF to buy VEPro so I did. Unfortunately after installing I can no longer start Logic (or GarageBand or MainStage) it just hangs at the splash screen, removing vepro allows logic to start again. I’m sure this is simple user error (if it isn’t I’ll log a ticket with Vsl support)
I’m on an M1 MacBook if that makes a difference(it probably does)

Thanks 🙏


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## Kent (Nov 30, 2021)

PhilA said:


> Sounds like there’s some great expertise here.
> I’ve been waiting for BF to buy VEPro so I did. Unfortunately after installing I can no longer start Logic (or GarageBand or MainStage) it just hangs at the splash screen, removing vepro allows logic to start again. I’m sure this is simple user error (if it isn’t I’ll log a ticket with Vsl support)
> I’m on an M1 MacBook if that makes a difference(it probably does)
> 
> Thanks 🙏


Sounds like VEP is not passing AU validation on your system.


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## mgaewsj (Jan 15, 2022)

Please forgive if I missed something, I tried to read the whole thread.

I am asking for confirmation:
Is it true that Midi Clock does not work with Kontakt if you use Vepro-AU3 in Logic?
I tried and indeed it does not work for me, while it works perfectly with the standard AU version.

IMHO this is unacceptable. Vepro-AU3 overcomes all the limitations related to the max number of channels, but in this way it becomes unusable whenever you need to sync to DAW (i.e. Ostinatos, Sforzandos, etc.). Ouch!


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## Dewdman42 (Jan 15, 2022)

Yes that is true. It’s a bug either in logicpro or vepro7 we don’t really have a way to know which is responsible.


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## Dewdman42 (Jan 15, 2022)

Ps - it’s not midi clock that is broken. It’s the host transport sync


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## mgaewsj (Jan 15, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Ps - it’s not midi clock that is broken. It’s the host transport sync


transport? I am definitely not a MIDI expert, so I am not sure what's the meaning of "transport sync" issue. You can replicate the problem while the DAW is not in play mode. Just change the tempo in the DAW, manually play your Ostinato patch and the tempo change is ignored. This does not happen with the AU2 version.

Btw I understand this crazy bug is there since a long time. Unbelievable.


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## Dewdman42 (Jan 15, 2022)

i'm just clarifying. "Midi Clock" is a term referring to a specific type of midi message that can be turned on sometimes to send a series of midi messages to a receiving device, so that the receiving device can lock to the same tempo. That is not involved here at all, that is more typically used with external devices.

Plugins are able to sync to the transport of their host normally... What I have observed is happening with VePro7 and AU3 is that as you adjust the tempo in your host, you will see that VePro is recognizing the tempo changes, etc.. but when you hit play on your host...VePro doesn't cause its hosted plugins play along with it, if they have transport type features in them.

AU2 works fine. I recommend you use AU3 for most things and for the specific plugin that you need transport sync to happen in the plugin, then use AU2 on a seperate VePro instance. 

cheers


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## mgaewsj (Jan 15, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> i'm just clarifying. "Midi Clock" is a term referring to a specific type of midi message that can be turned on sometimes to send a series of midi messages to a receiving device, so that the receiving device can lock to the same tempo. That is not involved here at all, that is more typically used with external devices.
> 
> Plugins are able to sync to the transport of their host normally... What I have observed is happening with VePro7 and AU3 is that as you adjust the tempo in your host, you will see that VePro is recognizing the tempo changes, etc.. but when you hit play on your host...VePro doesn't cause its hosted plugins play along with it, if they have transport type features in them.
> 
> ...


got it, thnx!


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