# Vep5 with logic - best way to set up?



## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

When using Vienna ensemble pro 5 with logic, which is the most efficient way to set it up - multiport, event inpup, or separate instances each with 16 midi channels? Thanks


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## resound (Jan 11, 2016)

I use a separate instance of VEPro for each instrument, load articulations on different MIDI channels and then switch articulations using SkiSwitcher2. It's a powerful combo!


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

resound said:


> I use a separate instance of VEPro for each instrument, load articulations on different MIDI channels and then switch articulations using SkiSwitcher2. It's a powerful combo!




Cool thanks, so to make sure I understand correctly, each VEP instance is dedicated to a different instrument, such as 1 for violin, another for viola and so on?


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## resound (Jan 11, 2016)

Yep! You end up with a lot of VEP instances but it is the easiest way to get it set up and Logic also just runs more efficiently that way.


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 11, 2016)

This is how I've done it, and I think it's the most popular way (see anything Jay Asher AKA EastWestLurker posts). I use AG Toolkit Pro to switch articulations. This is from my slave, but I use logic with some smaller libraries in another M-Frame on the Host


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

PeterBaumann said:


> This is how I've done it, and I think it's the most popular way (see anything Jay Asher AKA EastWestLurker posts). I use AG Toolkit Pro to switch articulations. This is from my slave, but I use logic with some smaller libraries in another M-Frame on the Host




cool thanks. Do you tend to load different patches up into your slave as you progress through the project depending on what you think you need, or are those same patches always going to be loaded on the same slave?


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 11, 2016)

There has recently been a new update for AG Toolkit which offers much more advanced functionality than I had previously used, so what I'm probably going to do at the end of my current project is read the manual for that and work out how to properly implement it into my current templates (which will probably involve me re-doing a lot of them!)

I'm not going to lie, I'm relatively new to all of this (about a year in the samples-buying market - if that's a thing), so anything I say below will probably change in the next year or so! I don't have loads of projects at the same time, so I'm currently working on a couple of shorts, and a full length nature documentary (which was the reason I bought my first samples a year ago!). 

I have this orchestral template which I use for all of my projects at the moment. Synths I tend to load directly through Logic because Alchemy is the best synth I have apart from a couple of random EastWest ones, but generally if I need a synth, I go direct in Logic. Are you working all on one machine? The luxury I have is that I have a (quite powerful) PC slave, meaning that I can load everything I could possibly want into VEPro, and leave it there, connect it to my full template in logic, and then delete any groups I don't think I'll use on a per cue basis (ie. a quiet orchestral track for just strings, delete any groups in logic that aren't strings, although in practice this is 99% of the time deleting anything non-orchestral at the moment - it's a nature doc.) 

I actually quite enjoy building my template, because each time I do it, I spend a bit more time exploring each instrument and what patches it has to offer. The problem with templates is that you can get used to just using the patches you've loaded, so it actually restricts you. With a blank canvas, it has (not literally) endless possibilities, because if you think, oh do I have string harmonics (which I found out a couple of days ago, yes I do), then you can just load those, or at least add them to your template. So yeah, once this project is done, I'm gunna dive back into my two systems and work out what I've actually got.

If I was doing a much more modern synthy project, I'd probably have a totally separate template, but because I have 2 quite powerful systems, I can load the majority of the patches I need into a template, then disconnect anything I don't need and not lose valuable time working out whether I may or may not want sustains instead of legato samples.

So to answer your question, yes, at the moment the same patches are always loaded on the same slave (due to license issues of swapping machines - it would be so much better if licenses could be shared between slaves for quick tests of patches, but anyway!) I have two metaframes, with individual instruments loaded for the larger instruments (EW violins, horns etc.) and then perc and other smaller libraries I use multi-timbral, just because I can't be bothered to set up 300 individual V-Frames. For me, it gets too messy, especially as you can't re-order them (yet) in VEPro. I think this might be coming in an update, but who knows. 

I know Daniel James (see his youtube) has a 'template' in Ableton which he just has empty instances as plugins, and then picks each instrument as he needs. This obviously saves RAM, but for me, I'm a fiddler, so need to be able to click an instrument and hear it instantly. For projects I need a quick turnaround in, I haven't got time to decide which library's brass I prefer, so I just have them all loaded, ready to go. 

PS. I'm a few whiskeys deep, so apologise if this ramble has gradually become incoherent! If anything is unclear, let me know and maybe I'll have sobered up when I respond!


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

PeterBaumann said:


> There has recently been a new update for AG Toolkit which offers much more advanced functionality than I had previously used, so what I'm probably going to do at the end of my current project is read the manual for that and work out how to properly implement it into my current templates (which will probably involve me re-doing a lot of them!)
> 
> I'm not going to lie, I'm relatively new to all of this (about a year in the samples-buying market - if that's a thing), so anything I say below will probably change in the next year or so! I don't have loads of projects at the same time, so I'm currently working on a couple of shorts, and a full length nature documentary (which was the reason I bought my first samples a year ago!).
> 
> ...



thanks for all the info. yes, i am doing this all on one computer. i tried the multiple v-frames approach a (about 30 v-frames in total), and what ended up happening was the cpu in logic, while still going to multiple cores, ended up skyrocketing and idling even when i didn't press play. I'm not totally sure why this was. Maybe the multiple v-frame approach doesn't work as well when you're doing it all on the same computer?


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## resound (Jan 11, 2016)

I am working with one computer just fine. What sample libraries are you loading and what are the specs of your computer?


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 11, 2016)

I'm pretty sure that the multiple v-frame approach is the best method, regardless of how many systems you're using. Does it make a difference if you select an audio track rather than a midi channel?


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

resound said:


> I am working with one computer just fine. What sample libraries are you loading and what are the specs of your computer?



cinebrass, cinestrings, and cinewinds (both core and pro bundles), drums of war, sound iron rust. using 2013 mac mini quad core 2.3 i7 w/ 16 gb ram, 480 gb ssd.


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

PeterBaumann said:


> I'm pretty sure that the multiple v-frame approach is the best method, regardless of how many systems you're using. Does it make a difference if you select an audio track rather than a midi channel?



sorry, but not quite sure what selecting an audio track rather than a midi channel would do. does that make a big difference?


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## resound (Jan 11, 2016)

With 16 gigs of RAM you are probably maxing out your system. I used to work on a similar Mac Mini but I recently upgrading to a Mac Pro with 32 gigs of RAM and I can load a lot more VIs now without getting cracks and pops. Like Peter said, it helps to keep an audio track in your template because of the way Logic operates. Basically, when you play your project with an instrument track selected, that instrument will be in "live" mode and will use up a lot more CPU, so selecting an audio track when playing back your project can help out your CPU.


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

resound said:


> With 16 gigs of RAM you are probably maxing out your system. I used to work on a similar Mac Mini but I recently upgrading to a Mac Pro with 32 gigs of RAM and I can load a lot more VIs now without getting cracks and pops. Like Peter said, it helps to keep an audio track in your template because of the way Logic operates. Basically, when you play your project with an instrument track selected, that instrument will be in "live" mode and will use up a lot more CPU, so selecting an audio track when playing back your project can help out your CPU.



i looked on activity monitor and it does look like about 13 out of the 16 available gb is being used by logic and vep, which i'm confused by because i made a point out of switching the preload buffer to minimum (6kb /s ) and if i look into kontact the samplers only tell me that no more than a couple gigabytes are being used.


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

and even when i purged absolutely all samples in vep the activity monitor still tells me that around 7gb is loaded. really confused by this.


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## resound (Jan 11, 2016)

You've got all of your instruments set up in one instance of VEPro using multiple channels within that instance. Try setting up each instrument in a separate instance of VEPro and see if that helps. That wouldn't explain the extra RAM being used but it may improve your performance.


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

resound said:


> You've got all of your instruments set up in one instance of VEPro using multiple channels within that instance. Try setting up each instrument in a separate instance of VEPro and see if that helps. That wouldn't explain the extra RAM being used but it may improve your performance.



ok thanks i'm gonna try multiple instances and see if that changes. do you have any idea why the extra ram is being used?


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## resound (Jan 11, 2016)

I could be wrong but I think Kontakt only displays how much is loaded into RAM in that instance, so you would have to add up the totals of each instance in your template which is likely a lot more.


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

resound said:


> I could be wrong but I think Kontakt only displays how much is loaded into RAM in that instance, so you would have to add up the totals of each instance in your template which is likely a lot more.


i added up all of the ram counts of each kontakt instance, and it's definitely well below 5gb. like 4gb at most


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

i tried the separate frame method, but now i get extremely high latency and no matter which channel i have selected every instrument gets triggered. also tons of hanging notes, and the cpu is idling even when nothing plays back


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

this is a screenshot. is there anything here i'm doing incorrectly?


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

i'm wondering whether activity monitor can't be trusted for this, because i don't even have a logic project open now and it says logic is using 4gb


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

is purging samples in kontakt not enough to free up ram? what i see in contact is not being reflected by the activity monitor so i'm not sure which to trust. should i be paying attention to compressed memory rather than just memory in the activity monitor? i heard somewhere that yosemite tends to use all the ram available even if it's not necessarily needed - so is that possibly why activity monitor says that there is more ram being used than what contact says?

And just because contact is saying that there is only 4gb or so loaded, could it be possible that that's only a theoretical number and that more memory is actually being used to load this much?


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 11, 2016)

resound said:


> With 16 gigs of RAM you are probably maxing out your system. I used to work on a similar Mac Mini but I recently upgrading to a Mac Pro with 32 gigs of RAM and I can load a lot more VIs now without getting cracks and pops. Like Peter said, it helps to keep an audio track in your template because of the way Logic operates. Basically, when you play your project with an instrument track selected, that instrument will be in "live" mode and will use up a lot more CPU, so selecting an audio track when playing back your project can help out your CPU.



is making sure that the "R" button is not highlighted enough to do this, or does a different audio track really need to be highlighted in order for this to happen?


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 12, 2016)

Noizmak3r said:


> this is a screenshot. is there anything here i'm doing incorrectly?


Try decoupling all your instances. there's a decouple all option in the 'connect' window. This might help.


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 12, 2016)

Noizmak3r said:


> is making sure that the "R" button is not highlighted enough to do this, or does a different audio track really need to be highlighted in order for this to happen?



I would turn off the I and R buttons, but don't know for sure if that would make a difference.


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## mc_deli (Jan 12, 2016)

It is crazy that there is not an easy to follow guide our there for VEPro and Logic X on one machine. (that's the first time I have seen the left hand side of the Vienna window look like that)

I have a 16GB rMBP. With my full orchestra of BWW, SSB, CinePerc core, VSL harp, CS2 and bits of Albions, Yosemite seems to keep the RAM just under max al the time. When I open a project it sometimes takes a few "plays" to get the CPU happy (especially if someone else is in the room!). I am using one metaframe and then one VEPro instance/project for each section/library. Then in Kontakt I have one instrument per Kontakt Instrument/channel - and do keyswitching using AG toolkit in the automation lane. Everything is purged and decoupled.

I also enable the on/off button in Logic so that I can disable folders/tracks/sections easily.
I am also nuts about auxes and their numbering so I have 24 at the start of the template for routing, grouping and FX. I think these use CPU so the on/off button is good here too.


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 13, 2016)

I read from somewhere on this forum that it's good to have separate vframes for each instrument (i.e. One for violin 1 , another for violin 2, etc) and not use auxes because logic handles it better that way. But I'm a little confused by that, because doesn't that defeat the purpose of using VEP since the main benefit of using it on just one computer is that it's supposed to spread processing over multiple cores even though there's just one instance of Kontakt being used (which logic doesn't do)?

If I am using this multiple v frame method on only one computer without a slave, would I actually be better off just loading separate Kontakt instances directly into logic?


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 13, 2016)

Noizmak3r said:


> I read from somewhere on this forum that it's good to have separate vframes for each instrument (i.e. One for violin 1 , another for violin 2, etc) and not use auxes because logic handles it better that way. But I'm a little confused by that, because doesn't that defeat the purpose of using VEP since the main benefit of using it on just one computer is that it's supposed to spread processing over multiple cores even though there's just one instance of Kontakt being used (which logic doesn't do)?
> 
> If I am using this multiple v frame method on only one computer without a slave, would I actually be better off just loading separate Kontakt instances directly into logic?


I think the main advantage of VEPro is that you can load your template in VEPro and then load up projects in a fraction of the time compared to saving all your Kontakt instances directly in Logic. That's what de-coupling is for


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 13, 2016)

mc_deli said:


> It is crazy that there is not an easy to follow guide our there for VEPro and Logic X on one machine. (that's the first time I have seen the left hand side of the Vienna window look like that)
> 
> I have a 16GB rMBP. With my full orchestra of BWW, SSB, CinePerc core, VSL harp, CS2 and bits of Albions, Yosemite seems to keep the RAM just under max al the time. When I open a project it sometimes takes a few "plays" to get the CPU happy (especially if someone else is in the room!). I am using one metaframe and then one VEPro instance/project for each section/library. Then in Kontakt I have one instrument per Kontakt Instrument/channel - and do keyswitching using AG toolkit in the automation lane. Everything is purged and decoupled.
> 
> ...


Are you using auxes within these vep instances? Do you use event input at all?


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 13, 2016)

PeterBaumann said:


> I think the main advantage of VEPro is that you can load your template in VEPro and then load up projects in a fraction of the time compared to saving all your Kontakt instances directly in Logic. That's what de-coupling is for




The preserve function is definitely great, But as far as processing performance is concerned, is there not any benefit in using vep on the same computer?


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## resound (Jan 13, 2016)

You don't need auxes if you are using multiple VEPro instances because you already have instruments on separate instrument tracks in Logic. The only reason you might need auxes is for instance if you have a "Percussion" instance of VEPro with multiple instruments and for some reason you needed to process different instruments in that instance with different types of plugins.

The benefit of using VEPro on a single computer is that when you close and open different projects in Logic, VEPro keeps all of your samples loaded so that you don't have to reload the same samples every time you open a new project.


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 13, 2016)

resound said:


> You don't need auxes if you are using multiple VEPro instances because you already have instruments on separate instrument tracks in Logic. The only reason you might need auxes is for instance if you have a "Percussion" instance of VEPro with multiple instruments and for some reason you needed to process different instruments in that instance with different types of plugins.
> 
> The benefit of using VEPro on a single computer is that when you close and open different projects in Logic, VEPro keeps all of your samples loaded so that you don't have to reload the same samples every time you open a new project.



but does it help at all with the actual performance efficiency since it's instances can do multi core better?


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## resound (Jan 13, 2016)

Yes, I noticed a big difference when I started using VEPro. I have no way to "measure" it, but it just made my setup run a lot smoother with the same amount or more instruments loaded.


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 13, 2016)

resound said:


> Yes, I noticed a big difference when I started using VEPro. I have no way to "measure" it, but it just made my setup run a lot smoother with the same amount or more instruments loaded.


Ok cool thanks. And when you're using that many instances, how many cores do you allocate to each one in VEP? Or do you just leave it at whatever the default is?


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 13, 2016)

also when you're using separate instances, would you for example put all violin articulation patches into one vep / kontakt instance, or do you even have a separate instance for each articulation?


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 13, 2016)

Noizmak3r said:


> also when you're using separate instances, would you for example put all violin articulation patches into one vep / kontakt instance, or do you even have a separate instance for each articulation?


I put all articulations in separate kontakt/play instances within one VEPro instance.


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 13, 2016)

PeterBaumann said:


> I put all articulations in separate kontakt/play instances within one VEPro instance.



sorry i'm a little confused, i thought you said you used multiple vepro instances


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 13, 2016)

PeterBaumann said:


> I put all articulations in separate kontakt/play instances within one VEPro instance.



so within one ve pro instance you have like 80 or so kontakt instances, and each of them only contains one articulation?


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 13, 2016)

Noizmak3r said:


> sorry i'm a little confused, i thought you said you used multiple vepro instances


Sorry I meant all of violin 1 articulations, not all articulations. Then another vepro instance for violin 2 etc.


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 13, 2016)

oh ok so you have multiple v frames and they each represent a different orchestral instrument with all of it's articulations loaded up into that v frame?


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 13, 2016)

Noizmak3r said:


> oh ok so you have multiple v frames and they each represent a different orchestral instrument with all of it's articulations loaded up into that v frame?


Yep. I put them in separate kontakt/play instances rather than all in one kontakt instance. Don't know if this makes a difference or not


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 13, 2016)

PeterBaumann said:


> Yep. I put them in separate kontakt/play instances rather than all in one kontakt instance. Don't know if this makes a difference or not



do you do that because vep doesn't spread one instance of kontakt or play on multiple cores, or is it just easier to keep track of that way?


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## mc_deli (Jan 13, 2016)

Noizmak3r said:


> Are you using auxes within these vep instances? Do you use event input at all?



Event input - no
Multiport template - no
Auxes in VEPro - no
Auxes as multitimbral midi tracks in logic - yes

How you want to handle articulations is probably the deciding factor in how you set up


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 13, 2016)

mc_deli said:


> Event input - no
> Multiport template - no
> Auxes in VEPro - no
> Auxes as multitimbral midi tracks in logic - yes
> ...


How many cores do you allocate to each vframes?


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 14, 2016)

Noizmak3r said:


> do you do that because vep doesn't spread one instance of kontakt or play on multiple cores, or is it just easier to keep track of that way?


I think it was just what people had recommended for me. I'm not sure why in terms of system performance, sorry. When I get a chance (maybe later today depending on how much free time I have), I might do an experiment with my slave and master setup with different templates of strings, and I'll post results on here when I get the chance


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 14, 2016)

While people may have their preferences as to how they like to work, in my extensive testing with this, it is "settled science." 

For the best performance:
Separate v-frames for each instrument with either 1 instance of Play or Kontakt or Engine, etc. containing a keyswitching multiple articulation patch or individual multiple articulation patches (or combos of both, depending on the library, each connected to a single stereo instance of the VE Pro server in Logic Pro. You can use either multiple MIDI channel tracks or an articulation switcher like the SKiSwitcher 2,AG Toolkit Pro, or Art Conductor.


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 14, 2016)

EastWest Lurker said:


> While people may have their preferences as to how they like to work, in my extensive testing with this, it is "settled science."
> 
> For the best performance:
> Separate v-frames for each instrument with either 1 instance of Play or Kontakt or Engine, etc. containing a keyswitching multiple articulation patch or individual multiple articulation patches (or combos of both, depending on the library, each connected to a single stereo instance of the VE Pro server in Logic Pro. You can use either multiple MIDI channel tracks or an articulation switcher like the SKiSwitcher 2,AG Toolkit Pro, or Art Conductor.


What would you use for smaller perc instruments (ie. Stormdrum 2), would you load just one perc instrument per V-frame, or treat them as articulations?


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 14, 2016)

Treat them as articulations.


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## Luke W (Jan 14, 2016)

EastWest Lurker said:


> ...each connected to a single stereo instance of the VE Pro server in Logic Pro. You can use either multiple MIDI channel tracks or an articulation switcher like the SKiSwitcher 2,AG Toolkit Pro, or Art Conductor.



Wait - I think I just learned something new. Am I reading this correctly: an alternative to an articulation switcher is to load individual artic patches of the same instrument into one VE instance, let them all output to the same audio output, but let them be separate midi channels/tracks? In Logic, I won't do any keyswitching - just switch tracks for each artic - but I won't have to mess with adding auxes. All the audio will arrive in one channel in Logic.

And this is in keeping with the understanding that Logic handles many multiple VE Pro instances much better than fewer multiport instances? The strain on Logic only occurs when you have multiple AUDIO outputs coming from a single instances, but not multiple MIDI channels?


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 14, 2016)

EastWest Lurker said:


> Treat them as articulations.


So the way I have it at the moment for them is V-frame --> Play instance x 16 (max) each with one Stormdrum 2 instrument loaded, and then connected to logic via mutli-timbral, because I often want to use more than one of the instruments in the v-frame at once. Is this wrong then?


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 14, 2016)

No that is fine for percussion.


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 14, 2016)

Luke W said:


> Wait - I think I just learned something new. Am I reading this correctly: an alternative to an articulation switcher is to load individual artic patches of the same instrument into one VE instance, let them all output to the same audio output, but let them be separate midi channels/tracks? In Logic, I won't do any keyswitching - just switch tracks for each artic - but I won't have to mess with adding auxes. All the audio will arrive in one channel in Logic.
> 
> And this is in keeping with the understanding that Logic handles many multiple VE Pro instances much better than fewer multiport instances? The strain on Logic only occurs when you have multiple AUDIO outputs coming from a single instances, but not multiple MIDI channels?



All correct.


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 14, 2016)

EastWest Lurker said:


> While people may have their preferences as to how they like to work, in my extensive testing with this, it is "settled science."
> 
> For the best performance:
> Separate v-frames for each instrument with either 1 instance of Play or Kontakt or Engine, etc. containing a keyswitching multiple articulation patch or individual multiple articulation patches (or combos of both, depending on the library, each connected to a single stereo instance of the VE Pro server in Logic Pro. You can use either multiple MIDI channel tracks or an articulation switcher like the SKiSwitcher 2,AG Toolkit Pro, or Art Conductor.


Is there a benefit to doing it with one instance fully loaded of play vs up to 16 individual play instances within a v-frame (each with one articulation)?


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 14, 2016)

PeterBaumann said:


> Is there a benefit to doing it with one instance fully loaded of play vs up to 16 individual play instances within a v-frame (each with one articulation)?


 I think so, but I see no advantage to doing it the other way. It has to eat up more resources I would think.


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 14, 2016)

EastWest Lurker said:


> Yes.


Ah, looks like I'm doing it wrong then :(


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 14, 2016)

Well, certainly there can be variations, depending on the nature of the library/instrument. But as a guiding principle, think of it the way you would think of a score page.


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## Noizmak3r (Jan 14, 2016)

EastWest Lurker said:


> While people may have their preferences as to how they like to work, in my extensive testing with this, it is "settled science."
> 
> For the best performance:
> Separate v-frames for each instrument with either 1 instance of Play or Kontakt or Engine, etc. containing a keyswitching multiple articulation patch or individual multiple articulation patches (or combos of both, depending on the library, each connected to a single stereo instance of the VE Pro server in Logic Pro. You can use either multiple MIDI channel tracks or an articulation switcher like the SKiSwitcher 2,AG Toolkit Pro, or Art Conductor.



If I have 8 virtual cores and 30 or more v frames, how many cores do I need to allocate to each v frame?


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 14, 2016)

You don't actually allocate cores, you allocate "threads" , not quite the same thing. I leave it at two per v-frame and that seems to work really well.


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## mc_deli (Jan 14, 2016)

Noizmak3r said:


> How many cores do you allocate to each vframes?


2 (threads)
What he said ^ x1000


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 14, 2016)

EastWest Lurker said:


> You don't actually allocate cores, you allocate "threads" , not quite the same thing. I leave it at two per v-frame and that seems to work really well.


on both host and slave?


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## EastWest Lurker (Jan 14, 2016)

PeterBaumann said:


> on both host and slave?


Yes.


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 15, 2016)

Do you keep to the default 16 midi ports, 21 audio I/Os?


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 15, 2016)

Just doing a new template now, fortunately I wanted to try some new articulations from HS that I hadn't been using in my current template so I was going to do this anyway. CPU usage with 2 V-frames with 16 instruments (connected to host on 2 stereo channels) uses between 0.8 and 2 percent CPU according to my task manager CPU meter.

One major difference I've noticed is that play's reload time is vastly increased doing it this way, rather than doing it with multiple instances of play within a v-frame. It used to take less than a second per articulation, now it takes about 30-40 seconds per V-frame, but then the actual loading seems a bit quicker, but I think overall it might be slower this way to load a template. I'll have to time it later.


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 16, 2016)

mc_deli said:


> Event input - no
> Multiport template - no
> Auxes in VEPro - no
> Auxes as multitimbral midi tracks in logic - yes
> ...


Is there a benefit to doing it this way rather than just having several multi timbral tracks (not as auxes)?


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## mc_deli (Jan 16, 2016)

PeterBaumann said:


> Is there a benefit to doing it this way rather than just having several multi timbral tracks (not as auxes)?


Advantages and disadvantages.
If you make a multitimbral set of midi tracks using "Create software instrument > Select e.g. Kontakt 16x stereo > Click the plus in the mixer window > Click Create track in the mixer window" - then you get midi tracks that are numbered as auxes - the big advantage is that you can add plug ins to each individual track, and use individual track mutes, solos, vol etc.

The big disadvantage is that you can't use e.g. AG toolkit scripter because the track type doesn't support the automation type.

If you make multitimbral midi tracks from the menu Create track > Software instrument > Check the box e.g. 16x multitimbral then you get the track type that does work with AG Toolkit etc. but does not give you individual solo, mute, vol.

For me it makes sense to:
- Use the "aux / click plus" type for e.g. Omnisphere, piano multis etc etc that don't need artic switching where you want to add plug ins on each track - and these probably are not in VE Pro.
- Use the "basic multi" type for VE Pro "template" orch instruments that need artic switching but have the vol/pan etc- all set in Kontakt/VEPro.

In the latter case you need to enable the On/Off button (EDIT: so you can e.g. mute individual tracks) - and remember that you need to lock the screenset you are working on to keep the On/Off buttons in the track header.


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## PeterBaumann (Jan 16, 2016)

mc_deli said:


> Advantages and disadvantages.
> If you make a multitimbral set of midi tracks using "Create software instrument > Select e.g. Kontakt 16x stereo > Click the plus in the mixer window > Click Create track in the mixer window" - then you get midi tracks that are numbered as auxes - the big advantage is that you can add plug ins to each individual track, and use individual track mutes, solos, vol etc.
> 
> The big disadvantage is that you can't use e.g. AG toolkit scripter because the track type doesn't support the automation type.
> ...


Thanks. The only instruments I'm using this sort of setup for is not articulation switching instruments, rather the smaller percussion patches, so for instance, I have orchestral drums in one multi. I think I'll probably set it up as a normal multi-timbral, as I don't particularly need the ability to individually add effects to them. All I need really is the initial reverb settings (which is fine to be grouped for me). I used to have these as Auxes, but found that I was hitting my aux limit of 256 or something, because I had all my Ghostwriter guitars and drumkits and things like that in similar setups, which quickly adds up.


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