What's new

VEPro with Logic routing...?

Well yeah, I know what it *is*, but this was ten years ago and I've forgotten the details. They were also coming out with different versions at the time, I think more than one plug-in...

Anyway, you use it, so I'll take your word for it over my own.
 
Hey all,

I'm giving this a bump because I'm following the advice here but feel I must surely be doing something wrong.

Is this really the right way? A single instance of VEPro for every instance of Kontakt each holding a single instrument, as follows?

Having each instrument with a separate audio out, a separately controllable volume, and separate control with MIDI Scripter is very important to me... if this is the only way to achieve that, I'll go ahead. Just thought it was weird that this thread seems to recommend NOT loading instruments up into one Kontakt since Pro Tools can work that way just fine...

Screen Shot 2019-02-02 at 7.27.57 PM.png
 
Hey all,

I'm giving this a bump because I'm following the advice here but feel I must surely be doing something wrong.

Is this really the right way? A single instance of VEPro for every instance of Kontakt each holding a single instrument, as follows?

Having each instrument with a separate audio out, a separately controllable volume, and separate control with MIDI Scripter is very important to me... if this is the only way to achieve that, I'll go ahead. Just thought it was weird that this thread seems to recommend NOT loading instruments up into one Kontakt since Pro Tools can work that way just fine...

Screen Shot 2019-02-02 at 7.27.57 PM.png

If you want complete control over each track, then this is the way to go. Until Logic supports VST3, this is the only way. In Cubase, you can actually route each instrument separately, so you can load up each instance.
 
Hey all,

I'm giving this a bump because I'm following the advice here but feel I must surely be doing something wrong.

Is this really the right way? A single instance of VEPro for every instance of Kontakt each holding a single instrument, as follows?

Having each instrument with a separate audio out, a separately controllable volume, and separate control with MIDI Scripter is very important to me... if this is the only way to achieve that, I'll go ahead. Just thought it was weird that this thread seems to recommend NOT loading instruments up into one Kontakt since Pro Tools can work that way just fine...

Screen Shot 2019-02-02 at 7.27.57 PM.png

This is why I said goodbye to Logic.
 
Is this really the right way? A single instance of VEPro for every instance of Kontakt each holding a single instrument, as follows?

Its not totally clear to me what your question is, but it is definitely possible to operate LogicPro without a separate instance for each instrument. I personally do not like to work that way with one instance per instrument, though I know some others do.

There are several different ways to setup multi-timbral instruments in LPX. At the very least, the VEPro plugin can handle 16 channels...which you can send to a single instance of VEPro, and in that VEP instance you could have 16 channel strips with a different instrument on each one.

However, yes...in that case there is no way around the fact that if you want to use Logic Scripter, you have have to funnel all 16 channels of midi through a single script. Which means the script has to be more complex in order to handle multiple channels at the same time. All doable, but more complicated in the scripting.

If you want a separate script for each separate instrument sound, then there is no other way but use a separate Vepro instance for each one.
 
Well not entirely true, you could also perhaps put different scripts one after the other on the midifx channel strip, where one script handles channel 1, the next script handles channel2, etc.. So in that way you could have a different distinct script for each midi channel...and they all feed into one VEP plugin instrument, which could then send to a single VEP instance handling 16 different channel strips and instruments... but I'm not sure what limitations there are in terms of maximum number of midifx on any particular channel strip in LPX.
 
Could anybody explain me the reason to use VEPro with Logic? I’m thinking to move to Logic from Cubase. One of the reasons - people told me it’s optimized for mac very good and also I don’t want to use stupid USB keys. Great. I thought I won’t need VEPro. This was partially proved by Christian Henson youtube video, where he said he doesn’t use one and don’t see a big reason.
I understand that with VEPro it’ll be possible to open more tracks/plugins etc. BUT, how much? Did anybody tried to compare? Does it actually worth it? Spending money on VEPro and be able to open a bit more channels? Bouncing doesn’t exist anymore? And I understand if you have a very old computer, but with new ones…
Anybody?
 
Could anybody explain me the reason to use VEPro with Logic?...

If nothing else, the speed of opening, closing, and saving sessions/cues based on "mega" templates. Mine is about 800 tracks - all separate VIs - and it runs on a MacBook Pro with just 16 GB RAM, thanks to a couple slaves running VEP.

As for the routing issue, I've talked about it so many times over the years here - I wish I had saved links to the threads. For me, I've had great success NOT doing the 1 VEP instance per plugin approach, but rather, 16-channel multis, each with a different instrument on each MIDI channel. I also don't use any multi-outs, auxes, etc. - just a simple stereo out instance of each VEP plugin.

Since my template is almost entirely orchestral stuff, it's all premixed in VEP so I have no need to "mix" each part using Logic's channel faders. Tons of advantages to doing it this way, IMO...
 
I've had great success NOT doing the 1 VEP instance per plugin approach, but rather, 16-channel multis, each with a different instrument on each MIDI channel.
Based on your posts, I've done the same and it works well for me. I have a template of 300+ mostly disabled tracks and loading it up takes a minute. (I timed it just now, it takes exactly 1:03). I'm using Logic and VEP on the same machine. No auxes, etc, just bounce each track in place.
 
I've started building out my VEP template. So far it has 86 instances of VEP and no bussing/post-processing yet, but I timed opening it up and it only took 12 seconds - for almost a hundred instruments and 30GB of samples. I'll gladly take that over the minute-plus it took me to fully load 16GB sessions on my MBP before doing the Mac-PC-VEP setup.
 
I've started building out my VEP template. So far it has 86 instances of VEP and no bussing/post-processing yet, but I timed opening it up and it only took 12 seconds - for almost a hundred instruments and 30GB of samples. I'll gladly take that over the minute-plus it took me to fully load 16GB sessions on my MBP before doing the Mac-PC-VEP setup.

It's definitely a time-saver. In terms of routing, I have done a hybrid of what you described and Jim described. For example, with CSS and CSB, I host each instrument in its own VEP instance - so I have an instance for V1, V2, Solo Horn, 4 Horns, etc. But when I used LASS, I created a multi for 'Violins 1' that had a Kontakt multi with 8 or 9 instruments - one articulation per MIDI channel. And still got good results with that.

The biggest problem I have with VEP 6 is the tabs get unwieldy when you have dozens of instances. But the performance gain is tremendous. You can build a fairly massive array of instruments, all purged, and switch from project to project very quickly. VEP 6 is a lot faster than VEP 5 for this - it seems the 'connect / disconnect' takes a lot less time.

PS - Not sure if you are also running VEP on your MBP, but you can host locally too and it basically shifts the CPU burden outside Logic to give you even more headroom.
 
The biggest problem I have with VEP 6 is the tabs get unwieldy when you have dozens of instances. But the performance gain is tremendous...VEP 6 is a lot faster than VEP 5 for this - it seems the 'connect / disconnect' takes a lot less time...

Very interesting Marc! I'm still on 5 because I hate the interface of 6 by comparison - but you have me intrigued by the performance increase!
 
Very interesting Marc! I'm still on 5 because I hate the interface of 6 by comparison - but you have me intrigued by the performance increase!

Hey Jim, this was actually one of the first things I noticed when I upgraded to version 6. In version 5, when I closed Logic (or changed to a different project), I would watch slowly as each instance would disconnect. It was like 1 instance per second, which can add up.

In version 6, the disconnect happens MUCH faster, so you can change projects with barely an interruption. However... when you shutdown the server host, it takes a moment to go through each instance and unload all of the plugins (audio engine?) at that time.

To me, it looks like they decoupled the connect / disconnect process from the plugin load / unload. In version 5, I think both steps might have happened during disconnect. But that's just a guess on my part...

I am still new to VEP 6, but happy with the performance improvements. I agree that the interface is more difficult to manage when you have a larger template. I liked the old 'list of instances' view.
 
However, yes...in that case there is no way around the fact that if you want to use Logic Scripter, you have have to funnel all 16 channels of midi through a single script. Which means the script has to be more complex in order to handle multiple channels at the same time. All doable, but more complicated in the scripting.
This discussion of scripter and VEP got me wondering about @Peter Schwartz 's ARTzID--

If you funnel 16 channels of midi, and let's say they are all Cinematic Studio Strings, through one instance of ARTzID, would that work or would the overlapping articulations cause some kind of conflict?

Currently I'm using @NoamL 's Thanos script for Logic with CSS to compensate for the legato delays, but I think there is a conflict when I use one instance of scripter for multiple instances, and so I've had to use the separate tracks mentioned in the discussion above.
 
Could anybody explain me the reason to use VEPro with Logic?

In addition to what Jim said - although I work differently (I use far fewer tracks) - it uses computer resources really efficiently. If you have slave computers, it also saves you the expense and bother of having separate audio and MIDI interfaces on them.

But it's not like you can't run a large template in Logic without it. You certainly can.
 
This discussion of scripter and VEP got me wondering about @Peter Schwartz 's ARTzID--

If you funnel 16 channels of midi, and let's say they are all Cinematic Studio Strings, through one instance of ARTzID, would that work or would the overlapping articulations cause some kind of conflict?

No, no conflicts. If I were asked to develop such a script, it would be quite easy to avoid any kind of conflicts.

As an aside... Generally speaking, I don't see much benefit in creating a single instance of Kontakt (or VEPro or whatever) and trying to funnel a million channel's worth of MIDI into it just for the sake of supposed "efficiency". This is true for the various Cinematic libraries and others too. Now, having said that...

Not every instrument in a project or template needs to be individualized like that. There are plenty of situations where it makes perfect sense to combine patches/articulations into the same instance of (whatever). For example, combining Core and Decorative palettes + a bunch of individual articulations from a Spitfire string library into the same plugin or VEPro Instance makes perfect sense. By using ARTz•ID (or even Articulation Sets, if you're willing to put in the work) you can play all of those articulations on the same track from the same plugin "shell". But when it comes to combining all of the instruments of a particular family into the same shell, such as strings, woodwinds, brass, etc., I don't believe it's worth the trouble or technical nightmare that results from the exercise.
 
Following this thread with great interest, but having one question for you:

I´m using Logic and VE PRO 6 together on one Mac Pro (12 Core, 3,46GHz, 128GB Ram).
I´ve organized my VE Pro Rig in 12 Instances with Multi-Instruments each containing 16 Channels of Audio-Instruments and 2 Buffers Latency.
All the mixing gets processed in VE Pro, so Logic only has to deal with 12 Stereo Audiostreams
and the MIDI.
Everything runs smoothly at 256 Samples Latency.

But:

I´m experiencing massive Drop-Outs, Crackle and Midi-Issues when opening and using an additional Kontakt SingleChannel Instance directly in Logic alongside the VE Pro PlugIns.

This has nothing to do with the the Latency, I tested it with Maximum Latency in Logic and got the same behaviour.
Do any of you know, what could be the issue here?
Am I forced to open every additional audio-instrument in VE Pro when using it in conjunction with Logic?

Thanks for the help...
 
Top Bottom