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Question about mixing in audio vs. midi

Just a little side note. I'm just ramping up with VePro, but one of the things I've messed around with a lot is the ET score mockup from VSL's website, as a way to see what VEpro is capable of (and all the VSL instruments). In theory it should work perfectly, though I had to take their midi file and create an LPX project, they originally made it for Cubase.

It generally sounds fantastic, but recently I started noticing some weird notes dropping out and I started looking at it more deeply and figured out something was screwy with overlapping legato notes..it was not reproducing them correctly....it would drop the second and third notes entirely and weird stuff like that. I do not know if ViPro, or VePro, or LogicPro...or some other Pro...is responsible for the problem....I haven't had time to dig into it with a microscope, but I plan to eventually. I have it running on top of my multiport macro template also, which could also be the culrpit, but something funny is going on there.

Its also interesting that Cubase is dropping NoteOff's on channelized events..would like to hear more about that project Henu. Were you using expression maps for the channelizing or separate cubase tracks for each articulation? I'm working through my own Articulation Script in LogicPro and basically one of the issues that came up is for channelizing, its not always easy to make sure the NoteOff's go to the same channel as the NoteOn's. Especially when there are overlapping notes. I've worked through it reasonably well in my own LogicPro script, but no idea what Cubase does to make sure the NoteOff events are channelized also through an expression map, or why the problem would be intermittent.

Anyway, we are dealing with rather complicated setups for this kind of work, and everyone has slightly different workflows, so sometimes its really hard to diagnose what might be happening.
 
The advantage to bouncing to audio is that you know your sessions will open up 20 years from now, when all the MIDI instruments you have today will be gone, your computers will be dead and gone, etc.

I rarely do it.
 
Yes indeed but apart from that I find it much easier to mix with audio tracks rather than midi for several reasons. It also suits the way I learned to mix, in particular orchestral material, and it fits well with my established workflow. Now maybe this old dog needs to learn some new (midi) tricks but I'd rather keep doing it that way rather than have to change because of some software glitch!

However if I can't trust the rendering process at this stage then I'll never be able to bounce even the final version to audio, which must be done eventually! Unless I actually record the output from Logic in some other way outside of the programme..

I'm trying to change the streaming settings within Play as there's some suggestion that that can make a difference. Will try it out and report back.
 
this sounds like a solvable problem. Need to figure out why the bounced tracks sound different and perhaps adjust workflow. I tend to doubt this is a bug in LPX, but never know.
 
No I don't think it's a Logic issue, at least not on its own, because as I said this didn't happen when I was doing everything within Logic.

I tried adjusting the streaming setting in Play to the max (which means little or no streaming from disc) but that doesn't seem to allow the midi to play properly, at least that ostinato does not play smoothly at that setting. I have a decent SSD on the slave so streaming shouldn't really be an issue anyway. However it was mentioned previously on the other forum as a possible fix for this sort of problem.
 
Dewdman42 said:
Its also interesting that Cubase is dropping NoteOff's on channelized events..would like to hear more about that project Henu. Were you using expression maps for the channelizing or separate cubase tracks for each articulation?
Click to expand...

Yep, expression maps. I have all my articulations on different midi channels inside Kontakt which works marvellously with pretty much any other library but Berlin Woodwinds- particularly Bassoon 1 from the new Revive being the worst offender. It screams NoteOff for me, but yet I'm still to figure out why it's so random instead of happening all the time.
 
As a test, you can save your Play instruments, download and install Play 6 and open the saved instruments in Play 6 to see if it works. If it doesn’t, uninstall Play 6 and reinstall Play 5.
As I recall, I had the experience that Play 6 works better then Play 5, when I updated long time ago...

When I work with audio files- the mix/ mastering, I open a new Logic session and import al audio files. It is one more work step, but for me it makes it more easy to overview.
 
Thanks Ole. I figure I'm going to have to bite the bullet and update Play to see if that improves things. So if I save the instruments separately to the ones already installed, that should save the adjustments I have made to things like the overall levels (within Play), marcato sample volumes etc. as well? I really don't want to lose all those settings, thus my hesitation. Also, I have been updating Play through the Installation Centre for the last few years so I don't have a separately downloaded version of 5 and they no longer have it available on their support page, only 4 and I don't want to have to go back to that. So unless there's some way to revert within the Installation Centre (pretty sure there isn't) it looks like updating would be a one-way-street for me. Another reason I am nervous to go there mid-project. Looks like I'm running out of choices though..
 
I hope it will work well! Let us know....
By the way, have you contacted Lorenz (moderator) at East west forum, he is experienced and helpful....
 
I've posted on the support forum there which he and others frequent but so far no-one has replied. I'll do this update and if that doesn't solve the issue I'll maybe contact him directly. Will certainly report back once I've updated.

Actually I've since discovered that I do have a copy of the installer for Play 5.0.6, the latest version so between that and a back-up of the VEPro server project for my template, I should be covered in case I do need to revert.
 
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Well the update seems to have gone fine in that it preserved all the settings within my template. It hasn't entirely solved the problem though. The recordings I'm getting of that track are certainly closer to the sound of the midi than they were but now there is sometimes a difference between the simple playback of that track and the playback of the same track while I'm recording it to an audio track, or if I do a realtime bounce with that track soloed. All offline bouncing including bounce-in-place and track freezing are a no-no with notes being cut off all the time. I imagine this is to do with the whole slave/VEPro/Logic setup - it seemingly can only process a recording in real time. At least with Play anyway.

I've done multiple tests and tried all sorts of variations - you know the drill! - and I've had most success in terms of the audio accurately replicating the midi by raising the sample cache setting in Play by one (to a setting of 3) and then doing a realtime bounce with the oboe track soloed. It seems to be a bit random though. Sometimes it works fine and other times the midi doesn't sound right, even when just playing back, no recording or bouncing. It goes a bit out of time or almost drops a note or whatever. This didn't happen with Play 5 during simple playback which seemed more reliable. I'm not going to revert to 5 though as I think the full solution to all this is not really to do with the Play version as such. Quite what it is remains a mystery for now though. I'll do more testing tomorrow but I may end up having to compromise and accept a 'good enough' rendering on some tracks. Not ideal though.

Thanks for all the support and encouragement guys. Appreciated.
 
I have play and vep. If you want to send me a simple LPX project that exhibits this I will try to replicate it here
 
Thanks Dewdman. I’ll do that tomorrow once I see how it all performs again. Yeah it would be great to get to the root of this.
 
I agree, it has to work perfectly.
Is it al libraries you are experiencing this problem or only one, ex. like woodwinds?
Just a thought, do you have windows defender scanning drives turned on?
Also do you have firewall on Mac turned on?
 
Just getting back to this now. You're both right, any compromise is not really acceptable.

I will check the other libraries and instruments. I will also check what's running on both computers in terms of security, including what you have mentioned Ole. I will report back once I've looked into all this. Thanks again.
 
Been testing things out extensively for hours. I'll try and summarise what I've found - it seems pretty strange, to me anyway.

First of all, I have both the firewall on the Mac turned on and Microsoft Security Essentials running on the PC. The firewall was configured correctly as far as I know when I was setting up VEPro however I did turn it off, as well as MSE and also disconnected both machines from the internet. It made no difference. Windows Defender is turned off by default.

Now the audio recording is sounding the same as the midi. However the weirdness I've discovered is that the problem seems to occur only with legato patches. It's the same with multiple instruments across the different sections within Hollywood Orchestra. What's even more weird is the track plays back and records fine only if it (the midi track) is selected. If I have another track selected while playing it back, then it plays back all wrong. That's whether I select a midi or an audio track. This happens 99% of the time, i.e. occasionally it plays back ok with another track selected.

Here is what I'm talking about. The first example was recorded with the midi track selected while the second one was with the audio track I was recording to selected.





I repeat, the only difference between both recordings was which track was selected. I've confirmed that this happens in the current Logic project, in a new project based on my template and also in a completely new project, i.e. not a template and with absolutely nothing added except one midi track with VEPro on it in order to connect to the server on the PC, the oboe track imported from my project and one audio track so that I can select it for testing. I did not use any scripters on the midi track so no ARTZid. I'm exhausted now but tomorrow I might try it on the empty project with a track created from scratch rather than imported. I'll also try it with a new Server project because in all these tests I used the same Server project as I use for the main template.

Now maybe this makes sense to someone but I have to admit I'm baffled. Officially.

Edit: I've fixed those two tracks so that they play properly now. They are louder and they start straight away. Apologies, should have done that earlier.
 
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I'm away from my studio and the bit you recorded is too low volume to hear on my computer speakers so I can't comment about the recording

Do you have the Event Input plugin being used by any chance?

In LogicPro audio prefs try changing the multithreaded parameter to "Playback".

without seeing your project its difficult to diagnose.
 
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