Blue Cat DP Meter Pro Providing Hi Resolution External Metering

[ibanman555]

Hey All,

I have been exploring ways of adding external meters to my existing 32 channel control surface that does not provide metering itself. My controllers are connected to Pro Tools 10 via the HUI protocol. As you may or may not know, HUI sends MIDI messages for metering, but only 13 steps of it. For some that would be sufficient, but I am looking for a way to provide a higher resolution meter. This is where DP Meter Pro comes in!!

I've recently been introduced to DP Meter Pro, and I find it extremely versatile. It's interface is brilliant, and most importantly, it is able to output MIDI data (passed through a MIDI channel) to my external hardware providing what appears to be 128 steps of metering MIDI data!!! This is what I've been dreaming of!

There are some setbacks that maybe can be explored, however. Firstly, I feel that inserting 32 instances of this plugin will be very taxing on memory and processing. The plug in seems fairly demanding itself. I am running on a current high speed processor and 64GB of memory, but I don't know how that would go for extended periods of time. If I wanted to output 32 *stereo* meters for my controller, that is alot of midi data being sent. I will be testing this soon, just to see if even my CPU and handle it.

Secondly, I would need to open just as many MIDI tracks to route the metering data per channel. That would be 64 tracks total. Here is one of my questions regarding this situation... Is it even possible to add a feature to this plug in where I could directly output the midi data to a MIDI Port outputting to my external hardware?? This would eliminate the need to route through an additional Midi Track.

Is there another plugin (either RTAS or AAX) made my BCA that would provide me simply with MIDI output of a channel meter or data, that would demand less processing power?

I sense that this all is a bit overkill for metering, but it's really what I am aiming for. I have tried so many different methods and plugins, but I haven't gotten as close as I have, until trying this one. There are a few simple MIDI meter and MIDI OUT plugins in VST format out there, but Pro Tools doesn't do well with 'wrapped' VST's.

I'm intersted in anyone's thoughts about this, or from the BCA people themselves regarding a possible "upgrade" I'll be riding this plugin for a while however, it's magic!!

[Blue Cat Audio]

Thanks for the feedback. We are glad that the plug-in is helping you with your control surface. Not so many people use it in such a way (even if we posted a video about this just for fun some time ago, see below)!

Since you are using the plug-in for display purposes, you may want to reduce the output data rate in the global settings. This will produce less MIDI data, so it might improve performance a bit. Also, please make sure that you disable histograms to reduce the amount of CPU used by the plug-in.

Using a direct MIDI connection inside the plug-in is indeed an idea we are thinking about, but it is not in the plans yet, as we want to avoid conflicts with the host application.

DP Meter Pro driving a control surface

[ibanman555]

Thanks for the tips. I will try adjusting these settings and experiment more with it. I'm also glad to hear the idea of porting midi from the plug in is there. I do find it valuable for me and probably for others, but I understand there are limitations. None-the-less, looking forward to it if you choose to add the feature.