I can't be that stupid - can I ?

[virtual_mike]

Being new to this forum, I don't want to make a big splash and all, but would somebody tell me how in the world would someones Windows OS would know about a MOUNTED filesystem on a Linux box without either NFS ($$), Samba, or some other client-server file system sharing software running on both machines? Does any of Receptors installers provide for such a thing? Pianodano, can you see a new network drive that WASN'T there before you hooked things up and installed software? I mean, does Receptor load a filesharing server on startup and does the wrapper have a client element that magically knows to a) scan local drives b) open a file share client temporarily c) scan a mounted file system on Receptor for new plug ins d) do something with them and last and certainly not least e) shut itself down so the user doesn't see a new network share in "My Computer" on the DAW. Maybe everything I know about networking and sys admin is getting ready to go up in smoke, but I would truly love to hear how the feat of loading or seeing vsts across Ethernet is accomplished without software on both sides to enable that sort of functionality. Thanks for your time!

[CrownRoyal]

Well CrownRoyal,
Seeing as to how you unlike me, (remember the title of this thread is "am I that stupid or what?" were able to learn everything there was to know about it before you bought yours, I am having a hard time understanding why you have to spend so much time talking with them at home after hours and all trying to keep yours working. If you could be so kind, maybe you could just point me to where you learned on the Muse site that uniwire wasn't
in it. And also if you would'nt mind, how about were you learned on the Muse site that Receptor runs "standard windows VST's, but not exactly, or do I need someones private number to learn that?

I really appreciate the help.

Danny

Also, I haven't "learned all there is to know about it", I'm learning, it's a conituing process. Is it why I asking them. I knew BEFORE I bought my Receptor that UniWire was coming but not released. Did you ask anyone how they're using UniWire? If so, you would've got a response that said, "UniWire has been announced but not released". If you can't wait a month for UniWire, well, you're out of luck.

I'm frustrated that I've got some kind of buggy hardware glitch OR self-inflicted setup problem. They can't control that. They can help, though. I've asked myself why I brought this into my life because it has disturbed the way I've been doing things. Once I figure things out, with help from Muse, I'll be fine. Or I'll stay screw it and return it. I'm not going to personally attack someone. This is a luxury item. It's just an instrument. It's just another piece of hardware in your collection. Big deal. Sounds like you have thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff.

Sounds to me that you're frustrated, too. I'm just saying call them. What's to fear? You might learn something? I have. Shoot, I'd be willing to help you out, too.

I hope you find what you're looking for... good luck.

[CrownRoyal]

Being new to this forum, I don't want to make a big splash and all, but would somebody tell me how in the world would someones Windows OS would know about a MOUNTED filesystem on a Linux box without either NFS ($$), Samba, or some other client-server file system sharing software running on both machines? Does any of Receptors installers provide for such a thing? Pianodano, can you see a new network drive that WASN'T there before you hooked things up and installed software? I mean, does Receptor load a filesharing server on startup and does the wrapper have a client element that magically knows to a) scan local drives b) open a file share client temporarily c) scan a mounted file system on Receptor for new plug ins d) do something with them and last and certainly not least e) shut itself down so the user doesn't see a new network share in "My Computer" on the DAW. Maybe everything I know about networking and sys admin is getting ready to go up in smoke, but I would truly love to hear how the feat of loading or seeing vsts across Ethernet is accomplished without software on both sides to enable that sort of functionality. Thanks for your time!

The Receptor runs AppleTalk and Windows Networking to connect to another computer, if you want... or it can run standalone. The Receptor hard drive "looks kinda" like a Windows file system. I believe it's a Samba server. Linux has had that ability for years.

[pianodano]

CrownRoyal,

I am very sorry if you took my comments as an attack against you but your inital words were not very encouraging to me. This thread was about how and or if anyone else was running VST's in their DAW host. I just don't need another stand alone sound module. I would much prefer that Receptor do what we thought it would do in a studio application.

Obviously if I infer what you are said correctly, I am in way over my head with Receptor which by extension means, I just won't fit in with the guys that are thrilled with it. I did have someone schooled in windows and Linux trying to help me understand what exactly Receptor was doing now and how it could possibly be used in my enviroment as it is without uniwire. But it appears to just not do what we thuoght it would do which we based entirely on the available info at the Muse site. Evidently I just cannot intergrate it into my host . . . . . so I guess she's a going back. Looks like it's time for another PC and teleport. Darn, I wish you had not helped me make up my mind so quickly.



Regards,

Danny

[CrownRoyal]

I am sorry if you took my comments as an attack against you but your words were not very encouraging to me. This thread was about how or if anyone else was running VST's in their DAW host. I just don't need another stand alone sound module. I would prefer that Receptor do what we thuoght it would do. Looks like it's time for another PC and teleport

Obviously I am in way over my head with Receptor. I did have a someone schooled in windowsa and Linux trying to help me understand what Receptor was doing or could possibly be used for as it is now. But it appears to just not do what we thuoght it would do based of the available pre sale info. Evidently I just cannot intergrate it into my host so I guess she's a going back.

Regards,

Danny

Danny, it's no biggie... I'd help you if you wanted it. You can't offend me... I doubt it. Not with the career I've had! LOL!

I just don't want you to think you're being shut out or something. The Muse dudes will help you. Take a few minutes and call them. Talk to a person and not typing in here. Know what I mean?

Well, I'm off to get the love of my life, my son, so this music stuff goes on hold as of now!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

[virtual_mike]

Thanks for the reply! Let me make sure I understand because you mentioned three truly different protocols. Appletalk is still a client-server protocol that requires the client to be loaded on the Windows side. Maybe this happens during the installation process? Could someone go in to Control Panel on the DAW and see where the MS version of the Appletalk client is loaded?
"Windows" networking is based on Netbeui, which was MS first "in house" attempt at networking their OS starting with DOS 6, I believe. Nice little protocol, only 4 layers like TCP-IP, BUT, the client HAS to loaded on ALL machines involved. Unfortunately, it is loaded by default, but is VERRY chatty. Linux does not "know" Windows Networking or netbeui. (do a Google search on Linux AND netbeui)
Finally, Samba. Now I will definitely buy Samba being loaded on a Linux box since it is an open protocol that DOES allow Windows boxes to access filesystems on Linux servers IF the Windows box has the Samba client loaded.
So I guess my question is, does the wrapper use Samba or Appletalk. I guess Appletalk, but there's still the client side question...
Thanks - Have a great day!

[pianodano]

With Receptor turned off here's what I get when inserting a Receptor vst into Sonar.

VST adapter error
The following Plugin Failed to Load

\\Receptor-22684\Hard Drive\Program Files\VST Plugins\4Front\4front Bass module\4Front Bass Module.Dll .

Loads fine with receptor turned on and networked.

I am so confused about what this thing does now, I have no idea what this could mean.

Danny

[philipc68]

With Receptor turned off here's what I get when inserting a Receptor vst into Sonar.

VST adapter error
The following Plugin Failed to Load

\\Receptor-22684\Hard Drive\Program Files\VST Plugins\4Front\4front Bass module\4Front Bass Module.Dll .

Loads fine with receptor turned on and networked.

I am so confused about what this thing does now, I have no idea what this could mean.

Danny

Seems that the Sonar VST wrapper treated your Receptor as a hard drive and wrapped the VSTs it found there (although I assume, surely, you would have had to tell Sonar where to look when running the adapter).

As Dan from Muse said, this isn't how Receptor is meant to be used. Out of curiousity I took a quick look at the manual online, and I thought the quick-start instructions were reasonably clear. You need to connect the midi out from your computer (or keyboard) to the receptor, and the audio out of the receptor to your monitors or heaphones. From memory I think there was a section on "how to audition a patch" which covered this.

I don't mean to sound like a smartass, but this sounds like a case where it would be best to start from scratch with the receptor manual and just do exactly what it tells you to try and get some sound out of it.

Best regards
Philip

[pianodano]

Philip,

Not at all. You are most likely right in your assumptions, but It really does appear that the vst's are actually being run on the Receptor and inseted as a VST in Sonar. I just had no idea how that was possible. My DAW is so fast I really can't tell with the freeware plugs. I get maybe 1 -2% usage on the CPU of the DAW and thought that was most likley just caused by the interupts. Are you thinking of getting a Receptor ? IF so will you be using it in a studio ? Have you been able to determine just exactly what it will be capable of with the promised uniwire?

Regards,

Danny

[philipc68]

Hi Dan, no, I have no plans to get a receptor. Anyway, I'm sure Muse support can help you out with these issues. I can understand the confusion they would have had on the phone with your question - telling them the complete text of the error message you got above will no doubt help clear things up.

Cheers
Philip

[DanTimis]

Being new to this forum, I don't want to make a big splash and all, but would somebody tell me how in the world would someones Windows OS would know about a MOUNTED filesystem on a Linux box without either NFS ($$), Samba, or some other client-server file system sharing software running on both machines? Does any of Receptors installers provide for such a thing?

Receptor is an AppleTalk server, and a Samba server. The disk partition that is exposed through AppleTalk or Samba, has a Windows-like structure because Receptor is used primarely for running Windows VST plug-ins.

There is nothing to install on a Mac or PC to have the Receptor disk mounted. Mac OS 9 has AppleTalk built-in, Windows has Windows Networking built-in, while Mac OS X has both AppleTalk and Samba built-in. Samba is the name of the open source software that is compatible with Windows Networking.

[DanTimis]

I have been writing music software for over 25 years. I have been involved with VST (both plug-ins and hosting) for over 10 years. Yet when I joined Muse Research almost 3 years ago, I didn't have the faintest idea what Samba was - and I don't mean the Brazilian dance (I actually knew a few steps). At first I was confused, but in time it started to make sense.

We can all be confused when we learn something new, especially when it is something that is very different than other things we know. I've seen early demos of the audio CD, early demos of the Yamaha DX-7, and early demos of hard disk recording. In all cases I've seen many people go "What the hell is that!" And I've also seen many people confused at first about Receptor.

That is because Receptor is a different kind of beast. It is different than a computer running a DAW, different than an accelerator card, and different than traditional synth and effects modules. It has something in common with all these, but it is also different enough to require a little bit of a learning curve. Receptor is a little bit like a computer because it has its own CPU, RAM, and hard drive. It is a little bit like an accelerator card (like an UAD-1) because it can offload your computer's processor. It is also a little bit like a traditional synth or effect module because it can function without a computer, without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, can be rack-mounted, and has audio and MIDI I/O built-in.

When you work in Sonar, Receptor without UniWire is like a traditional synth module, you send it MIDI and it sends audio back. But unlike a traditional synth module, Receptor is very expandable because you can easily install all sorts of new VST plug-ins. Show me a hardware synth module that can run Colossus, or even better show me a hardware synth module that sounds as good as Colossus.

With UniWire, Receptor will have something a little bit in common with FX Teleport. You send audio and MIDI and you get back audio over Ethernet. But, it will also provide features that FX Teleport does not have, like being able to use Receptor's audio I/O, the Receptor mixer, the Receptor's multis and singles system, or the ability to work with the Mac.

With Receptor turned off here's what I get when inserting a Receptor vst into Sonar.

VST adapter error
The following Plugin Failed to Load

\\Receptor-22684\Hard Drive\Program Files\VST Plugins\4Front\4front Bass module\4Front Bass Module.Dll .

Loads fine with receptor turned on and networked.

I am so confused about what this thing does now, I have no idea what this could mean.

Danny

You tried - and managed to achieve - something that nobody else has tried before (at least as far as I know). I never thought about this, although now it make sense to me, but since you are a beginner with Receptor it also makes sense that you are confused.

Each Receptor has a name. When it comes out of the factory, each receptor is named "Receptor-xxxxx" where the x's are a unique number. Customers are supposed to rename their Receptors, like you could change it to "Dans-Receptor" However, we noticed that most customers leave the factory name unchanged. Looks like your Receptor's name is "Receptor-22684"

Receptor is a Samba server. That means that you can mount the Receptor drive on your PC. One way to mount the Receptor is to type its name preceded by "" in Windows Explorer. In your case it would be "\\Receptor-22684" Then, Receptor is mounted and you can see the contents of the disk, and then name of the volume is "Hard Drive".

When you turn on your PC the next day, the Receptor hard drive will not be mounted. But, Windows remembers about it. If you go to "My Network Places" I believe (I don't have a PC handy to verify, right now) you will see something like:

"Hard Drive" on Receptor-22684

or

"Hard Drive" on 192.168.1.102

If you double click on that, the Receptor hard drive will be mounted.

Sonar does not support VST plug-ins directly, AFAIK. It has to wrap them first. Sonar will go and scan the disk, and for any VST plug-ins it finds it will create a wrapper. The wrapper will point to where the plug-in is.

Here is an experiment:

Code: Select all

1.  Download a free VST plug-in that you don't already have, let's say free.dll, and put it in:
         "c:\Program Files\Steinberg\VstPlugins"
2.  Tell Sonar to scan for new VST plug-ins.
3.  Run the VST plug-in in Sonar
4.  Quit Sonar and delete the plug-in from your hard drive
5.  Start Sonar and try to load the plug-in.

I bet you will get this message:

Code: Select all

VST adapter error
The following Plugin Failed to Load

c:\Program Files\Steinberg\VstPlugins\free.dll

That means that Sonar tried to load free.dll through its wrapper and could not find it because it was no longer on your hard drive.

You did install Colossus on Receptor, which means that you mounted the Receptor hard drive at least once. When the Receptor hard drive was mounted you asked Sonar to scan for new plug-ins. To Sonar the Receptor hard drive looked like any other hard drive, so it wrapped and remembered the VST plug-ins on Receptor's hard drive.

When you tell Sonar to load one of those plug-ins, Sonar reads the code from the Receptor hard drive into RAM, the same as if it were a local hard drive. Then, Sonar runs the plug-in using your PC's CPU. The Receptor CPU is not at all involved in this.

When the Receptor is off, Sonar cannot access the Receptor hard drive and gives the error message that is the same as when Sonar would not find a plug-in on the local hard drive. When you turn your Receptor on, Sonar looks for the plug-in, your PC remembers the Receptor hard drive from "My Network Places" and the Receptor hard drive is mounted. Even though you did not specifically mounted the Receptor hard drive, Windows mounted it for Sonar, because it remembered it from when you mounted it yourself previously.

I hope this makes it a little bit more clear, but I'm happy to explain more or to explain anything else about Receptor, if needed.

[DanTimis]

Another thing. If you load "4front Bass Module" in Sonar from Receptor and play it, if you plug headphones on Receptor's front panel, you won't hear anything. Receptor is not running the plug-in, your PC is running it.

[Hybernation]

DanTimis' explaination is 100% correct I think. Except for one little thing about Sonar....you HAVE to TELL Sonar's VST wrapper which directories/drives to scan VST's for. It keeps a list, and with the new version, when ANYTHING changes on one of these directories, it rescans at start-up.

so at some point, pianodano, you HAD to have opened up the VST wrapper and POINTED to the dir "\\Receptor-xxxxx\Program Files\VST Plugins" and said "scan this directory".

[pianodano]

Dan,

Thank you very much for taking the time to try to fully expain what is taking place with my Receptor. I really appreciate your great effort. I have certainly been quite frustrated in trying to understand the technology (but I guess I really like being on the bleeding edge with new musical products). I am still conviced that if and when Receptor is able to do everything promised, it has tremendous potential.

The experience so far has been quite difficult though. If you remember, I am the guy that was unable to register it a couple of weeks ago because of some kind of serial number snafu. I am the same guy that ordered through Guitar Center after being promised by the district manager that it was the same as the bundle being offered by SOL. I really do have a longstanding relationship with Virginia Beach Guitar Center. I don't know how that snafu happened nor should I really be concerned. I do know that they fully expected to receive Receptor with Colossus pre-installed. The reason I point this out is that myself and two of the salesmen there have been very interested in Receptor for about 6 mos and, when the SOL offer came out via email, I told them about it. The district manager happened to be standing at the counter while we were disccusing it. He called SOL and told someone there that he had a customer with him that was very interested and asked if he could get the package. He was told yes. He asked me if I wanted one to which I replied yes and he asked the SOS person for the item number. He was given the item number and imediately ordered it for me.

We knew something went wrong a few days later when they received 2 invoices (1 for Colossus, 1 for Receptor). Anyway I agreed to pick it up when it came in and said I would try to install Colossus.

It just became very dificult when the registration issue occured. I am not much interested in freeware (I am fortunate to have excellent sample libraries and audio processing VST's) so I simply could not understand why your company require that I register a pace dongle for software I did not even want, just so I could register a hardware based Receptor, just so I could get the Colossus helper installer. Wow, it pains me even typing all that, much less thinking about what your company put me through after I had spent a considerable amount of money to buy the products. But I know it was unintentional.


Then, like many other folks I am sure, I just could not belive it when I learned on this forum that uniwire was not a part of the current Receptor. When I talked with GC about it, they could not believe it either. Like myself, Franz, (my saleperson) had been all over the Muse site because as I stated above, he wanted one for his studio.

So to make a long story shorter, I do have faith in you folks at Muse and I want believe you will try your best to do what you have said you are going to do and deliver a uniwire based package.

This will seem brazen and crass and I am sorry but I know of no other method of getting the following point across. The Muse site seems to lead many reasonable folks to believe uniwire is a part of Receptor. If there is to be some kind of upcharge to get a version of the uniwire or if it happens to be hardware based which requires additional expense on my part,I promise you this. The proverbial stuff will hit the fan. Virginia I am told, is a leader in agressively prosecuting internet based/interstate advertising fraud. I am sorry to be so frank about this matter, but that is were we are at now based on my experience so far. I will very shortly loose my ability to return Receptor to GC so I must be clear about this - based on what you and others have explained, Receptor is useless to me without uniwire.


Even though GC has repeatedly offered to give me a full refund on Receptor, I just want to believe that uniwire will soon be available so that Receptor will be able to do what it is stated on the Muse site that it is to do. So I will hang in there with you folks a little longer.

BTW, it never occured to me that I was doing something nobody else had ever been able to do with Receptor. You must be familiar with Muses own site and the video that expains how with Receptor I can run VSTs in my DAW via Receptor. Really nice long video there. That video is why I bought Receptor.

Hybernation,

No Sonars' vst wrapper did not ask me to point anywhere the first time I ran it. It went out on it's very own and found every VST on the Receptor and yes it was mounted. It would not make sense to scan for VSTs on a drive that was not there. (Colossus was not yet installed). The wrapper registered every single one without any help from me "except" when it tried to register a demo (ie: LoungeLizard) it said something along the lines of "VST is not compatible". I assumed this was because it was a unlicensed demo.

At the beginning of this thread, I explained all this and that after installing Colossus I ran the wrapper again to find new VST's. (Again bear in my it never occurred to me I was doing anything that Receptor was not designed to do acording to the video.) The wrapper found Colossus without any help but as I said previously it errored out and said something like "VST in unexpected location". I was prompted to point to the drive. Receptor was not one of the drive options. Which brings up another point Dan questioned. I did have a network neighborhood in my start/programs but it has disappeared over the last couple of days. I am having constant problems in keeping Receptor connected. Don't know what that's all about or if may have had anything to do with the network hood disapearing.

Best regards to all and thanks again,

Danny