The East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Choirs VST instrument (EWQLSC) is famous not only for having one of the longest titles of any VST instrument, but also for its near complete incompatibility with any DAW.
After a lot of hair-pulling, I found the below protocol to work for connecting EWQLSC to MU.LAB. It is somewhat cumbersome and the audio downmix leaves something to be desired, but one can record the choral parts -and play them back.
First of all, EWQLSC can be loaded into MU.LAB just like any VST and can be played as such, but the "word builder" causes a lot of problems. It cannot be loaded as a VST, must run as a stand alone, and its multi channel output does not down go well with MU.LAB, in the sense that any instance of EWQLSC as a VST receives only one in five notes.
One workaround for this is to run both word builder and EWQLSC as two stand alone instruments and pipe the midi through MU.LAB using "midi-yoke" as a virtual cable in the following setup:
Midi controller -> MU.LAB -> Word Builder -> EWQLSC
Step by step:
1: Make sure that you have midi yoke installed.
2: Start MU.LAB, word builder and EWQLSC (in that order)
3: Set the midi input port for MU.LAB to that of your MIDI controller keyboard
4: We will use rack A for EWQLSC. Do not load any VSTs into this rack, go to 'choose target' and set it to midi outputs -> midi yoke 1.
5: In "Word builder" as stand-alone, set midi in option to "in from midi yoke 1" and out to: "out to midi yoke 2"
(Don't forget to enter a phrase and voice for word builder)
6: In EWQLSC as stand alone, set midi input to "in from midi yoke 2"
7: restore the MU.LAB window and play.
After recording, the choral part will play through the stand alone EWQLSC and
any mixes made by using the "mixdown" function in MU.LAB will therefore not contain this part. One way to remedy this, is to play the part and record it with an audio editing program (e.g. Audacity) and import it as a sample or to use Audacity to mix the whole song.
Connecting EWQLSC / word-builder to MU.LAB
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- KVRer
- 2 posts since 27 Sep, 2008 from Edinburgh
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- KVRAF
- 7412 posts since 8 Feb, 2003 from London, UK
...and another in the list of things that'll be fixed with multi-channel MIDI support... 
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- KVRAF
- 13862 posts since 24 Jun, 2008 from Europe
Why is that so?pljones wrote:...and another in the list of things that'll be fixed with multi-channel MIDI support...
(sorry if i'm missing the point, i have no practical experience with EWQLSC, though it looks like something superb)
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- KVRAF
- 7412 posts since 8 Feb, 2003 from London, UK
I think word builder uses multiple MIDI channels for controlling different aspects of the choir, from memory of an article I read... MU.LAB would have a single MIDI channel out to the word builder but I think this returns MIDI data on multiple channels. Hopefully, this could be handled.
MU.LAB sequence (1 ch) -> primed word builder -> (n ch) MU.LAB [EWQLSC VST] -> mixdown
It might need some plugin delay compensation to get the mix to work right, though.
MU.LAB sequence (1 ch) -> primed word builder -> (n ch) MU.LAB [EWQLSC VST] -> mixdown
It might need some plugin delay compensation to get the mix to work right, though.
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- KVRer
- Topic Starter
- 2 posts since 27 Sep, 2008 from Edinburgh
Pljones is correct,
The 'word builder' uses no less than 5 channels simultaneously for the actual phonetic sounds passed on to the EWQLSC (choir part) VST and 1 channel for additional info. MU.LAB in its current version however, receives input to one selected channel only. Thus if EWQLSC is used as a VST plugin, it receives data only to that particular channel and therefore 5 of 6 sounds are effectively lost. This way, a phrase such as 'gloria in excelsis deo' is spat out in random staccato phonetics G!..I!..L!.. That is why I have opted for running EWQLSC in stand alone mode. The propsed protocol is far from an optimal one, but a working model none the less until the day where our favorite DAW supports multi channel input, and/or VSTA plugins (required for word builder).
The 'word builder' uses no less than 5 channels simultaneously for the actual phonetic sounds passed on to the EWQLSC (choir part) VST and 1 channel for additional info. MU.LAB in its current version however, receives input to one selected channel only. Thus if EWQLSC is used as a VST plugin, it receives data only to that particular channel and therefore 5 of 6 sounds are effectively lost. This way, a phrase such as 'gloria in excelsis deo' is spat out in random staccato phonetics G!..I!..L!.. That is why I have opted for running EWQLSC in stand alone mode. The propsed protocol is far from an optimal one, but a working model none the less until the day where our favorite DAW supports multi channel input, and/or VSTA plugins (required for word builder).
Last edited by Tetrahymenix on Wed Oct 01, 2008 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRAF
- 13862 posts since 24 Jun, 2008 from Europe
Ok, i'll do my best to implement "multi-channel midi input routing" asap after the 2.0 release.
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- KVRAF
- 7412 posts since 8 Feb, 2003 from London, UK
Actually... so VSTA support with multi-channel MIDI routing internally (maybe on the MPA only, rather than in racks?) would also suffice... (he says, never having previously heard of VSTA...)