GSi VB3 question

[MikeCL]

I did a quick and dirty test tonight on a motif 6 using VSthost Anyways I have a sustain pedal and I connected to the assignable jack.. So what I wanted to happen was switching Leslie speeds.. It worked somewhat, but I learned it and what happen was the speed change would not stick I had to keep my foot down.

Do I need a momentary footswitch?

Another weird thing that happened (might of been on my end) is playing lower notes caused the program presets to change for some reason, after the program did crash (I hope that's only because I was short on ram) I was able to play the lower notes again but I don't know if it's a knob I have mapped that causes that preset change because it's not mapped to the knob I was moving.

Having said that It sounded sweet with the monitor behind me almost like a real 147 with the relay switching.


Can someone give me an idea on what a safe cpu speed I could be using? My laptop I was trying it out on was only a pentium 4 1.2 Ghz with only 512 Mb of ram.. my cpu usage was up around 52%

Now on my home pc I have a core 2 duo that's 2.93 and 2 GB of memory and it maybe only gets up to 10%

I might be able to throw a simple build with a slightly older pc without having to spend $300 to build one. the spare system is a AMD Sempron 3100+ that's 1.8 Ghz

[AdmiralQuality]

I did a quick and dirty test tonight on a motif 6 using VSthost Anyways I have a sustain pedal and I connected to the assignable jack.. So what I wanted to happen was switching Leslie speeds.. It worked somewhat, but I learned it and what happen was the speed change would not stick I had to keep my foot down.

Do I need a momentary footswitch?

No. There is a setting to make the pedal a toggle. Global Options Menu -> MIDI CC# 64 Function -> Rotary Slow/Fast (latched)

Another weird thing that happened (might of been on my end) is playing lower notes caused the program presets to change for some reason, after the program did crash (I hope that's only because I was short on ram) I was able to play the lower notes again but I don't know if it's a knob I have mapped that causes that preset change because it's not mapped to the knob I was moving.

That's what a real B3/C3/A100 does. There's an octave of inverted color keys on the left side of the keyboard manuals. They're preset keys, they don't make musical notes. One at a time sticks down, like old fashioned car radio buttons, and selects between hardwired presets, as well as the two sets of drawbars, what sound that keyboard manual makes.

Having said that It sounded sweet with the monitor behind me almost like a real 147 with the relay switching.


Can someone give me an idea on what a safe cpu speed I could be using? My laptop I was trying it out on was only a pentium 4 1.2 Ghz with only 512 Mb of ram.. my cpu usage was up around 52%

Now on my home pc I have a core 2 duo that's 2.93 and 2 GB of memory and it maybe only gets up to 10%

I might be able to throw a simple build with a slightly older pc without having to spend $300 to build one. the spare system is a AMD Sempron 3100+ that's 1.8 Ghz

Not sure what you mean by a "safe CPU speed". If it works, it works. But you want overhead to run other instruments, effects and recording processes as well. (10% is better than 52% by the way, that's how much of your CPU the process is using. Less is better.)

[MikeCL]

Yeah I saw that setting for the Leslie stetting last night before bed..

But the thing with the presets bother me.. I understand what they are getting at but say NI B4 II or NI B4 I can play the whole range without preset switching.. Is it possible to turn this off? Because I will be using a midi pad with buttons so I will use that to do the preset change.. Or I guess I can unlearn it.

but funny thing at home I have a cheap Midi 61 keyboard and playing the whole range does not change the presets so I can't understand that part.

And As far as I know right now I will be just using VB3 in Forte unless anyone else can list other stuff that might help during a live show.

By safe CPU speed I was running it last night in VSThost on a Pentium M that's 1.6 GHz with 512 MB of memory (just for testing) I did not have a lot of overhead at all.

I was messing with Forte and it seems to handle it better but I'm still doing testing.. on my desktop with a dual core I forgot how many samples I picked but it has chopy sound as if it can't handle it It might be the ASIO4all I'm using but I'm going to try again when my usb ASIO card comes in to see if that improves over the on-board audio.

[vic_france]

But the thing with the presets bother me.. I understand what they are getting at but say NI B4 II or NI B4 I can play the whole range without preset switching.. Is it possible to turn this off? Because I will be using a midi pad with buttons so I will use that to do the preset change.. Or I guess I can unlearn it.

Global Options Menu>"Enable Organ Preset Octave"

[MikeCL]

But the thing with the presets bother me.. I understand what they are getting at but say NI B4 II or NI B4 I can play the whole range without preset switching.. Is it possible to turn this off? Because I will be using a midi pad with buttons so I will use that to do the preset change.. Or I guess I can unlearn it.

Global Options Menu>"Enable Organ Preset Octave"

Wow thanks! I still have a lot to learn it seems

[AdmiralQuality]

Yeah I saw that setting for the Leslie stetting last night before bed..

But the thing with the presets bother me.. I understand what they are getting at but say NI B4 II or NI B4 I can play the whole range without preset switching.. Is it possible to turn this off? Because I will be using a midi pad with buttons so I will use that to do the preset change.. Or I guess I can unlearn it.

Just adjust the octave of your keyboard. (Either in the controller itself or in VB3 so that your bottom octave doesn't reach the presets. Most modern controllers start at a C, which is where the Hammond octave starts.)

but funny thing at home I have a cheap Midi 61 keyboard and playing the whole range does not change the presets so I can't understand that part.

A B3, etc, have 2 61 note manuals, plus an extra 12 color-reversed preset keys at the bottom. A regular, 61 note/5 octave C to C keyboard is perfect for controlling Hammond sounds.

And As far as I know right now I will be just using VB3 in Forte unless anyone else can list other stuff that might help during a live show.

By safe CPU speed I was running it last night in VSThost on a Pentium M that's 1.6 GHz with 512 MB of memory (just for testing) I did not have a lot of overhead at all.

I was messing with Forte and it seems to handle it better but I'm still doing testing.. on my desktop with a dual core I forgot how many samples I picked but it has chopy sound as if it can't handle it It might be the ASIO4all I'm using but I'm going to try again when my usb ASIO card comes in to see if that improves over the on-board audio.

Like I said, if it runs it runs. If it has a choppy sound, that's because you don't have enough CPU power and/or your latency is set lower than your system can tolerate. (Relaxing latency will only give you so much more CPU, but if it's very short you can try lengthening it a bit.)

New hardware may help. Or it could be the CPU just can't cut it for that much real-time power. Pentiums are getting rather long in the tooth.

[EvilDragon]

How about reading VB3 manual to learn about all it can do?

[MikeCL]

How about reading VB3 manual to learn about all it can do?

I've been reading it but some stuff was still a little unclear< I'm new to the software and this site so I'm trying to get the hang of it.

[MikeCL]

Yeah I saw that setting for the Leslie stetting last night before bed..

But the thing with the presets bother me.. I understand what they are getting at but say NI B4 II or NI B4 I can play the whole range without preset switching.. Is it possible to turn this off? Because I will be using a midi pad with buttons so I will use that to do the preset change.. Or I guess I can unlearn it.

Just adjust the octave of your keyboard. (Either in the controller itself or in VB3 so that your bottom octave doesn't reach the presets. Most modern controllers start at a C, which is where the Hammond octave starts.)

but funny thing at home I have a cheap Midi 61 keyboard and playing the whole range does not change the presets so I can't understand that part.

A B3, etc, have 2 61 note manuals, plus an extra 12 color-reversed preset keys at the bottom. A regular, 61 note/5 octave C to C keyboard is perfect for controlling Hammond sounds.

And As far as I know right now I will be just using VB3 in Forte unless anyone else can list other stuff that might help during a live show.

By safe CPU speed I was running it last night in VSThost on a Pentium M that's 1.6 GHz with 512 MB of memory (just for testing) I did not have a lot of overhead at all.

I was messing with Forte and it seems to handle it better but I'm still doing testing.. on my desktop with a dual core I forgot how many samples I picked but it has chopy sound as if it can't handle it It might be the ASIO4all I'm using but I'm going to try again when my usb ASIO card comes in to see if that improves over the on-board audio.

Like I said, if it runs it runs. If it has a choppy sound, that's because you don't have enough CPU power and/or your latency is set lower than your system can tolerate. (Relaxing latency will only give you so much more CPU, but if it's very short you can try lengthening it a bit.)

New hardware may help. Or it could be the CPU just can't cut it for that much real-time power. Pentiums are getting rather long in the tooth.

I will try that with the presets I have a real Hammond B3 in storage but I'm not going to pull it out plus the Leslie on a stage for 4 days then put it right back in storage.. too much work and hassle.

For testing I think my pentium will make to do but I think I'm still going to build a 3 GHz slim pc and keep that on the stage

[MikeCL]

been trying the brainwave forte and it's nice.. funny thing it gave me audio drop-outs on the desktop pc while not playing any notes. the red meter would spike in the red every 2 seconds about.

the slower laptop it seems to be ok but not enough overhead.. still haven't got around to putting XP on the laptop yet however.

[MikeCL]

I hate to say but I disabled the octave preset but for some reason it still wont play anything?

And one other thing about the two controller for the Leslie I would need two switches no? Has me wondering if this lighted MIDI pad would work the way I wanted it to..

I ended up mapping it to the pitch bend but when playing live I can't be wondering did I have the wheel centered so it's in the off position.

The manual does not really touch on the octave part other then saying it can be turned on and off.. it's funny I use a basic non touch response keyboard at home and I have no issues at all with the lower octave but on the motif it's an issue.

[AdmiralQuality]

I hate to say but I disabled the octave preset but for some reason it still wont play anything?

And one other thing about the two controller for the Leslie I would need two switches no? Has me wondering if this lighted MIDI pad would work the way I wanted it to..

I ended up mapping it to the pitch bend but when playing live I can't be wondering did I have the wheel centered so it's in the off position.

The manual does not really touch on the octave part other then saying it can be turned on and off.. it's funny I use a basic non touch response keyboard at home and I have no issues at all with the lower octave but on the motif it's an issue.

I'm not sure where the disconnect is, but you're complaining about the best product in its class. Nobody else has any of these problems.

A mod wheel would make the most sense for mapping to the Leslie. And... "lighted MIDI pad"? What are you talking about? "Two controller for Leslie", huh? Pitch bend isn't a regular MIDI Control Change message and I don't see an option for using it for the Leslie. (It does seem to be hooked up to give the spring reverb a kick, something I hadn't noticed until now. Neat!)

If notes aren't playing, you either have no drawbars pulled out, or you're playing outside the range of the 5 octave keyboard. (You can change the range over 3 octaves using the -12 0 +12 buttons right above the drawbar sets.)

[MikeCL]

I hate to say but I disabled the octave preset but for some reason it still wont play anything?

And one other thing about the two controller for the Leslie I would need two switches no? Has me wondering if this lighted MIDI pad would work the way I wanted it to..

I ended up mapping it to the pitch bend but when playing live I can't be wondering did I have the wheel centered so it's in the off position.

The manual does not really touch on the octave part other then saying it can be turned on and off.. it's funny I use a basic non touch response keyboard at home and I have no issues at all with the lower octave but on the motif it's an issue.

I'm not sure where the disconnect is, but you're complaining about the best product in its class. Nobody else has any of these problems.

A mod wheel would make the most sense for mapping to the Leslie. And... "lighted MIDI pad"? What are you talking about? "Two controller for Leslie", huh? Pitch bend isn't a regular MIDI Control Change message and I don't see an option for using it for the Leslie. (It does seem to be hooked up to give the spring reverb a kick, something I hadn't noticed until now. Neat!)

If notes aren't playing, you either have no drawbars pulled out, or you're playing outside the range of the 5 octave keyboard. (You can change the range by 2 octaves using the -12 0 +12 buttons right above the drawbar sets.)

I wish I knew what the disconnect is.. the Motif 6 and my PSR-170 are both 61 keys so I can get the psr-160 to play that octave fine at home but not with the motif.

I was going to use a Akai LP8 for the leslie switch and use the knobs on it for the overdrive, reveb and map the other buttons on the pad for percussion and vibrato.

For the leslie I'm looking in the program they list under rotary speed controller "Tweo controllers CC#1 Slow/Fast and CC#68 Stop/Run So in my case they would need to be mapped to two different things? I haven't had to map out MIDI stuff before so you will have to excuse me a little bit. I was using the B preset and just to be sure I was playing full.

[AdmiralQuality]

I hate to say but I disabled the octave preset but for some reason it still wont play anything?

And one other thing about the two controller for the Leslie I would need two switches no? Has me wondering if this lighted MIDI pad would work the way I wanted it to..

I ended up mapping it to the pitch bend but when playing live I can't be wondering did I have the wheel centered so it's in the off position.

The manual does not really touch on the octave part other then saying it can be turned on and off.. it's funny I use a basic non touch response keyboard at home and I have no issues at all with the lower octave but on the motif it's an issue.

I'm not sure where the disconnect is, but you're complaining about the best product in its class. Nobody else has any of these problems.

A mod wheel would make the most sense for mapping to the Leslie. And... "lighted MIDI pad"? What are you talking about? "Two controller for Leslie", huh? Pitch bend isn't a regular MIDI Control Change message and I don't see an option for using it for the Leslie. (It does seem to be hooked up to give the spring reverb a kick, something I hadn't noticed until now. Neat!)

If notes aren't playing, you either have no drawbars pulled out, or you're playing outside the range of the 5 octave keyboard. (You can change the range by 2 octaves using the -12 0 +12 buttons right above the drawbar sets.)

I wish I knew what the disconnect is.. the Motif 6 and my PSR-170 are both 61 keys so I can get the psr-160 to play that octave fine at home but not with the motif.

The Motif is most likely set to a different octave setting. On anything less than a 128 note keyboard it's entirely arbitrary which octave is which. Still, you should be able to compensate for it with the VB3's octave shift buttons.

I was going to use a Akai LP8 for the leslie switch and use the knobs on it for the overdrive, reveb and map the other buttons on the pad for percussion and vibrato.

Do you mean an Akai LPD8?

Should work... but you'll need to somehow merge it onto the same channel as your keyboard controller.

For the leslie I'm looking in the program they list under rotary speed controller "Tweo controllers CC#1 Slow/Fast and CC#68 Stop/Run So in my case they would need to be mapped to two different things? I haven't had to map out MIDI stuff before so you will have to excuse me a little bit. I was using the B preset and just to be sure I was playing full.

Those ARE two controllers. CC#1 and CC#68. Not sure where you're reading this from. What is "the program"? The VB3 plug-in? Which menu are you reading? (I don't see anything like this when I right click on the ROTARY SPEAKER control.) Oh wait, I found it. Global Options Menu -> Rotary Speed Controller -> One Controller vs. Two Controller.

But why not just use CC#1 (mod wheel), where the middle position works as "STOP" as well? Why overcomplicate things with two controls with overlapping functions? (I realize it's more historic. But even more historic is to not have a STOP option at all.) But if you want to, sure. What's the issue?

[MikeCL]

Yeah I think it's a setting on the motif that's the issue I'd have to check again on Sunday.

and yeah yeah the Akai LPD8 so it's going to conflict? the way I was thinking was it would just add it's self as another usb-to midi? and I could map it to the channel that the keyboard is on.

The thing is using this in a church gospel setting playing fast and having like 5 different players trying to move the mod wheel to the center and trying to get used to that might be an issue and more so if I have other players playing during services. that's where I thought about the Akai pad