Vienna Ensemble alternative?

[ghettosynth]

hmmm, you know I've never tried but I'm pretty sure you can call a VEP server from multiple hosts, so technically there shouldn't be a problem setting up the audio relay. I have no idea what advantage that would be, but it is a curious experiment.

I don't think so. You cannot connect to the same instance from multiple hosts. Each "instance" can only connect to a single host and, AFAIK, you cannot route audio or midi between instances.

[SJ_Digriz]

hmmm, you know I've never tried but I'm pretty sure you can call a VEP server from multiple hosts, so technically there shouldn't be a problem setting up the audio relay. I have no idea what advantage that would be, but it is a curious experiment.

I don't think so. You cannot connect to the same instance from multiple hosts. Each "instance" can only connect to a single host and, AFAIK, you cannot route audio or midi between instances.

test in progress .. give me about 30 minutes and 2 fingers of Belvenie and I'll be back

[ghettosynth]

Whatever. The topic is VE Pro alternatives and the meaning is not that vague.
The whole idea of VE Pro is server farm, the innovation is the simple LAN connection over a CAT6 cable rather than a sound card per each slave to port MIDI into and audio back out of to the sequencing host, which was the composer's lot before it was developed, using Gigastudio.

Yes, but you were talking about Reaconnect, that isn't the comparable tool, Reamote is. The point is that one has multiple choices for free with Reaper that may or may not work as well depending on one's needs.

If these REAPER jobs provide a great mixing host and control of core assignments per instance, and 48 MIDI ports, preserve the instance so it stands alone unconnected to the DAW we can consider to compare the two, such as how well does it work. Not at all in my experience. Not once, for either.

Your lack of ability to get it working is beside the point. If your requirements meet the constraints that I delineated, Reamote provides a much more natural experience for someone just wanting to offload processing to a server farm than VEPro. You simply choose which server that you want to run the processing chain. You do this from the host, so there is never any need to use remote desktop access or even needing access to the servers. VEPro requires a more deliberate choice to run a particular chain locally or remotely.

As I said though, it's much more work getting it stable for running instruments remotely with low latency.

JUST USE REAPER in extremis there, it's no alternative.

I don't disagree in general. It's not an alternative to VEPro in many, perhaps most instances. I'm not trying to be argumentative, rather, I'm trying to add facts to this conversation. Reaper provides two distinct tools that do work reasonably well in some configurations and if the goal is to just distribute processing across multiple machines it might well be the better value. Your description of Reaconnect was woefully incomplete. It works for me as it does many.

Moreover, those tools provide utility that VEPro does not, so understanding that difference might help one understand how they fit in and what the best approach is for them.

I like VEPro, I think that it's the best tool available all things considered, but ReaConnect and ReaMote work well in some circumstances and they may be better choices for some. In some circumstances, they are alternatives. I don't think that everyone cares, per se, about a "mixing host", that's what a DAW is. For a lot of people it's just moving the processing of plugins to a different machine.

[ghettosynth]

hmmm, you know I've never tried but I'm pretty sure you can call a VEP server from multiple hosts, so technically there shouldn't be a problem setting up the audio relay. I have no idea what advantage that would be, but it is a curious experiment.

I don't think so. You cannot connect to the same instance from multiple hosts. Each "instance" can only connect to a single host and, AFAIK, you cannot route audio or midi between instances.

test in progress .. give me about 30 minutes and 2 fingers of Belvenie and I'll be back

Cool, let me know what you find out. It's certainly possible that I'm missing something as I'm new to VEPro, but I've certainly tried connecting two hosts to the same instance and, unless I'm missing something, it can't be done.

[SJ_Digriz]

Yeah, without cheating with a plugin the instance can't go outside the hosts assignment.

[SJ_Digriz]

But, I swear I saw someone doing something along the lines of passing audio between instances. Maybe it's one of the VSL plugins?

[ghettosynth]

Yeah, without cheating with a plugin the instance can't go outside the hosts assignment.

Right, so something like Wormhole might work ,which should have reasonably low latency on the same host, and there are a couple of other plugins that attempt to grant access to hardware. In any case, I'm not trying to be critical of VEPro, I think that it's pretty damned good software, but it fits a certain usage profile.

[ghettosynth]

But, I swear I saw someone doing something along the lines of passing audio between instances. Maybe it's one of the VSL plugins?

If you find out, let me know in this thread. I'm still trying to decide how to integrate my hardware synths which are somewhat remote from my main workstations.

[SJ_Digriz]

I'm not taking it as being critical. But, it is definitely not how they visualize it being used. The forum has several occurrences of the question, but no answer. Maybe that's what I was remembering. I really don't have a use for that, so I never really looked into. I just have done a lot of study on how to use VEP, and I remember coming across stuff about this type of thing. Mainly from people trying to integrate Mainstage and their DAW with VEP.

[ghettosynth]

I'm not taking it as being critical. But, it is definitely not how they visualize it being used. The forum has several occurrences of the question, but no answer. Maybe that's what I was remembering. I really don't have a use for that, so I never really looked into. I just have done a lot of study on how to use VEP, and I remember coming across stuff about this type of thing. Mainly from people trying to integrate Mainstage and their DAW with VEP.

Sure, I get that's not how they envision it being used, that was, in part, why I posted. Other uses are a valid use case and I can see how routing outside of the product would impact stability and latency.


The reference to mainstage makes sense, for all intents and purposes, it's the same use case since mainstage isn't a plugin, you would need to get midi out of VEPro and into Mainstage and route the audio back the other way. OS X with soundflower would give you the pipes, but then you'd need a plugin that would connect to audio and midi drivers.

I appreciate your input. I'm just trying to do my bit to add to the discussion in a factual way.

[SJ_Digriz]

It's a hard topic really. If you are in the VEP use case, there simply isn't anything as good as far as I know. It's just a stellar piece of software. But, there are lots of networking solutions that do various bits and bobs of it. And if they accomplish a particular thing you are trying to do, then you can save an ass load of money. But, at the cost of stability and polish.

I'm just in this thread because you never know when you will learn something.

[jancivil]

What is the great attraction of having the audio outputted from the slave? I guess I'm simple.

People use the standalone (eg., with Mainstage) for live performance, there's no problem. But sequencing with it, the audio comes out of the sequencing host, period.

I imagine if you set Kontakt or whatever that does the same to send MIDI to the outside world it would but I haven't tested it with the server, it does from the standalone; I used it for a while with no Cubase even installed to set arrangements up. In this case controllers work no problem, I'm unsure why they maintain the stance of this being experimental w. VE Pro as a plugin. I don't see any real reason for that use profile though, either.

[SJ_Digriz]

What is the great attraction of having the audio outputted from the slave? I guess I'm simple.

People use the standalone (eg., with Mainstage) for live performance, there's no problem. But sequencing with it, the audio comes out of the sequencing host, period.

I imagine if you set Kontakt or whatever that does the same to send MIDI to the outside world it would but I haven't tested it with the server, it does from the standalone; I used it for a while with no Cubase even installed to set arrangements up. In this case controllers work no problem, I'm unsure why they maintain the stance of this being experimental w. VE Pro as a plugin. I don't see any real reason for that use profile though, either.

The reason I looked originally back whenever I bought VEP 5 was to possibly buss to hardware on a rack that was in a closet where my VEP servers were. I was trying to set up using VEP as the primary mix point.

[jancivil]

I see. Yeah, not possible. I use it as the primary mixer, definitely. I don't even touch faders in Cubase. Once I print to audio Cubase is for those tracks, but there shouldn't be any real need. I'm simple, convoluted setups aren't for me.

[ghettosynth]

What is the great attraction of having the audio outputted from the slave? I guess I'm simple.

For me, it's the other way round, I want midi out of Vienna server and then audio back into the server to be routed back across the network. But audio out could be useful for the same reasons. My hardware is somewhat remote from my main workstation. So I want to put a computer there to interface with it, it's not a small amount of hardware. Then I want to access the audio/midi from across the network.

So, if you had say an analog compressor that you wanted to use from anywhere on your network it would be cool to able to choose and audio card insert on a Vienna server channel. Then you could connect to that server from all other hosts and run your audio through your hardware.

But people use tools like Reaconnect to replace analog/digital audio channels from one machine to another. So there are plenty of reasons for that. E.g., using mainstage, Max, or VCV as a "virtual" plugin on a different computer.