Any Mac hosts with a realtime bounce-in-place/freeze?

[aMUSEd]

I've just finished setting up my Virus Ti on my new iMac but am missing one feature Sonar had which is the ability to bounce-in-place or freeze a track in realtime (realtime is necessary for hardware like the Ti). Logic's bounce-in-place has no option for realtime bounce, only bounce to an external file, and neither do Bitwig's or Studio One (they both have bounce to another track with a realtime option but not in place). Live doesn't seem to have any realtime options and Tracktion/Waveform is still broken after many versions with the Ti for audio renders. I thought Reaper might have such a thing at least but can't seem to make it do this either. Running out of options, it seems no host on Mac is quite up there with Sonar for support for my Ti.

[Tronam]

I've just finished setting up my Virus Ti on my new iMac but am missing one feature Sonar had which is the ability to bounce-in-place or freeze a track in realtime (realtime is necessary for hardware like the Ti). Logic's bounce-in-place has no option for realtime bounce, only bounce to an external file, and neither do Bitwig's or Studio One (they both have bounce to another track with a realtime option but not in place). Live doesn't seem to have any realtime options and Tracktion/Waveform is still broken after many versions with the Ti for audio renders. I thought Reaper might have such a thing at least but can't seem to make it do this either. Running out of options, it seems no host on Mac is quite up there with Sonar for support for my Ti.

Logic has a more traditional track freeze option which does show up on Software Instrument Tracks using the 'External Instrument' plugin, but I don't know if it switches to real-time in that case. Sadly I don't really have a way of testing this anymore. I'd be very curious to know if there's a solution as I'll be bringing back some external instruments into my setup again soon.

[aMUSEd]

I wouldn't be using the external instrument plugin though, but the Virus Ti plugin.

[jancivil]

Nuendo/Cubase renders in realtime. I use VE Pro as an FX rack sometimes, in that cfg it’s an external device, it won't print otherwise.

[aMUSEd]

Ah figures, the one host I tend to stay away from due to the cost of maintaining it. Thanks anyway.

[commuter]

When using "external instruments" module in Ableton LIVE, Freezing is happening in real time, i'm using this all the time with my hardware synths.

[commuter]

I wouldn't be using the external instrument plugin though, but the Virus Ti plugin.

Opps, sorry, ok, maybe creating a rack in ableton combining the external instruments plugin (with empty inputs) and the Virus VST would work ?? (i'm sure it will)

[macmuse]

Studio One has the coolest one in terms of bouncing MIDI to an audio track in place, because of ARA. So let’s say you do your MIDI regions and want to convert it to audio on the track. There is the command ‘Transform instrument track to audio’. It will then replace your MIDI track with its audio counterpart. But here’s the special part. As you have gone along, you have now rearranged, edited, cut up your audio track, but now you realize you want to make changes to the MIDI. Well in S1 it remembers all the edits you have done while it was audio, so you simply transform back to MIDI, and all the edits, rearranging, etc. are now reflected in the MIDI! You don’t lose all the changes you made when it was audio. No other DAW does that yet. Way better than Logic’s freeze, which when frozen you can’t even make any edits.

I now use Cubase and wish it had that feature.

[aMUSEd]

Studio One has the coolest one in terms of bouncing MIDI to an audio track in place, because of ARA. So let’s say you do your MIDI regions and want to convert it to audio on the track. There is the command ‘Transform instrument track to audio’. It will then replace your MIDI track with its audio counterpart. But here’s the special part. As you have gone along, you have now rearranged, edited, cut up your audio track, but now you realize you want to make changes to the MIDI. Well in S1 it remembers all the edits you have done while it was audio, so you simply transform back to MIDI, and all the edits, rearranging, etc. are now reflected in the MIDI! You don’t lose all the changes you made when it was audio. No other DAW does that yet. Way better than Logic’s freeze, which when frozen you can’t even make any edits.

I now use Cubase and wish it had that feature.

Yeah I know - ideally I want to use Studio One's bounce in place because it is a great implementation but they need to add the option for it to be realtime or it won't work with a Ti (or any hardware based plugin).

[aMUSEd]

Studio One has the coolest one in terms of bouncing MIDI to an audio track in place, because of ARA. So let’s say you do your MIDI regions and want to convert it to audio on the track. There is the command ‘Transform instrument track to audio’. It will then replace your MIDI track with its audio counterpart. But here’s the special part. As you have gone along, you have now rearranged, edited, cut up your audio track, but now you realize you want to make changes to the MIDI. Well in S1 it remembers all the edits you have done while it was audio, so you simply transform back to MIDI, and all the edits, rearranging, etc. are now reflected in the MIDI! You don’t lose all the changes you made when it was audio. No other DAW does that yet. Way better than Logic’s freeze, which when frozen you can’t even make any edits.

I now use Cubase and wish it had that feature.

Yeah I know - ideally I want to use Studio One's bounce in place because it is a great implementation but they need to add the option for it to be realtime or it won't work with a Ti (or any hardware based plugin).

OK investigated this further. It seems I was confusing the command to 'render instrument tracks' (which appears if I right click on the midi clip itself, with ‘Transform instrument track to audio’, which is an option if I right click on the whole track. Not sure why this is the case but the latter does render in realtime but the former does not - it seems to choose to do this automatically so I presume it knows when the Virus is inserted as opposed to a regular plugin. I think one reason I didn't immediately see a difference in terms of realtime render is it only seems to do this if I use the VST3, not the AU or VST2 versions of Virus Control. Presumably the VST3 communicates some additional information to the host that the other versions don't (it might be as simple as the fact that it is categorised as 'External'). Anyway it works, thanks!

[aMUSEd]

Overall then in terms of the best experience I've had of hosts for the Virus on Mac I guess Studio One is top of the list. Followed by Logic, which has a good realtime bounce, just not in place, and Bitwig, which has a realtime bounce to a new track (but a bug with the VST3). Tracktion/Waveform is bottom of the list - it just doesn't seem capable of rendering audio from the Ti except by routing one track into another.

[daw.one]

Studio One has the coolest one in terms of bouncing MIDI to an audio track in place, because of ARA.

Yes, cool feature but ARA is not involved in Transform To Audio and Transform To Instrument. This is native Studio One behavior. Just like you can drag the note data of transformed audio to instrument tracks.

[apoclypse]

Sorry duplicate.

[apoclypse]

If you are interested in S1 you can use Export Stem and choose Import to track. It allows Realtime rendering and imports the audio to a new track once it's done. Can probably be setup with a Macro.

Also Bitwig allows you to realtime bounce.

[aMUSEd]

If you are interested in S1 you can use Export Stem and choose Import to track. It allows Realtime rendering and imports the audio to a new track once it's done. Can probably be setup with a Macro.

Also Bitwig allows you to realtime bounce.

Thanks it's OK realtime bounce works in place in S1 if I use the VST3 version

Doesn't for Bitwig though, not in place anyway, only regular bounce has the realtime option