Multiple ARIA player (Garritan Orchestra) channel set up for Tracktion Waveform?

[marksmusicaustralia]

Hello,
Is there anyone out there using Aria player as a multi instrument (16 channel) in Tracktion? Would love to get hold of a project file or a list of steps to set this up properly.
I could do this in Logic 9 but not in Tracktion. So far I have tried setting up in a rack but struggled to hook it up correctly.
Tracktion only has a tutorial for multi audio output for drums with one midi input track, whereas I need to set up 16 input midi tracks to correspond to each instrument in Garritan (see attached screenshot).
Help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Screen Shot 2021-05-29 at 10.11.07 am.png

[pough]

Does each instrument have its own MIDI channel? MIDI channel is set per clip in Waveform.

[Peter Widdicombe]

Yeah, it can be done - but it's quirky.
As indicated, each midi clip has a MIDI channel. I just tried with TX16W as a VST on track 1 - and it supports the multi-MIDI channel input, where each MIDI channel can be assigned different sounds based on the input channel.

Routed the output from a different track (2) to Track 1. So (1) now it "gets" MIDI input or recorded MIDI events "on its own" and plays on MIDI channel 0 (or unassigned), the way Waveform works by default. In this scenario, it now played NOTE events from both tracks, but with the same sound.

THEN I changed the clip properties on track 2, to specify MIDI channel 1 . Still played the "default" where both track 1 and track 2 playing the same default instrument. Bummer.

On a hunch, I then enabled MPE output on track 2 clip properties. Voila!
- track 1 now played it's note events as piano, which was the default for MIDI "0".
- track 2 (midi output redirected to track 1) now plays Organ, which was the instrument set for MIDI 1

SIDE NOTES:
- this is probably more complicated, but if you REALLY must use multi-channel players...
- you can probably ALTERNATIVELY use multi-versions of ARIA, one on each track. Don't know if there's a significant load difference to doing this, but then it's easier to apply output and effects to each individual instrument...
- This test was done in Waveform 10. TX16W seems to hang on Waveform 11. I'd originally tried it to use the old sound libraries I used to use with SFZ (32 bit), but found I didn't like TX16W with those soundfonts - sounds would chop off unnaturally compared to SFZ.

[marksmusicaustralia]

Thanks Peter. Any chance of posting this as a Waveform project? I can then load this to see exactly how you set it up - would be a bit easier for me to follow along and swap TX16W (which I also have) with ARIA and see which one works.
This also might be worth trying with Best Service Engine and a few others.

[Peter Widdicombe]

This is probably NOT the best way of doing this - as it turns out, NEW information added (i.e. from a MIDI keyboard) gets played with the default instrument in the pack, and it's only AFTER the clip exists (i.e. recorded) can you actually change the properties. CLIP properties can be changed; but the MIDI channel for the (empty) track will be ignored.

Again, not sure of the impact on replicating the VST to each track and setting properties on each one; but that would probably be "easier" to work with.

... or you reserve channel 1 in Aria for the instrument you are recording at the time, and use channels 2-16 for the instruments for playback purposes.

... or have a copy of Aria on each track, which you only have enabled when recording that instrument. You MAY have to ALSO remember to redirect the output of the track to audio output when doing this.

PS - seems I was wrong on the MPE - it's NOT needed; in fact does some really funky things in this scenario. Seems to randomly pick a patch in TX16W; perhaps based on it's velocity ?

[asprog]

Hello,
if you can choose a different midi channel for each part of Aria, so it's like with Kontakt: you must insert the Midi Patch Bay Waveform plugin before the rack with 1:N for the N track.
And it's a pleasure now the "input follow track" with racks is back

[Peter Widdicombe]

I knew it could be done, and was starting to realize there had to be a better way. Yeah, racks allow you to do all kinds of advanced routing !

[marksmusicaustralia]

All hooked up and working. Thank you.

[jabe]

I have GPO5, and I haven't done anything more than tinker, but I believe the 16-tracks mentioned by OP isn't an absolute limit for a piece of music, just for each instance of the Aria player. A way this could be worked is to have an instance for each section of an orchestra, with up to 16 tracks contributing to each section-specific instance.

[Peter Widdicombe]

Would there be a large performance hit by having multiple versions of the SAME VST on multiple tracks, as opposed to having a multi-track version like this encapsulated into a rack?

I'm also thinking of the system load of something like Collective (and possibly, say, 10 instances of it), as opposed to having different VSTs some of which may be much "smaller" (for example, 4OSC?) where some of the pads may be perfectly acceptable? Or will multiple copies and associated tables be "shared" and implicitly take less memory because they're already in memory anyway?

[marksmusicaustralia]

I guess it depends on the actual VST. I did notice a significant increase in CPU usage when using multiple VSTs of the same kind.