Help Muse, I'm beginning to lose my faith ....

[MartinHines]

I'm with you... the issue for us is that there are two distinct groups of users: those who just got the new XYZ and want it to run, and those who have just updated their old ABC to the latest rev... its difficult to prioritize those two customers... obviously, we want to do both, but honestly, there is a little bit of "well, the older version works, and others are clamoring for this new thing that doesn't work at all..." thus our dilemma.

Bryan (groovology)

I would agree that all customers (both existing and potential owners) have an expectation that new VSTs will be added to the "Supported" list over time, but I still think it is very important for Muse to keep up with version updates for existing "supported" VSTs, primarily due to people's expectations regarding the term "supported".

When a person considers buying a Receptor, once they understand that not every VST can be run, they rely upon the "currently supported list" as their primary input to the buying decision. Many people will simply see a VST is "supported" and won't always instantly recognize that the Receptor supported version is not the most current PC version (e.g. not everyone who would browse Plugorama right now would automatically know that the listed "Kontakt 2 v2.1.1.001" is not the most current version [v2.2.1]). People will generally assume "yes, Kontakt 2 is supported" and can become very disappointed when they find out otherwise. Also, if the "version lag" is big enough, people who buy a copy of the "Supported" VST might have difficulty actually getting the old version from the vendor. For most people, once a title is on the "supported list" they assume Muse has made an implicit promise to support that VST over time.

On the other hand, people who purposely buy a software product that is NOT on the Supported List must realize there is no specific promise of Receptor support.

[ADino]

Hey all, been watching this thread for some time,
so may I ask, for people using only au's...how do you get these to work on a Receptor? its a vst player, so do u need a wrapper? Im a Mac user who has been thinking of not if, but when to get into the Receptor, so Id app any feedback on this.
Thanks, A.

[looneytunes]

Hi ADino

I think you might be thinking about Receptor a bit differently than it is intended.

Receptor is a whole other computer than your Mac. It runs (PC compiled) VSTis on it locally. You can send MIDI information to a Receptor from your Mac DAW (eg Digital Performer, or some other sequencer), and you can record the returning audio by one of a few methods.

One of the methods by which you can record the returning audio is via a plugin that Muse has written, called "Uniwire". This is a plugin that runs natively within your DAW. For example, in Digital Performer, you could instantiate the Uniwire (audio unit) plugin, and configure it to 'listen-to" a number of audio output channels coming back from the Receptor. Uniwire communicates to and from the Receptor via a (high-speed) ethernet connection.

Alternatively, you could have a MIDI connection from your Mac to Receptor, and use Receptor's digital or analog audio outputs to connect to your Mac's audio interface (whatever you use for your DAW). In this scenario, you are simply streaming to audio channels in your sequencer.

You should be considering Receptor for a few reasons:

1.) You find that you need to 'freeze' audio from VSTi's in your DAW all the time, because you do0 not have the CPU/Disk power on your Mac to run all the VSTis that you need. This is not ideal when you are trying to make global edits to your composition structure.

2.) you have need to run VSTis live. Either because of reason 1 above, or if you are playing live in a band for example.

3.) Some people like to use hardware to logically isolate their VSTis and Sample Data from their recording platform (DAW). This helps minimize what needs to change for software updates (to either the DAW or the VSTis).

For me, I spend alot of time configuring my Receptors to use both live and in Studio. This flexibility of my configuration is definitely worth the investment in time.

Hope this helps, Regards,
Kevin L

[ADino]

Thanks Kevin, Im running LogicPro on the Mac.
What Im wondering is, since I purchased Ivory, Miroslav, Atmosphere, etc, they are au's. Now say I got a Receptor and wanted to load the plugs I purchased and run on the Mac into the Receptor for stage use, as well as running them uniwire or whatever into my daw..since the Receptor runs vst's, and my plugs are all au's,
how would that work?
Thanks for your explaination, A.

[looneytunes]

Hi again,

I'm not sure about Miroslav.

For Ivory, Muse provides an installer - which will put the appropriate (PC) VSTi on your system., You can upload your sample files from the mac onto receptor. Then, you send a note to Synthogy with a challenge code, and they send you an authorization.

For Atmosphere, Muse has a 'prep' installer (which sets up some folders and protections on the Receptor HD). At this point, you need to do what muse calls an "unsupported install" (which means you need access to the PC vsti file, and the .DAT files). Muse gives good instructions how to do this kind of install. Basicly, you put these onto the Receptor HD in a specific place, then you go to a page on Receptor's interface, and hit an install button.

Typically for an 'unsupported install', it helps to have a PC lying around. I typically install plugs on a PC, grab all of the important files (eg. VSTi.dll, any data files) and put them onto the Receptor's file system.

If you only have a Mac, and (cross platform) install CD/DVDs, you might have to figure out how to get all of the files off the installation disk. It's much easier to first install on a PC, and then grab files.

Regards,
Kevin L

[Bryan@MuseResearch]

What you might want to know is that you can special order a Receptor with anything you want pre-installed. It costs a little more, but it eliminates all the hassles of installing the large sound libraries. But if you want to do it yourself, Kevin is explaining it correctly: you download the prep installer, install it, and then copy your sound libraries over. In the case of having the AU plug-ins, you'll have to get the Windows version of the plugin (called a DLL file) from Spectrasonics. Registered users can download it off their site for installation on Receptor.

With regards to Miroslav, IK is in the process of changing their copy protection to a scheme that Muse Research can support.

The cool thing about Receptor for Mac users is that you can fully control it from your Mac through Receptor Remote, and with UniWire you can run the plug-ins on your Receptor in Logic... a great way to access the huge world of Windows VST plugins on a Mac.

Regards

Bryan (groovology)

[G&L_player]

When a person considers buying a Receptor, once they understand that not every VST can be run, they rely upon the "currently supported list" as their primary input to the buying decision. Many people will simply see a VST is "supported" and won't always instantly recognize that the Receptor supported version is not the most current PC version (e.g. not everyone who would browse Plugorama right now would automatically know that the listed "Kontakt 2 v2.1.1.001" is not the most current version [v2.2.1]). People will generally assume "yes, Kontakt 2 is supported" and can become very disappointed when they find out otherwise. Also, if the "version lag" is big enough, people who buy a copy of the "Supported" VST might have difficulty actually getting the old version from the vendor. For most people, once a title is on the "supported list" they assume Muse has made an implicit promise to support that VST over time.

On the other hand, people who purposely buy a software product that is NOT on the Supported List must realize there is no specific promise of Receptor support.

This is a very interesting compromise that, for the most part, remains hidden from many potential Receptor users.

So, no Beat testing on the Recptors, hugh?

[Bryan@MuseResearch]

IN our defense, I want to again point out that we've been working on the Komplete installer for almost a year. We started making an installer technology for Komplete 3, almost finished it, and bam, Native came out with the Service Center and a completely different way of authorizing plug-ins (and that's okay, because they warned it would be happening and have been really helpful to us in developing the support for Service Center). So back to the drawing board we go, and alas, we should be finished in the next few weeks assuming beta test doesn't show up too many nasties.

The upside of all this work is now all the new Service Center plugins should work with a minimum amount of effort on our part, which will drastically improve the flow of plug-ins into the compatible list. Furthermore, it will free up engineering resources to work with all the other developers who want their stuff on Receptor. I think you see things improve remarkably over the next few months in terms of what is compatible and what is not, especially with regard to updates.

I'm not sounding too defensive, am I?

Bryan

[ADino]

Hi again,

I'm not sure about Miroslav.

For Ivory, Muse provides an installer - which will put the appropriate (PC) VSTi on your system., You can upload your sample files from the mac onto receptor. Then, you send a note to Synthogy with a challenge code, and they send you an authorization.

For Atmosphere, Muse has a 'prep' installer (which sets up some folders and protections on the Receptor HD). At this point, you need to do what muse calls an "unsupported install" (which means you need access to the PC vsti file, and the .DAT files). Muse gives good instructions how to do this kind of install. Basicly, you put these onto the Receptor HD in a specific place, then you go to a page on Receptor's interface, and hit an install button.

Typically for an 'unsupported install', it helps to have a PC lying around. I typically install plugs on a PC, grab all of the important files (eg. VSTi.dll, any data files) and put them onto the Receptor's file system.

If you only have a Mac, and (cross platform) install CD/DVDs, you might have to figure out how to get all of the files off the installation disk. It's much easier to first install on a PC, and then grab files.

Regards,
Kevin L

So I could load "certain" plugs straight from the Mac into Recptor, say Ivory, but not Miroslav or Atmo...
I have a few pc's, but none of them are configed into my recording setup. There are 2 plugs that I would have to use live, those being Ivory and Scarbee. I dont do a lot of gigs where I need synth, and if Im not mistaken, a few come already installed. Of course, for recording, I would want to use everything I could, given the fact that it could lessen cpu usage freeing up resources. Given the fact that Im really only using Mac, what would be the best way to get the most out of a Receptor?

Again, thanks for the replies, they are very helpful.

A.

[Scotty]

I wonder what would happen if they retooled this , made a version for Windows XP, optimized it and let it load anything that XP could load. Give it uniwire support when using their ported application. Even if you lost 10% to 15% power due to overhead, the compatibility wouldn't hold us back.

[looneytunes]

Hi again ADino,

So I could load "certain" plugs straight from the Mac into Recptor, say Ivory, but not Miroslav or Atmo...

Almost - but not quite.

There are some plugins where Muse has pre-packaged some of the parts (like Ivory), where the parts originally come from a PC installation. After you install these parts, you get sample Data files from your installation disk to complete the installation.

For some plugs (eg. GMedia's Imposcar, Minimonstar, ... ) some of these already come pre-installed with everything. Others, Muse provides complete installs. These are ones that you simply need to authorize.

There is another classification of plugs that Muse never tests or supports, but you can install these yourself. These are called 'unsupported plugins', and you typically need to grab all the files from a PC installation to load these.

This leaves the last group of plugs, which are ones that you can't install for various reasons. The largest class of these are plugs that are dependent on the syncrosoft hardware dongle (for anti-piracy protection). Scarbee players (that are based on the Halion sample player) are in this category.
[note - if you wish to have the Scarbee VKC libs, you can get these as Kontakt libs, which will load and run on Receptor]

In general, most of what you need runs on Receptor (Atmosphere, Ivory, Scarbee libs). You should be able to install these from your Mac. Miroslav is the one I don't know about - and if it is 'unsupported', you would probably need to install it on a PC first (to get the files to install on a Receptor).

I hope this makes sense. It's really not that hard to deal with once you get into Receptor. I use Pro Tools on a Mac as my DAW, and I like the combination of working with Receptor and the Mac.

Regards,
Kevin L

[ADino]

Hey, Im back, had to be gone for awhile...
So say I really dont need to use Miroslav..my main interest, besides the studio daw aspect, would be doing Ivory and Scarbee on my gigs...since I dont need a lot of synths, and could probably use 1 of the preinstalled plugs that comes w/Receptor for that. Your saying that I could, from the Mac, load Ivory, Scarbee needs NI K2player to work, which I just bought, havent installed yet, so wouldnt I need to load the K2 player to get Scarbee to run?
At any rate, to have Ivory on my gigs would be great for me, especially if it sounds as good as it does in my daw, very playable piano..the daw aspect is simply a bonus.
Another thing Im wondering, Receptor comes with all of these demo plugs...wouldnt it run better if you simply had the plugs you needed installed on it, and not all of this demo stuff? Seems to me that you could free up a lot of resources only running what you really need.

Thanks, A.

[Bryan@MuseResearch]

Hi A:

I must say you have great taste in piano plug-ins, Ivory is really great and runs particularly well on Receptor (especially under the 1.6 system software, soon to be released!) As for EP sounds, Lounge Lizard 3 is pre-installed, and I've met many players who like the expressivity of the rhodes sounds it creates.

As for Scarbee, you are right to state that it requires K2 to be installed, although all of the Scarbee libraries I've seen support Kompakt, Kontakt 1.5, as well as Kontakt 2.2. Once K2 is installed, simply drag the libraries over to Receptor's Hard drive, and you're good to go. The Scarbee library consists of two sets of discs: 16-bit "live performance" libraries, and 14-bit "studio" libaries. You'll have to decide whether or not you want to install the 16-bit library or the 24-bit library and whether or not the extra sample resolution is audible in your performance environment. Of course any 24-bit library requires more disc activity and eats up 50% more RAM per sample than a 16-bit library, so if you're looking for optimum performance, I'd stay with the 16-bit. And you can't have both libaries installed since the samples all have the same names and will cause mass confusion in K2 if you install both...

As for demo plugs, there is no performance penalty involved in having them around, they only take up disc space until they are actually instantiated (loaded). Most of the players I've spoken with really appreciate the fact that there are a bunch of interesting and useful plugs that are available for fully-functional demo-ing... you never know when the mood might strike to check out a nasty virtual analog lead synth like Albino or Vanguard, or take a trip back in time with the M-Tron mellotron... and most people have never even heard of Discovery, which is an amazing Nord lead replacement...

What you might want to consider, to save you time and ensure that everything works, is to order your Receptor with Ivory and Kontakt 2 pre-installed. Any Receptor dealer can special order a unit with software pre-installed for you, and although there is a small charge for this, it definitely seems worth it when you are loading in the samples from disc 4 of 7 in a huge library only to find out that a small scratch on the disc caused the sample to be corrupt and you have to start again. All you have to do at that point is register the plug-in and start playing.

All the best

Groovology

[looneytunes]

Welcome back, A.

I wanted to second the notion Brian brought up. I have done the Ivory Install myself before - and when I bought my second unit, I opted for Muse to pre-install Ivory (and a number of EW synths). I think it was $20. per program / lib. For these synths that have 5-7 CDs/ DVDs worth of data, that easily paid for itself. If you are new to Receptor, and haven't figured out some of the tricks to installing various VSTis, this can save you some headaches up front, and give you a good playing experience out-of-the-box.

Also, as Brian mentions, Scarbee sound great (in K2). Other EP VSTis do to, like Elektrik Piano, Lounge Lizard, and some freebies like MrRay. Lots of good options there. If you wish to have both Ivory and Rhodes available at the same time, you may wish to choose an EP VSTi that is not based on Samples (eg. lessen dependency on RAM and disk swapping samples) - since Ivory will be already pushing resources this way.

Regards,
Kevin L

[ADino]

Thanks for the info, I really do not have any pc based way at present to do anything musical, so how does an Ivory install at the factory work? I own Ivory, actually, the 1st plug I bought, so they install it, and I activate it using my reg as mentioned above. Sounds simple enough.
On the Rhodes, I havent tried Mr. Ray, but have tried the others that you mentioned..so lets just say I would rather have Scarbee.
I also look to the future, say I purchased a Rec, and would want to add vst's later. Would any compatible pc, providing it has the specs, be able to do this? And yes, I would most likely want to use Ivory, Rhodes and say a decent pad here n there, some clav, depending on the job Im doing.
Again, thanks for the info, it is very helpful in me understanding what the Recp is about.

Regards, A.