Vienna Ensemble alternative?

[jancivil]

Another cool thing is, now VE Pro makes it possible to deactivate channels and reactivate them. So the automation map for them still remains but are not using any power, at least if you send no MIDI to them. More convenient than freezing in Cubase, command/e as toggle.

[MadUnit]

I use VE Pro, its designed for server farms, you're offloading cycles/Ram/CPU onto other hardware, its excellent for large kontakt setups amongst other things, great for layering sounds and sending heavy tracks to other machines. The only problem I have found so far is no dice on Metaplugin.

[jancivil]

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

What is possible is to send the output/result in an Instrument Channel in the DAW to an instance you may have set up as an FX rack, a send using a feature known as Audio Input. (The real idea is to send audio to it, but since the Instrument Channel is technically an audio channel it works the same.)
Which is instantiated as an Effect and your instantiated connections appear to connect to. This is an external device to the DAW, rendering this has to be Real Time Export. Primarily designed for Cubendo, there is a workaround for Logic and I think DP, albeit DP uses VE Pro as MAS and gets the multiple MIDI ports without the torturous Logic workaround known as Event Input.

[jancivil]

I use it on a single machine as 'Local Host'; the plugins are in a process separate from the sequencer host, same as 'bridged'. Except for very small loads it's a big difference.

[jancivil]

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.

The standalone VE Pro sends audio out to the audio interface; the DAW sequencer host is not part of the path (VE Pro Server connects to DAW as plugin; VE Pro (standalone) is not 'Server'). When it is [Server], everything out, as far as I can determine, returns to DAW as home base (technically a plugin). In the case of the standalone, a vi which handles MIDI out, such as Kontakt, would probably get it to other devices. In the case of the plugin I suppose a MIDI track would deal with it as with any plugin

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.

Ok, I see. Different use case. VE Pro Server is just a plugin with features. Audio Input works as an external instrument, the one exception to the paradigm. But it's still not going anywhere else than to return to sender.

[ghettosynth]

FWIW, the best solution currently that doesn't involve hardware for the use case that I describe is DANTE Via/Virtual Sound card. It wasn't worth a damn a few years ago but they have made major strides and it is now VERY useful and worth the pittance that they ask for it. It's definitely more reliable than Reaconnect and/or JACK.

[PointOfDeparture]

I think everyone should do themselves a favor and check out Audio Gridder. It's still alpha code, but already does a decent job without too many crashes for me. I'm using Win7 as my server machine and Win10 w/FL Studio as DAW.

https://github.com/apohl79/audiogridder

[keyman_sam]

I use it on a single machine as 'Local Host'; the plugins are in a process separate from the sequencer host, same as 'bridged'. Except for very small loads it's a big difference.

I’m curious about this. Does it really offer a significant advantages? Can you quantify the advantage you get with VEP? Say, versus running kontakt instances in logic.

[jancivil]

It's the difference between a lot of freezing tracks and keeping the whole project up at the same time. Certain really insane resource hogs aside.
Besides instruments, I was loading 10 x as many instances of convolution reverb than I would dream of in Cubase (abnormal project).
NB, though: VE Pro with Logic is not as simple (due to the way Logic deals with a multimbral instrument and instantiates aux channels). I haven't kept up with it but they devised a whole plugin version for the Logic workaround; Event Input.
This was subject to change with AU3 which has been out for a while now. EDIT: their AU3 version still in beta

30 days unrestricted demo, you can't lose. except for the $30 dongle. If all you return to Logic is one stereo out, the hassle I refer to may be unnecessary.

[auron]

I think everyone should do themselves a favor and check out Audio Gridder. It's still alpha code, but already does a decent job without too many crashes for me. I'm using Win7 as my server machine and Win10 w/FL Studio as DAW.

https://github.com/apohl79/audiogridder

Yeah thanks for this hint, looks very promising. I tried it within Cubase 10.5 Pro and tested it with a very demanding patch from Halion Sonic 3 called "Antares". Now this patch consists of 3x Skylab and 1 Anima module and your asio meter can explode if you are playing 6-8 notes (nearly 80% asio meter). But with audio gridder it is very convincing result looking at your cpu meter, so Cubase is maybe 10% asio meter and audio gridder says 12 % cpu usage. Latency in Cubase is 128 samples for the audio device and 5 ms buffer for audio gridder , server localhost but thats ok for me , no need for a dedicated network pc. I have a ryzen 8 core 1700 and emu 1820m audio interface.