Plogue Bidule and Logic

i thought it might be a good idea to start a thread on the subject of using plogue bidule and logic, both to offer advice and to get some.

 

using a secondary app is absolutely the way forward to make efficient use of RAM and to be able to exploit the power of modern computers and to get past the memory limit in logic.

 

- logic must be started BEFORE plogue bidule in order to see the rewire bidule in the list of bidules on the left.

- WHITE represents midi BLUE represents audio.

 

here is a shot of my plogue setup for my current project:

the bidule rewire could be sent to a midi splitter rather than setting up bidules 3 and 4 - but i wanted to keep my expansion options open.

 

the horizontal level starting with "Strings 2_0" are my kontakt instruments. i set them up by dragging the relevant au instrument on the left onto the page. the blue cables going into the bottom rewire bidule plugs you into the respective channel that comes up in logic. so for strings its rewire 1&2 which you will find in the input slot of an aux object that you set up in logic.

 

to play the midi you need the correct midi rewire bus which you add to arrange.

 

so for strings, i might have 3 or 4 patches loaded up. there fore it will be bus 1 channel 1, for the first patch, bus 1 channel 2, for the next and so on. you set the midi channel just like you would in logics environment.

 

when you set up those other bidules - bidule 3 and 4 - they turn up as multi instruments (midi) in logics environment and you can add those. i had to use a midi splitter in plogue in order to split the midi channels between 3 different instruments as you can see. they are outputting to their own audio channels which you select in an aux channel strip in logic.

 

so here is my question:

 

how do you get the midi rewire bidule to show more than 2 midi busses on the bidule on the top left, and is it possible to have more than 16 rewire audio channels to bring into logic?

how do you get the midi rewire bidule to show more than 2 midi busses on the bidule on the top left, and is it possible to have more than 16 rewire audio channels to bring into logic?

In Bidule's Preferences>ReWire you can choose up to 8 MIDI ports and up to 96 audio channels.

Now, if you have at least 1 Aux in Logic assigned to a Bidule audio output,

when launching Bidule it comes up with a ReWire template that shows all ports and channels according to the preferences.

.

Interesting topic. Having not been aware of such a piece of software, I'm intrigued and wondering what performance gains I will get using third party plugins in Logic that work okay in Logic but to my mind seem a little flaky. An example would be, when using a particular manufacturers plugins, Logic really does not like going below 128 samples with a small buffer setting. Logic will quit as soon as I start playback. Not that this is an issue on my system as such as 128 is perfectly useable, but, will things feel a lot smoother using such an application? Would be good to hear from some of the users on this. I don't use a tremendous amount of ram consuming libraries however, I recently got omnisphere which probably uses a fair chunk of RAM with a few patches loaded. Any thoughts much appreciated! Also, is this the only / best application to achieve such a thing?

 

Cheers.

there are many others:

 

RAX which is relatively expensive, AU lab which is free with the developer tools in OS, but it is not rewire. it creates midi ports, but you will have to use audio jack to get the sound back into logic.

 

i have found that logic is much snappier and latency is much better using plogue. the combination of the 2 allows me to load up much more and have far superior GUI performance than i had when loading up within logic. in fact, i would not be able to load all this up in logic at all. i am using a fairly large exs library as well.

 

switching songs is much much faster because the 3rd party samples do not reload.

 

using rewire, you can offline bounce.

Thanks for the reply. It would seem it may speed up logic for me in that case as I have issues opening plugin windows such as big delays and disrupted audio playback. So, I presume it's just like using a rewire device such as reason? I shall have a google for it and check it out. Depending on the cost of it, half of me is thinking of hanging on for a 64bit version of Logic. Obviously there is no mention anywhere of this but I have noticed a fair number of the major third party plugin manufacturers are releasing native 64bit versions of their plugins in the very near future, such as Spectrasonics. One for another thread maybe.

 

Cheers.

stevenson,

 

I'm not sure if using virtual MIDI ports (Bidule 3 and 4) in addition to the ReWire MIDI ports is a good idea as these are processed outside the ReWIre protocol and thus may behave differently with respect to timing.

In Bidule's Preferences>ReWire you can choose up to 8 MIDI ports and up to 96 audio channels.

Now, if you have at least 1 Aux in Logic assigned to a Bidule audio output,

when launching Bidule it comes up with a ReWire template that shows all ports and channels according to the preferences.

 

well of course i have looked in preferences and even while the program is in rewire mode i cannot find rewire preferences. were do you find them?

The ReWire preferences are available only in standalone mode (which makes sense I think).

stevenson,

 

Thanks for this. Some questions though...

 

• I cannot find a bidule in Plogue called "Bidule ReWire" (as seen in your screenshot). Where is this located? Or is it an existing Plogue module which you've renamed? If so, what was it called previously?

• I've created one ReWire object in my environment, but there's no corresponding Plogue MIDI object that refers to its presence. How do I get Plogue to see it?

 

In short, I can't see any way of accessing Logic's ReWire within PB at this time. Can you please explain these initial setup steps?

thanks for the tutorial.

You might want to check and make sure you have the latest version of PB. In the Prefs you are missing the rewire tab.

stevenson,

 

Thanks for this. Some questions though...

 

• I cannot find a bidule in Plogue called "Bidule ReWire" (as seen in your screenshot). Where is this located? Or is it an existing Plogue module which you've renamed? If so, what was it called previously?

• I've created one ReWire object in my environment, but there's no corresponding Plogue MIDI object that refers to its presence. How do I get Plogue to see it?

 

In short, I can't see any way of accessing Logic's ReWire within PB at this time. Can you please explain these initial setup steps?

 

 

I had the same problem....check out my notes in this thread.

http://logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=36112

 

Try running PB without Logic. Do you see the Rewire Devices folder in the bidule list now? I found that after adjusting the Rewire PB prefs, quit PB, then launch PB again check the rewire dev folder, quit PB, launch Logic, launch PB. That's what worked for me.

Follow-up to my last question --- I have the latest version of PB (with the ReWire prefs) and I know how to make connections in ReWire. Any help would be appreciated, as I'm a total noob when it comes to ReWire.

Thanks Guavadude! I checked out your tutorial and followed the steps you described. I still don't see anything in PB that refers to ReWire. Then again, I don't have any ReWire anything in my system. I'm guessing that I'm missing the ReWire Engine, meaning that I have to buy Reason or something that comes with the ReWire Engine before I can use this setup? Or should Logic by itself act as a ReWire host?

http://www.propellerheads.se/download/updates_rewire/index.cfm?fuseaction=displaymain

 

you need to download and install Rewire 1.7 engine. It comes with Reason but you can download it free.

 

Be sure to quit all apps before installing. I'd probably restart and then launch PB once by itself to get it to connect. From there on out PB will be listed as a Rewire option.

You're a star Guavadude! I'll DL it now. 8)

Thanks for the help! But still no love... After following your directions and installing the ReWire engine, then restarting, then launching PB, I still don't see ReWire objects appear in the list within PB.

 

When I launch PB after launching Logic, I see Bidule 1 and Bidule 2 objects appear in Logic's library, and I'm able to send MIDI to PB no problem (confirmed via a MIDI monitors in PB). But I don't see anything related to ReWire in PB.

 

Granted, I'm using an evaluation copy of PB, though it's supposedly fully authorized until Feb. 15th. Anyway, any add'l help would be appreciated. Meanwhile I'll keep messing around.

(virtually bowing)...

I'd really kickass if I knew how to rewrite Logic to make better use of the RAM without having to jump through all these hoops.

Maybe we should try to get Plogue to do a group buy for every Logic user on the planet!

ski,

I think you need to be sure Bidule is opening in rewire mode, which I think depends on whether you open it before or after Logic is running. What order are you starting things up?

I'm still evaluating as well so that's not it.

 

from Bidule's help

 

ReWire Slave Basics

 

In order to slave Bidule to another ReWire master device, you must do the following steps in the exact order below:

 

Launch the ReWire master application

Activate the Plogue Bidule ReWire device. (How you do this varies from program-to-program - consult your ReWire application's manual for more details.)

Launch Bidule. The splash screen will indicate that Bidule is in ReWire mode.

Connect any MIDI outputs from the master ReWire device to any desired instruments in Bidule, and connect all audio from Bidule to the appropriate audio inputs on the Bidule ReWire device to send audio to the ReWire master application.

 

 

I think you're problem is in the second step. You have to create the aux in Logic and then choose Bidule from the list of rewire devices, then launch PB.

OK, I'm making some progress here (got an error message when launching PB that said "ReWire device already in use". But I have to go out for a while, so I'll continue to play with this when I get back. Thanks Guys!!

Hey Stevenson

 

Thanks for starting up this topic in the logic forums, going to be getting into PB over the next few days and i know im going to appreciate having this to refer to.

 

Glad we are all in the same boat and can work together to get around the nasty logic memory ceiling.

Hey Peeps

 

Would someone be kind enough to help me out. I'm pretty new to this rewire stuff also, but i have managed to get Reason to rewire correctly and i have successfully rewired multiple synths from reason into external midi tracks in logics arrange. I can then record midi and it will play back fine from reason's synths.

 

However when i configure PB, i can hear the device playing when i play my midi keyboard, but i cant seem to get it to wire into logic. PB is starting in rewire mode, but when i click on the Plogue Bidule device on the auxilary in logic, it just comes up RW: Bidule Out (im assuming it should say something similar to reasons re wire which is RW: Mix L/R

 

If anyone can assist as i would love to get up to speed and get bidule to work with logic.

 

Thanks

You are really close but have a few things wrong.

First you need to open the prefs in PB and in the Rewire tab, set it for 8 midi ports. This will let you use 8 different VI instances which is the max.

You should then see 8 midi outs from the Bidule Rewire and you can delete the midi splitter. Also delete the M-audio controller, since you'll want to be controlling it from within Logic.

 

These outs should go directly to your VI, (Nexus in your case)

 

The Aux you've created in Logic looks right, it's just labeled differently than the Reason auxes. You have the VI plugged into audio ins 1-2, so you need to choose the top bidule rewire outs (in your pic you have selected the last pair which is outs 15-16)

 

that should do it.

Hey Guavadude

 

Thanks a million for the reply. Ok so i went through and configured bidule like you said, and it works!

 

I can play midi into logic, i can record it, it plays back, but after about 3 mins, instead of playing back the midi ,bidule just hangs on 1 note and it gets stuck playing a sustained note. Ive attached another screen shot, perhaps something is still wired wrong?

 

This happens even when there is only 1 audio unit setup in PB. I tried different Audio Units, nexux, gladiator, Albino same problem.

Ok so i discovered that this held sustained note occurs when logic is playing back the midi in the arrange window and then if you attempt to quantize the midi data in the piano roll, the notes just sustain. I have to delete the AU instruments in PB and then recable the all to make it work again!!??

 

Perhaps i am doing something wrong? Does anyone else have this problem?

I'm not having the note hang. Post your system spec and what AU's you're using. I'm about to do a full score with Bidule so I'll know better what to expect shortly.

Wow. This Bidule takes a little while to setup but the results I'm getting are nothing short of amazing. Shame it's necessary to do it this way, but a workaround is better than no workaround.

 

First I decided to test Logic 8 with an one ext midi, one software instrument and one audio track. With nothing loaded the graphics were very fast. Not blazing fast but plenty responsive, didn't bother me a bit. I could change plugins, add buses and sends, re-route the outs and it all worked fine.

Then I started adding Kontakt 3 instances and with each instance the responsiveness of everything slowed waaayyyy down. Beach ball spinning for several seconds before I could do anything.

 

Then I deleted all of the Kontakts from Logic and setup an 8 port Bidule rewired and loaded that baby up with 4 Kontakt 2 players..... with Evolve, and a separate Symphobia for WW, Brass and Strings. Then I loaded up 4 Kontakt-3's with my personal brass setup of one each for Trumpets, Fr Horns, Trb and Low brass.

 

drumroll please..........it all worked! Not only did it work it was snappy, everywhere. When I select one of the VI's in bidule....pop it opens right up....really quick.

 

And now in Logic, wouldn't you know, everything is crazy snappy as well. My cpu is purring along at about 1/3 on both cores, and this is a G5 PPC 2.3ghz with 4.5 gb of ram. Once I max out my ram at 8gb, I'll have a lot more room for EXS and other stuff in Logic.

 

Here's what it looks like

 

if nothing else, this will hold me over big time until the new Mac Pros and Snow kitty arrive. Maybe by then you won't have to do this.

Ok so i discovered that this held sustained note occurs when logic is playing back the midi in the arrange window and then if you attempt to quantize the midi data in the piano roll, the notes just sustain. I have to delete the AU instruments in PB and then recable the all to make it work again!!??

 

Perhaps i am doing something wrong? Does anyone else have this problem?

 

I am getting the occasional note hang but I can get it to let go by just playing the track a bit until it hits the stuck note. You might also try the all notes off command, under Options menu/Send to Midi/Reset controllers.

Where do i get this?[/i]