NEW THREAD: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=143416
The new AU3 plugin (currently in beta) works really well and I highly reccomend using that instead of this in the near future. You will need to be running High Sierra or newer and VePro 7 in order to use that.
VSL made some new AU3 starter templates but they are a bit broken in 10.4.5+ due to a bug in LogicPro. I won't go into the details now, but bottom line is that I do NOT recommend using VSL's AU3 templates.
Here is a new one provided that is more compatible with logic 10.4.5+. This one has 1270 tracks that connect to 10 VEP instances.
But it turns out its pretty easy to create a new template from scratch for AU3. You can also follow these instructions to add more tracks to the above template.
Instructions for building up tracks and new 1270 AU3 template are here:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=143416
Everything below here is ancient history....advise against using it....
VEP Multiport and SinglePort Templates
This package provides a number of templates for working with Vienna Ensemble Pro and LogicPro. These include both MultiPort and SinglePort templates. The MultiPort templates are improvements upon the ones that were provided by VSL in order to support super large track counts with VEP. The original version provided by VSL has some bugs in it due to bugs in the Logic environment layer which were not accounted for by VSL in their templates. These templates work around those bugs and are generally much better thought out with cleaner environment setups. These are useful until such time that VSL will update their AU plugin to AU3, along with required improvements to LogicPro in order to theoretically use true multi ports in Logic.
The MultiPort templates are useful for very large track counts, up to as many as 6000 tracks! Even larger track counts are possible if you expand upon the provided templates.
MultiPort templates also introduce an additional level of complexity which is often not desirable, so as a convenience, several SinglePort templates have been provided which are handy for setting up reasonably large track counts without using MultiPort, but using Logic MultiInstruments to achieve 16 channels per VEP instance. In addition, a hybrid template that has half the VEP instances as SinglePort and half as MultiPort; is also provided. Some empty templates are also provided that do not have pre-created tracks, but have all the internal environment cabling setup so that you can easily create new tracks adhoc on an as-needed basis and direct them to the desired VEP instance, port and channel.
See below for more information about the Logic Environment bugs which prevent VSL's original multiport macro from working properly, as well as the work-around provided by this package
(See below for Usage details)
Templates Provided
MultiPort
12.instance.768.tracks.4ports
12.instance.1536.tracks.8.ports
12.instance.3072.tracks.16.ports
4.instance.3072.tracks.48ports
1.instance.768.tracks.48ports
Templates without Tracks
12.instance.empty.16.ports - up to 3072 tracks
8.instance.empty.48ports - up to 6144 tracks!
4.instance.empty.48ports - up to 3072 tracks
2.instance.empty.48ports - up to 1536 tracks
1.instance.empty.48ports - up to 768 tracks
Single Port (no multi-port macro used)
16.instance.256.tracks.NoPorts
24.instance.384.tracks.NoPorts
Hybrid Combo
12.instance.480.tracks.4ports.NoPorts
Usage
In order to use this template, here are basic steps.
- Download and unzip the attachement from above. Note that it is currently distributed as a 7z compressed archive, inside a zip file archive. This is due to limitations of this forum in terms of file types I can attache and the fact that zip won't make it small enough to meet the limits of this forum also. So when you download the zip file, unzip it if your browser doesn't do that for you already. Then you will have a .7z file. Then you must uncompress that. The latest free "unarchiver" tool from the app store will uncompress 7z files. You will end up with a folder full of stuff.
- Open a template.
- When you open the template you will see the arrange page. Near the bottom of the arrange page you will see a track folder called "VEP Instances" and inside that folder you will see one track corresponding to each VEP Instance.
- When you click on each of those track headers you will see they correspond to instrument channels which are configured as follows. You will need to open the VEP plugin for each instance and connect to the VEP server instance that is to be used for each one.
- Add instruments to each VEP instance using the VEP software.
- Once you have instruments ready listening in VEP on each instance, listening to the correct ports and channels you can begin to audition sounds from LPX by clicking on the corresponding track header and playing your instrument. The midi tracks are contained inside track folders for now, you can move them around freely. The default naming for each midi track indicates the vep instance, port and channel, so for example the track called "VEP 1_2 3" will route midi events to VEP instance 1, port 2, channel 3.
- You can rename these tracks freely but keep track of which instance and midi port is relevant on each track, since LPX has no knowledge about that and will not show you any other way. If you right-click to reassign track, you can see the underlying environment object that each track is assigned to and they are organized in a way that it should be easy to figure out which VEP instance, port and channel is relevant.
- You can delete these midi tracks as you wish in order to shrink the size of the template. Deleting unused tracks and unused environment objects is not a bad idea when your project is nearing mix down stage.
- If you wish to start with an "empty" template and add your tracks one at a time manually, then simply create new external midi tracks and right click the track header, select "reassign track" and find the VEP instance, port and channel you wish to direct the track to. Very easy.
IMPORTANT Usage Notes
The following things need be enforced for proper operation:- In Project Preferences, turn off the "Midi Data Reduction" option. We're not sure at the moment whether this makes any difference, but we want to make sure LPX does not eliminate any CC99 messages in an attempt to thin or optimize CC bandwidth.
- There is an important Scripter script included in the templates which handles AllNotesOff and forwards those events to all ports when the user stops the transport or hits the panic button in LPX. This script is called VepMultiPort192.pst. This script is only needed for VEP instances using multi port. Single port instances should not have it on the channel strip.
- Users have reported issues when trying to copy and paste midi events into regions while the transport is playing through the same section. Just don't do that.
- LogicPro is sometimes unable to process too many midi events happening simultaneously in any one given instrument channel. This can be rectified by going into LPX audio preferences and setting the Process Buffer Range = "Large".
- When playing back a score with a lot of midi tacks funneling into one instrument, make sure to select a track header of a dummy track before hitting play. Make absolutely sure the track header for the channel hosting the VEP plugin is not selected. I usually hide this track so I don't forget.
- I would also recommend you set the Multithreading mode in LPX to "Playback".
- Make sure the LPX mixer does not have MIDI channels showing while in ALL mode, otherwise LPX will attempt to display perhaps thousands of available midi channels on the mixer and it may cause problems.
Logic Bug Explanation
More information about this LPX bug/flaw can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=137162
VSL's original multiport templates didn't work because of bugs in LogicPro. The environment transformer object does not properly transform events in some cases as intended. For example, with the following transform:
In the above transform, all incoming events are supposed to have CC99=1 event inserted in front of the original event. This mostly works, but not correctly. The CC99 ends up in front of every event, but the CC99 inserted in front of the NoteOff message does not get the fix operation working properly, it is always set to zero. And secondly, this seems to create an extra NoteOff message then is intended, resulting in confusion for the VEP AU plugin.
The work around is:
If anyone comes up with a simpler way to do it, please let us know.
TBD- Update DOCS to PDF, for now use this forum thread as documentation
- Try to move VepMultiPort.pst logic into environment in order to eliminate script from the template
- feature that can monitor bandwidth to each VEP instance in order to spot bottlenecks easily that need to have tracks spread around to other instances.
- try to find a way to avoid assigning articulationID values to the CC99 messages in the environment macro.
- In Project Preferences, turn off the "Midi Data Reduction" option. We're not sure at the moment whether this makes any difference, but we want to make sure LPX does not eliminate any CC99 messages in an attempt to thin or optimize CC bandwidth.