Native Instruments Maschine, Virus Ti Multitimbral operation

I'm using Maschine and VC inside Reaper, and there it is trivial - simply create a MIDI send from Maschine track to VC track.

If I understand correctly, you're using Maschine in standalone mode and instantiate VC as a plugin inside it. I never tried that, but as a guess - try inserting VC in a Group effect slot, rather than a single Sound.

Hope this helps.

Zitat von nightstep

Thanks for the reply Boreg, Yes I am using Maschine in standalone mode, also did what you mentioned (opening the Virus in Group rather than Sound) but the Virus is not available via group. Its a good idea, it would make sense if it where available from the Group section. It would be good if Access could incorporate better integration for NI Maschine, that would clear up a major headache for Maschine users.

Cheers!

maschine does not support what every major sequencer does: multi channel instruments. - this is nothing we can change. and, maschine is not in the liste of supported hosts.
marc

Zitat von nightstep

Ok Marc, so what your saying is, this is on Native Instruments head that the Virus TI will not integrate nicely into Maschine? Also is there any reason why the Virus TI software will not allow one to open another instance, or more in channels of their own, to acces each of the channel available within the Virus?

cheers!

if the virus could stream 16 stereo channels (one for each corresponding midi channel), we would have used multiple plug-ins, one for each channel. but as you might know, this is not the case and therefore the 16 parts do share 3 stereo channels (USB out 1/2/3). the issue is a result of the need for sharing audio channels.
native instruments does not advertise maschine to be a host which supports multi channel plug-ins and we do not advertise the virus to be compatible with every host. that's why there is a compatibility list.
best, marc

I too was frustrated with this, but didn't really blame either party.

One thing you can do is check out is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhwif4aSMeo

where they are clearly using Bidule to route the sounds.

I haven't tried that. I kept it simple and just send MIDI note data like I think most hardware sequencers would do (or at least my Spectralis does).

So, in Maschine, I just route the sound to a MIDI channel and then record what I want. I also use a sysex librarian to manage the sounds used for each song. It is a bit of work, but honestly, not too bad.

But yeah, you lose CC control... which blows, but for me it hasn't been a huge issue.

Hopefully someday they update Maschine to include multitimbral softsynths (which would probably affect the Virus TI too).

This is not actually that complicated...ok fine..you cannot control VC from Maschine, but you can at least use VC and have multi part use of the virus
With Maschine standalone, you need a logical midi connection and a vst host. In my case (pc) i use loopbe (http://www.nerds.de/en/loopbe1.html) logical midi and mini-host (http://tobybear.de/p_minihost.html) for VC.

So... anyone have any thoughts on this for macs?

Using Ugly VSTi interface, I can get it to work, but if I make three separate MIDI OUT in Maschine, the signals end up only going to channel 1 on the virus. I've used midipipe to make sure all channels are being routed to the VST host. So everything is getting to Ugly VSTi, but I don't think it can send data to different channels...

To map it out:

Maschine Virtual MIDI OUT --> MIDI IN (midipipe) --> scans data --> MIDI OUT (midipipe) --> Ugly VSTi interface MIDI IN --> Virus TI (USB input)

Maschine sending MIDI note data to channels 1, 2, and 3.

Virus TI receiving all MIDI note data to channel 1.

Never used it myself, but try creating 16 pipes (name them something like Virus chan 1, Virus chan 2, ..., Virus chan 16). Then use the channel router tool to route them into a single output with the first channel of each pipe on a different channel of the output.

Thanks flabberbob,

I may give that a shot, though I think I've tried something like that.

The problem seems to be in the VST hosts, they only allow the MIDI OUT to channel one. Even if Maschine (standalone) is sending MIDI data to channels 1, 2, 9, 12, they all get routed to channel 1.

This is true if you use Maschine and VC as a VST in maschine.

HostX for mac allowed multiple output channels, but only up to Channel 5 (What the crap happened to all the rest of them?!)
http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/HostX/

Actually, Bidule works flawlessly on this, allowing you to route to all 16 channels (A video is on youtube showing this, which is WHY I thought maschine would work, but being that it's in Spanish, I wasn't able to understand that Bidule was required at first). But I felt that things started to get cumbersome for my Macbook Pro... Bidule, Maschine, Virus Control... Also, the $95 price tag on the thing just seemed a bit steep, especially for the one application that I need.

It's a shame that VC doesn't natively work within maschine. I know it's not a 'supported DAW' so... it isn't supposed to work. But damn, I really think Maschine is a great groovebox and it would be great to get that integration.

Anyway, I just don't think there's a VST host out there for macs that will work perfectly, at least for free.

Midipipe doesn't open VSTs, and there is not really a good way, or rather, no way to route the different channels into VC because VC is dependent on the VST host, most of which only send MIDI data to Channel 1.

Zitat von acemonvw

It's a shame that VC doesn't natively work within maschine. I know it's not a 'supported DAW' so... it isn't supposed to work. But damn, I really think Maschine is a great groovebox and it would be great to get that integration.

it is maschine missing a feature: support for multi channel plug-ins. there is nothing we can do about that.
marc

Zitat von acemonvw

Anyway, I just don't think there's a VST host out there for macs that will work perfectly, at least for free.

even though it is not a VST host and an AU host instead, try AUlab. It is a part of the free apple developer tools.
marc

Zitat von Marc

it is maschine missing a feature: support for multi channel plug-ins. there is nothing we can do about that.
marc

Sorry Marc, I was trying to be ambiguous and not fault either company (Access or NI), neither company promised me it would work.

Zitat von Marc

even though it is not a VST host and an AU host instead, try AUlab. It is a part of the free apple developer tools.
marc

I was looking into trying AUlab. It appears that apple gave it up back in 2009 or something like that. There's no access to its download anywhere that I saw. When I search usenet... all I come up with are links to: paulabarbieri

Wait... I guess all it took was googling that crap and I actually got it. I think at one point I applied for being a mac developer (to probably download something else I didn't need, but wanted). So, I DID find AU Lab in the developer section and will be testing it out tonight. I'll report back to help anyone else who wants this functionality on a Mac. Here is the link to the developer site:
https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action#

Thanks Marc!

Just wanted to update that if anyone is using Maschine and want to use Virus Control with the standalone application of Maschine. It is possible to do this on a mac (not sure on a pc, but I bet there's a way).

1) Go to: https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action#

2) Sign in (or sign up for free first) and find AU Lab / download it.

3) Open Maschine first and then open AU Lab, set the MIDI input to Maschine Virtual Output (make sure that all MIDI channels are active in the MIDI input settings).

4) You can then open the Virus TI AU.

5) Go back to maschine, and start testing this (setting groups to different MIDI channels)

AU Lab did just freeze and close 'unexpectedly' on me... so there is that.

A working solution for standalone Maschine and standalone multi part VC on the PC is post #9 of the thread