Posts by ChrisCabbage

    Contacted Access about the timing issue. here's what they had to say:


    ''When using the Virus TI plugin and using the analog outs, this cannot be delay compensated by DAWs due to technical restrictions in general. There is also no setting that would influence this at all. You can try to see if using different buffer sizes might help, but again the signal from the analog outs cannot be delay compensated in general with the plugin being in use (and this never was the case.''


    So basically there's nothing we can do to fix the timing when using the analog outs.

    Yep. Pretty-much what I thought, despite being told otherwise by various people.

    This is inaccurate. You have to enable midi in the plugin if it is running, and then it will work. Its on the tab on the right. You will know you are looking at the right page when you see a picture of the Virus panel. "Enable Midi" is in the dropdown. Otherwise just enable midi via the keyboard itself if you want to forgo the plugin altogether.

    The "Enable Midi" you're referring to I think, is the "Enable Midi Channel" item under "MIDI Channel Behaviour" on the "remote" setup page...?

    I don't think that it has anything to do with reception of MIDI note data. Enabling it, doesn't enable reception of MIDI note data.

    I *think* my original statement is not inaccurate. I'd be very happy to be proved incorrect though!

    Edit: from the manual, what that setting does is:


    "MIDI Channel Behaviour

    Select whether or not the controller messages are sent to the

    specific channel as determined by the MIDI string, or whether

    this part of the string is ignored, and the messages are sent to

    the currently selected channel."

    This is inaccurate. You have to enable midi in the plugin if it is running, and then it will work. Its on the tab on the right. You will know you are looking at the right page when you see a picture of the Virus panel. "Enable Midi" is in the dropdown. Otherwise just enable midi via the keyboard itself if you want to forgo the plugin altogether.

    I honestly hope I’m wrong. I’ve asked many times, on multiple forums (including this one) if there’s a way to do this and I’ve never had a useful response. I’ve seen many others ask the same question and it’s never been answered.


    I’ve also just looked at the manual again and I can’t see a mention of this.


    could you be specific about which “panel” enable midi is on? Which drop-down?

    Thank you for the quick answer.


    So, I understood, that the original Virus-Plug-in only allows for MIDI via USB. To send MIDI through a MIDI interface, a third-party-plugin needs to be used (like from mystery islands or MidiQuest).


    Question: Does the timing issue become better, if both Midi and Audio are sent through dedicated interfaces ?

    My understanding, is that the plug-in only works with its own USB connection. When the plug-in is running, you can't separately send MIDI to the Virus over USB (or DiNs), without going through the plug-in.

    Mystery Islands is one way forward. I use that, but do prefer the Access plug-in.

    Again - I'd love to be shown a better way of doing this, but so far haven't found a way.

    Timing is better, if you treat the Virus as a standard external instrument. In my case, I'm setting up my DAWs to use Virus as an external instrument, with PDC applied. USB MIDI and DiN are pretty-much the same timing-wise, when working in that mode.

    Timing is also good for me, if I use the full Ti plug-in system, with USB audio. Obviously, we're waiting for a Catalina update for that.

    Of course, I would prefer the built-in Total-Integration-USB-solution, because it saves me 6 audio-ins on an interface. Nevertheless, I do not want to miss the Virus TI and I am prepared to invest in a dedicated audio/midi-interface for the Virus. If it works ....


    Thanks a lot !!


    Stefan

    Hi. It kind-of works, but I find that the timing becomes very unreliable and jittery.


    Also, Virus doesn’t receive MIDI via anything other than the plug-in, if the plug-in is running.


    I’d like to be proved wrong on all that though.

    Ploytec still haven't released their Catalina UAB Audio driver yet... I'm assuming that's also what Access are waiting on as well. - https://www.usb-audio.com/support/

    If Elektron are using it for Overbridge (which is what we’ve been told), then they might have a version they’re releasing to partners, but not one they’re yet happy to publicise. Conjecture of course.


    ...or they might just be terrible at keeping their web-site up-to-date. ?

    well you need to learn to explain your problem more clear in the future.

    What are you saying, that the plugin sending midi to the virus and then the audio coming out of the D/A instead of USB, is not compensated correctly? Do you realise how microscopic that latency is? You are being ridiculous. EVERY hardware synth has output latency,

    You appear to be trolling now. I’ve been working with synths and recording kit for more than 30 years now. I’m also a software engineer, working in embedded multimedia systems. I know a fair bit on what I’m talking about.


    I’m not obliged to help people like yourself mate. Good luck with finding solutions to your problems. I’m no longer responding to your posts.

    In case it helps (just noticed the latest posts on here), this is where I got to when using the analogue outputs.

    I've actually got reasonable-ish results in Cubase 10.5.11, using the external outputs, but timing isn't completely consistent and there's a fair bit of timing jitter.

    Here's what I'm having to do:

    Plug-in set up with analogue outputs, into one of my RME Mulitfaces.

    Live mode on the plug-in checked. This is the crucial bit! ...and you'll need to check it every session, since it doesn't get remembered.

    Virus set up as an External Instrument in Cubase (you'll have to check the guides on how to do that).

    MIDI channel sending to plug-in (e.g. 01. Virus TI - Midi In).

    To test, I have a group channel, with the External Instrument instance routed into it. Then an audio channel, with input as the group channel. I then record the audio on that channel and check the start timing. I'm using an Init patch, with Osc Phase Init set to 1.

    It's not straight-forward, but it's kind-of useable. Hope that helps!

    If anyone has a better solution, please do respond.

    Update: I've actually got reasonable-ish results in Cubase 10.5.11, using the external outputs, but timing isn't completely consistent and there's a fair bit of timing jitter.

    Here's what I'm having to do:

    Plug-in set up with analogue outputs, into one of my RME Mulitfaces.

    Live mode on the plug-in checked. This is the crucial bit! ...and you'll need to check it every session, since it doesn't get remembered.

    Virus set up as an External Instrument in Cubase (you'll have to check the guides on how to do that).

    MIDI channel sending to plug-in (e.g. 01. Virus TI - Midi In).

    To test, I have a group channel, with the External Instrument instance routed into it. Then an audio channel, with input as the group channel. I then record the audio on that channel and check the start timing. I'm using an Init patch, with Osc Phase Init set to 1.

    It's not straight-forward, but it's kind-of useable. Hope that helps!

    According to several posts by Marc, MIDI should work fine, which means you'd only have to get Audio back in via your RME Interface.


    There's another thread where sombody asked whether that would work. It would be nice if you could try and post back.

    MIDI works without the plug-in. ...but if you’re using the plugin, then the DAW tries to apply PDC to the round-trip of MIDI event to incoming audio. That can mostly be removed by hitting the Live button on the plug-in GUI, but I still can’t get it right going that route.


    I don’t think it’s possible to send MIDI to Virus “Synth”, whilst running the plug-in. If I’m wrong, please someone let me know!


    I’ve already commented on one other post, do you have a link? I might have missed it.

    For info, I've now moved to Catalina. VirusTi plug-in is obviously not working, but I'm going to continue with the Mystery Islands editor until and unless Access get things going.

    If Access want me to try new drivers, just let me know.

    Since I tested on a separate partition, I had a fair bit of confidence that all of my software and hardware otherwise works OK. Obviously, the 32 bit software is broken, but I have Parallels running Mojave and Windows 10 for most of that.

    Again incorrect. Your audio interface should tell the DAW how much latency the driver and A/D have. Some interfaces have inaccurate drives, but then you use the recording offset in the DAW which all DAWs have. Do a loopback test to find out if the interface is reporting incorrect latency.

    If you have a MOTU interface it definitely will be, their drivers are way off.

    I don't think you're understanding the issue. My audio interfaces (RME Multifaces) work fine and I use multiple external synths - very low latency and spot-on timing.

    When the Virus TI plug-in is running, PDC applies and there's latency, which is compensated for by PDC.

    When the plug-in is running, you can't send MIDI direct to the Virus, it can only go through the plug-in.

    "Beta" Software in general has the meaning that you shouldn't use it in your productive environment, unless you're prepared to lose large parts of your work due to software errors (e.g. erasing your main drive because of a wrongly parsed preset file name), often have to update your working environment, and probably lose settings between versions. Good enough for hobbyists. Not good enough for professionals with a tight schedule and fixed deadlines.

    Again - no guarantees that non-beta software won't do that. E.g. I could introduce you to people who lost data on Akai's current MPC systems due to bugs on official non-beta software. I'd recommend never ever trusting any software, or even hardware platforms (e.g. disk controller firmware) to not corrupt or remove your data - that includes operating systems. Always have a backup strategy,

    40+ years of programming and software engineering under my belt (yes - I'm that old). Like I say - being out of beta is no guarantee of being bug free, even in terms of losing data.