Two instances of Usine

Vincent · Unread post by **Vincent** » 09 Sep 2008, 13:53

Hello!

Two instances of Usine standalone work so well (when installed in different folders of course). One instance on each CPU. And also each instance has it's own audio card. That kills.
They can communicate MIDI with Maple MIDI Tool, and they do it perfect!
But, unfortunately, since Virtual Audio Cable has no ASIO engine, and all other similar stuff (not so much in fact) is developped for Mac or Linux, could it be implemented directly in Usine, like some sort of external audio bus?
I'm not talking about Rewire, since it suposes that you have a master instance and a slave one, with MDI flow going from the master to the slave and Audio flow back from the slave to the master. I just mean two instances able to communicate both ways with both MIDI and Audio.
This could be a very powerfull extension of Usine's modular philosophy.

Hard stuff?

Thanks!

Note: some VSTi (and maybe some VST too) may not be loaded in two different hosts. GVI among them... I'm still wondering about tc-electronic powercore PCI plugins.

bsork · Unread post by **bsork** » 09 Sep 2008, 15:54

Hi Vincent,

have you tried to use OSC?

I have no practical experience with OSC whatsoever, but I did quick test sending and receiving within the same instance of Usine, and the little I tested worked. As far as I can understand, you can change the "addr" parameter in the same way as you name busses, so if you manage to make the two instances communicate this way, I suppose you could have as many data streams as you want both ways.

Vincent · Unread post by **Vincent** » 09 Sep 2008, 21:51

Aaaaaahhhhhhh! Sorry, bsork, I have to try that now. Thanks!
See you later!

bsork · Unread post by **bsork** » 09 Sep 2008, 23:16

Good luck!

Vincent · Unread post by **Vincent** » 10 Sep 2008, 00:25

Hi Bjørn,

Thanks for your answer, master guru!
And almost good news:
It works nicely for any kind of data (bye-bye Maple Midi!), except for audio (with 'type' set to array). There is a very sensible quality loss, and many clicks.
Chnl 1 of Usine A sending audio (16bits stereo) to Chnl 1 of Usine B => many clics
The same thing with channels 2 doing the opposite => it becomes really awfull
Usine's CPU vumeter both show 60 to 80%, since task manager shows "almost nothing" on each CPU. What's wrong?
Also, I have to leave on the 'broadcast' option for it to work. It seems to me that it's not the best thing to do on the same computer. Any idea?
That stuff is quite new to me!
I'm sure I miss something.
Thanks for your help.

YouTube · Unread post by **senso** » 10 Sep 2008, 08:15

OSC and audio is fragile with a respectable latency!
You can also try VST bridges like Senderella http://www.kvraudio.com/news/2685.html

bsork · Unread post by **bsork** » 10 Sep 2008, 11:50

Shouldn't that be 32 bit floating audio to maintain audio quality?

amiga909 · Unread post by **amiga909** » 10 Sep 2008, 12:03

alternatively to senderella there would be:
no idea if this apps work with 2 local host programs. they all should do both midi and audio
- Tobybear vstnetmid // kvr forum, tobybear.de is dead right now
- reaplugs stuff by cockos // can do both midi and audio too
- vertexdsp vxplug // not free

gregh · Unread post by **gregh** » 10 Sep 2008, 13:10

I thought of soundflower but it is mac only - however on the max/msp board the following were mentioned as replacements. I have no personal expertise I'm afraid.

jack for windows
http://www.grame.fr/~letz/jackdmp.html

wormhole (which is now free and open source)
http://plasq.com/wormhole

Vincent · Unread post by **Vincent** » 10 Sep 2008, 19:46

senso wrote:OSC and audio is fragile with a respectable latency!

Very! And am I wrong or it's a little greedy?
Thanks for Subminimal Senderella!, I'll try this tonight (Subminimal site is down for a while, it seems...). This plug seems to be simple. I'll tel you.
And thanks guys for your links. Open source is not still my sand box... I had a look to Jack for windows, well, I don't know what to do with it! And wormhole works on Mac.
@ Bjørn: I have no sound with OSC if send in 32 bit float, works only with array. I'll tell you about Senderella. I hope it's the answer. Let's now goto work on that!

Vincent · Unread post by **Vincent** » 10 Sep 2008, 23:51

VST bridge Senderella does not work in Usine neither in Cubase, neither for any combination of these two softs. Except for a big horn sound.
I surely miss something, since it was supposed to be very easy to use...
I'll now see what tobybear, realplug and vertex say - thanks amiga909!

EDIT: the only thing I would like to be able to is to send and receive audio with two instances of Usine on the same computer.

Clearscreen · Unread post by **Clearscreen** » 11 Sep 2008, 03:15

what about plasq wormhole? i have a feeling the latency might be too high, but it's free so worth a look...
it's over here at:
http://code.google.com/p/wormhole2/

with info at:
http://plasq.com/wormhole

Clearscreen · Unread post by **Clearscreen** » 11 Sep 2008, 03:17

also, i came across this today:
http://forum.cubase.net/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=101066
it's a multi client audio driver from steinberg that should let you run two instance of usine on one audio card - if you have enough in's and out's you could reroute your audio using cables the old fashioned way. i'm not sure how well it works or if it's stable, but again might be worth a look...

i believe asio4all can do a similar thing but it never worked stably enough for me when i tried it a while ago.

bsork · Unread post by **bsork** » 11 Sep 2008, 08:43

@Clearscreen: Others and I have tested the multiclient, but not with much success... http://www.cubase.net/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=102825. It was only with Asio4All, so it's worth a try with another, "proper" driver. Strange that noone hasn't chimed in on that Cubase thread with some test results using other drivers and hardware. I'm guessing though that this isn't what Vincent's looking for(?).

@Vincent: If you're willing to give OSC another try, I meant 32 float as the bit size. It would have to be put into arrays with a size equal to the block size, if I haven't misunderstood something completely. But then again, when I just now took a quick look at the OSC 1.0 specification http://opensoundcontrol.org/spec-1_0 it's not very clear how audio is supposed to be "packaged" and transmitted. And if latency is an issue, I guess it's a dead end anyway...

Vincent · Unread post by **Vincent** » 11 Sep 2008, 23:15

I gave up with OSC. Not the good solution. As says Olivier: much too "fragile"...
And, well, I find no solution for my stuff. I must stay with only half of my power for a while.
Maybe if it's not too crazy to implement, it's already in Olivier's TDL! We never know!

gregh · Unread post by **gregh** » 12 Sep 2008, 00:18

Vincent wrote:And thanks guys for your links. Open source is not still my sand box... I had a look to Jack for windows, well, I don't know what to do with it! And wormhole works on Mac.

ha ha - me too with things like Jack. Also, Wormhole2 works on Windows as well as Mac - at least that is their claim on the front page - i admit it does look like it is Mac only at first glance, but they say any VST host in Windows.

Clearscreen · Unread post by **Clearscreen** » 12 Sep 2008, 01:47

gregh wrote:
Vincent wrote:And thanks guys for your links. Open source is not still my sand box... I had a look to Jack for windows, well, I don't know what to do with it! And wormhole works on Mac.
ha ha - me too with things like Jack. Also, Wormhole2 works on Windows as well as Mac - at least that is their claim on the front page - i admit it does look like it is Mac only at first glance, but they say any VST host in Windows.

wormhole is definitely windows as well - i have used it over a wireless network and it didn't work that well, but using localhost IP's it might have low enough latency to be useful...

Clearscreen · Unread post by **Clearscreen** » 12 Sep 2008, 06:00

just tried wormhole out and it seems to be able to send with little latency and no loss of quality from usine to energy xt. it's not totally happy with a buffer setting of zero, but even as low as 8 or 16 samples on the receiver seems to do the trick.

i tried it using two separate soundcards and also with en echo soundcard that has multi client drivers and with the same results.

Vincent · Unread post by **Vincent** » 13 Sep 2008, 19:25

gregh wrote:Also, Wormhole2 works on Windows as well as Mac

Good news. Thanks gregh and thanks to Clearscreen fpr your comments.

Wormhole2 wrote:Hyperspace travel for your audio
This project needs a new leader. If you are interested, please let us know: plasq.com/contact
Wormhole2 is dependent on Steinberg's VSTSDK, which is not open-source. In order to build the binaries you'll need the VSTSDK 2.4 as well as some additional files. These files contain parts of the VSTSDK and are available solely from plasq as they cannot be open-sourced.
Sign the agreement to get access to Steinberg's VSTSDK. Once 'signed', please let us know and we'll send you the files. Contact us here: plasq.com/contact

Hey guys! We don't know how lucky we are with Usine. There, it's AS simple as it can be.
Olivier should be the new leader of Wormhole2 project...
Well... and what can I do with such help:

Sie sind hier:404
Unternavigation:Seite wurde nicht gefunden (404 Fehler)

I only understand what means the 404 number: "try something else"!

Vincent · Unread post by **Vincent** » 19 Sep 2008, 00:14

JackDMP is not so easy to install and start... but it works OK.

It's just like any sound card: if you select it in Usine's ASIO devices setup, you'll see Usines In and Out in the Jack Router.
Then, it's very easy to connect Usine A to Usine B *and* vice-versa.
So, yes, I can make my two instances of Usine send some sound to each other (and receive from)!
Yes!
And then?
And then the sound stream cannot be routed to my sound card!
So, unfortunately, it cannot help me for my goals, because I like hearing the sounds, anyway...

But thanks all for your help.
Jack seems to be a nice device.

ethnix73 · Unread post by **ethnix73** » 19 Sep 2008, 01:04

I've tried jackdmp, and i think you should be able to hear some sound by routing an additionnal audio output to your sound card...but my memory isn't so safe. i will have a look vincent

Clearscreen · Unread post by **Clearscreen** » 19 Sep 2008, 02:20

Hi Vincent, sorry if i'm misunderstanding you, but did you try out wormhole? it sounded like you got a '404' page doesnt exist thing or something. here's the download link for the binary anyway:
http://wormhole2.googlecode.com/files/w ... in_vst.zip
try it out (if you haven't already) as it should let you have more than one link between the two programs - i'm assuming that network bandwidth won't be a problem if you're only going over localhost internally, so i'd guess that you could have several going a once. simple to set up as well - you just name a new bus and set up as many receivers as you want.
jackDMP sounds interesting though, although it looks difficult to set up. the latency would be low if it's asio based though wouldn't it?
regards
C

Vincent · Unread post by **Vincent** » 19 Sep 2008, 05:47

Thanks guys!

With Jack, I did not manage to connect directly to the sound card. Surely somthing I miss.
But yes, very low latency, almost nothnig, i think. It's tricky, but good stuff.

@Clearscreen - Thaks for the links. I'll check that tomorrow - I mean today. But with binary files... I'm supposed to have something to compile, right?

rgds

Clearscreen · Unread post by **Clearscreen** » 19 Sep 2008, 09:01

Vincent wrote:@Clearscreen - Thaks for the links. I'll check that tomorrow - I mean today. But with binary files... I'm supposed to have something to compile, right?

nope - it's already compiled. just download the zip file i linked above and put it in your vst directory. it comes up as a regular vst. you can drop it anywhere in usine and type a name in where it says 'enter channel name or chooser'. put another instance of wormhole in the other copy of usine and use the arrow above where it says 'chooser' to pick the name you've already created in the first instance and wormhole sorts the rest out. you should be able to run several different 'pipes' with different names i think, so it might work out more flexible than jack anyway.

you might need to play with the latency settings in the receiving copy to get them low and usable - the default setting is fairly high but i've had it down to at 16 samples with no problem on my old machine so it shouldn't be a problem. you seem to need the 'sync' option checked in both copies or you can get glitches - but you might be different yet...

best of luck - hope it works out for you!

Vincent · Unread post by **Vincent** » 19 Sep 2008, 16:27

Thanks Clearscreen, it seems to be exactly what I need, at least.
I'll tell you as sson as I'm on my daw.
I don't really care about very short latencies, since this routing I think about is for surronding reverbs and delay FX...

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