External Instrument with Virus TI

aqua_tek · Post by **aqua_tek** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 12:47 am

So I bought a cable snake for the TI today to take advantage of all the 6 analog outs, and i'm wondering if there's a way to send MIDI to the TI and get the audio from the analog outs into Live with the External Instrument plugin.

It seems it will only allow me to stream audio from the TI through the 3/4 USB port (the Audio From box is greyed out with no more options).

Which works fine I guess, but not what i want. Creating separate MIDI and Audio tracks for each part of the TI works. But I was sort of hoping i could take better advantage of the External Instrument plugin to avoid clutter.

Am i doing something wrong or is it a limitation within the TI OS/Live?

kuniklo · Post by **kuniklo** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:30 am

Live doesn't know that your TI also has external analog outs. Set the audio from box to your interface's inputs, not the TI. You're going to have latency discrepancies between the TI and Live if you use both the plugin's audio and the analog inputs so I'd go with one or the other.

aqua_tek · Post by **aqua_tek** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 3:49 am

kuniklo wrote:. Set the audio from box to your interface's inputs,

that was the plan, but live won't let me. It sets it to the TI's USB 3/4, and it's greyed out, so i cant change it.

I also tried routing the MIDI To Box to the Virus TI (synth) but nothing happens there.

maybe something in my MIDI prefs?

snowtires · Post by **snowtires** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 3:53 am

i have the same problem, it's a pain in the ass. it's also kind of stupid that you can't select virus 1/2 or the 1/2 output of ANY multi-out plugin on an external instrument track, it always starts with 3/4.

aqua_tek · Post by **aqua_tek** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 9:50 pm

so the only obvious workaround is to create separate midi and audio tracks for each part for now, it seems? that's a little disappointing.

Hopefully it'll get sorted out soon... or maybe someone else can come along and shed some light.

Tarekith is one of the resident Virus wizards in the forum, maybe he can help?

anti-banausic · Post by **anti-banausic** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 10:48 pm

aqua_tek wrote:so the only obvious workaround is to create separate midi and audio tracks for each part for now, it seems? that's a little disappointing.

Hopefully it'll get sorted out soon... or maybe someone else can come along and shed some light.

Tarekith is one of the resident Virus wizards in the forum, maybe he can help?

I think he sold his Virus though. Unless he picked another up?

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:14 pm

You can't use the analog outs at the same time as the USB outs, you'd need to unplug the USB and use regular midi cables if I remember correctly. yes, it's dumb, I know.

Try asking on Virusti.com too, they might have more info, it's been awhile since I sold mine.

Khazul · Post by **Khazul** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:35 pm

Actually you can use the regular analog outs at the same time, Ive just not tried it in the context of the external instrument plugin. You dont need to unplug the USB, or even unload the VC plugin.

If you really want to, you could set the main outs to be USB and the 'surround' outs to be analog, and use the surround mix to crossfade between them - for eg if (as I often do) you have some interesting hardware fx processor patched into the analog outs.

You can do this while still using the plugins, however as someone pointed out - the audio from the analog has far lower latency than the TI's USB audio return, so you will need to compensate for this somewhere. There are a few free latency increaser plugins around on the net that are rather useful for this.

arkoenig · Post by **arkoenig** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 3:09 pm

Is there a reason you want to use the analog output rather than using the Virus as a VST plugin?

(I don't own one of these beasts, but I'm curious, as I thought the VST ability was part of the point)

Khazul · Post by **Khazul** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 3:39 pm

Two main reasons:

1. latency over USB while playing is unbearable for me for much of the stuff I do, in fact I even find computer midi latency to be an annoyance, even though many people dont notice it, so I often switch local control back on, track monitor off and use the analog outs to my mixer and just record the midi and audio (like any other h/w synth).

2. I have a whole heap of hardware processors and fx boxes - their doesnt seem alot of point in using the USB audio into a DAW just to send it back out again via a hardware box then back in again.

I guess other folks probably have thier own reasons too...

aqua_tek · Post by **aqua_tek** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 8:55 pm

arkoenig wrote:Is there a reason you want to use the analog output rather than using the Virus as a VST plugin?

(I don't own one of these beasts, but I'm curious, as I thought the VST ability was part of the point)

the reason i want to use the analog outs is because although I DO use it as a plugin, and love that capability:

1. you can only use one instance of the plugin
2. because of 1, you either choose to route all 16 parts through 2 USB channels, OR assign each part to different outs and route them into Live separately. Like have some parts go through USB, others through the analogs outs, etc etc etc which allows me to mix and apply different EQ-ing, dynamics, and other effects to each different part separately.

So basically i just want to use the analog outs because it gives me more routing and mixing flexibility

donnydonny · Post by **donnydonny** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 9:09 pm

The first thing you want to do is connect the 3 stereo analog outputs from the Virus TI to 3 stereo analog inputs on your audio interface. After doing so, enable the 3 stereo inputs in Live's Audio preferences.

1. Insert Virus|Control on a MIDI track. Name the track "Virus"
2. Create 5 more MIDI tracks and insert External Instrument on each one
3. On each instance of output the MIDI to "1 Virus" and to the corresponding channels (MIDI ch. 1-5)
4. On the first External Instrument, set Audio From to 1/2-Virus TI
5. On the second External Instrument, set Audio From to 3/4-Virus TI
6. On the third External Instrument, set Audio From to the first stereo analog input
7. On the fourth External Instrument, set Audio From to the second stereo analog input
8. On the fifth External Instrument, set Audio From to the third stereo analog input
9. On each part IN Virus|Control, make sure you set to the output the corresponding outputs on the Virus.

aqua_tek · Post by **aqua_tek** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 9:46 pm

donnydonny wrote:The first thing you want to do is connect the 3 stereo analog outputs from the Virus TI to 3 stereo analog inputs on your audio interface. After doing so, enable the 3 stereo inputs in Live's Audio preferences.

1. Insert Virus|Control on a MIDI track. Name the track "Virus"
2. Create 5 more MIDI tracks and insert External Instrument on each one
3. On each instance of output the MIDI to "1 Virus" and to the corresponding channels (MIDI ch. 1-5)
4. On the first External Instrument, set Audio From to 1/2-Virus TI
5. On the second External Instrument, set Audio From to 3/4-Virus TI
6. On the third External Instrument, set Audio From to the first stereo analog input
7. On the fourth External Instrument, set Audio From to the second stereo analog input
8. On the fifth External Instrument, set Audio From to the third stereo analog input
9. On each part IN Virus|Control, make sure you set to the output the corresponding outputs on the Virus.

this is what i've been trying to do over and over. Step by step, the same identical thing. External Instrument just wont let me select the Audio From. It's set on 3/4 Virus|TI and there's no chance to change it. Greyed out. I've tried this with both the AU and the VST Virus|Control. Just doesnt work for me.

Is the Audio From box not greyed out for you? then maybe this is a bug in my L7?

aqua_tek · Post by **aqua_tek** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 7:03 pm

donnydonny · Post by **donnydonny** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 7:15 pm

I've done this before and am sure this is the process I went through. I'll run through this again tonight and double check for you.