Vienna Ensemble Pro

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
trevox
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Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by trevox » Mon May 20, 2013 11:00 am

Has anyone used Vienna Ensemble Pro with Live? I have a few reasons for asking. First, there has been a multitude of posts regarding PDC and it looks to me like Ensemble pro handles this very well - the idea being that you load third party plugins in Ensemble pro rather than Live. Also, I have read about some rewire issues and it looks to me like Ensemble pro is a far more elegant solution. Another reason is that summing would be done outside Live (not starting the debate here - just pointing it out!).

My main reason for considering buying it is that I use Logic also and if you want to monitor inputs, all audio is processed on a single core (the 8th in my case). So if I use Logic to mix live instruments, when I start adding plugins, it begins to overload that core. Multi-out instruments like Kontakt are also an issue as all processing happens on a single core for each instance. I have noticed similar spikes when monitoring audio in Live, but given it does not give you any information as to what load is on each core, it is difficult to determine if Live has the same issue as Logic?

I know some will say "why should I buy other software - all I need is Live" and that is fine. Personally, I use Logic sometimes, Live sometimes and it would be great to have the ability to mix audio from any DAW on my computer or indeed any computer on my network with no timing issues. Any experiences with Ensemble pro would be much appreciated!

naburo
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by naburo » Mon May 20, 2013 1:08 pm

interesting. Yesterday I was thinking about nearly the same.
Curious about other comments.

But I don´t know if there are many Live users working with Vienna stuff
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Valiumdupeuple
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by Valiumdupeuple » Mon May 20, 2013 1:21 pm

I don't have the answer to your question.
But, just to let you know, Live uses CPU on a one track per core basis.
So track 1 on core 1, track 2 on core 2 ...

taoyoyo
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by taoyoyo » Mon May 20, 2013 1:38 pm

I've had some problems in the past, where in order to circumnavigate issues (and looping inconsistencies) with certain plugins hosted in VEP (IIRC it was two instances of Maschine and Kore) I've had to run VEP plugin in the 'zero latency' mode.

This basically meant that Live used the same amount of CPU as if the plugins were hosted within Live... defeating the main point of using VEP in the first place!

I haven't tried this with 9 in a while but the last time I tried (in the beta stages) I had the same issue.
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trevox
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by trevox » Mon May 20, 2013 1:54 pm

naburo wrote:interesting. Yesterday I was thinking about nearly the same.
Curious about other comments.

But I don´t know if there are many Live users working with Vienna stuff
I wouldn't have thought many would be using Vienna instruments either - I don't myself! The thing I like about Ensemble is that while it is designed with other Vienna stuff in mind, it is not reliant on any other Vienna software and looks like a great universal mixing solution and has been adopted by Logic users that have the same issues as I. I also like the idea of having the most used plugins open and ready in Ensemble rather than having to load in each separate Live/Logic project - would save a lot of time when loading tracks in live situations etc.

I must say I like the look of their effect plugins (Vienna suite) too from the tutorials I have seen.

trevox
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by trevox » Mon May 20, 2013 1:58 pm

Valiumdupeuple wrote:I don't have the answer to your question.
But, just to let you know, Live uses CPU on a one track per core basis.
So track 1 on core 1, track 2 on core 2 ...
Logic does as well, but when monitoring, it behaves differently. Can you confirm Live does not? Or indeed for multi-out instances of Kontakt...for instance, you have a drum kit with separate channels for each drum. You place different effects on each channel - does this distribute across cores?

trevox
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by trevox » Mon May 20, 2013 2:10 pm

taoyoyo wrote:I've had some problems in the past, where in order to circumnavigate issues (and looping inconsistencies) with certain plugins hosted in VEP (IIRC it was two instances of Maschine and Kore) I've had to run VEP plugin in the 'zero latency' mode.

This basically meant that Live used the same amount of CPU as if the plugins were hosted within Live... defeating the main point of using VEP in the first place!

I haven't tried this with 9 in a while but the last time I tried (in the beta stages) I had the same issue.
Interesting. Apart from looping issues and these two plugins, are there general issues with timing or does it work well? Is there something specific about the Maschine and Kore instances that is causing the issue? I guess I want to know if getting this will actually help or cause more issues before I buy it!

taoyoyo
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by taoyoyo » Mon May 20, 2013 4:01 pm

trevox wrote:
taoyoyo wrote:I've had some problems in the past, where in order to circumnavigate issues (and looping inconsistencies) with certain plugins hosted in VEP (IIRC it was two instances of Maschine and Kore) I've had to run VEP plugin in the 'zero latency' mode.

This basically meant that Live used the same amount of CPU as if the plugins were hosted within Live... defeating the main point of using VEP in the first place!

I haven't tried this with 9 in a while but the last time I tried (in the beta stages) I had the same issue.
Interesting. Apart from looping issues and these two plugins, are there general issues with timing or does it work well? Is there something specific about the Maschine and Kore instances that is causing the issue? I guess I want to know if getting this will actually help or cause more issues before I buy it!
I'd need to have some time to play with it some more, the looping issues were with Maschine... it would just stop randomly even with VEP Latency set at zero (without it the kick drum on the 1 would glitch slightly compared to the others).

The other thing I was trying to work around was to do with getting modulation and getting controller info in from VEP... it didn't look like the easiest task. Great though for bringing in Kontakt instruments (like percussion) that were going to take up a lot of CPU but didn't need controller changes made.

(Was working great with Studio One, I'm wondering if the issue was with with Live's current problems with PDC?)
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trevox
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by trevox » Mon May 20, 2013 4:49 pm

taoyoyo wrote:
trevox wrote:
taoyoyo wrote:I've had some problems in the past, where in order to circumnavigate issues (and looping inconsistencies) with certain plugins hosted in VEP (IIRC it was two instances of Maschine and Kore) I've had to run VEP plugin in the 'zero latency' mode.

This basically meant that Live used the same amount of CPU as if the plugins were hosted within Live... defeating the main point of using VEP in the first place!

I haven't tried this with 9 in a while but the last time I tried (in the beta stages) I had the same issue.
Interesting. Apart from looping issues and these two plugins, are there general issues with timing or does it work well? Is there something specific about the Maschine and Kore instances that is causing the issue? I guess I want to know if getting this will actually help or cause more issues before I buy it!
I'd need to have some time to play with it some more, the looping issues were with Maschine... it would just stop randomly even with VEP Latency set at zero (without it the kick drum on the 1 would glitch slightly compared to the others).

The other thing I was trying to work around was to do with getting modulation and getting controller info in from VEP... it didn't look like the easiest task. Great though for bringing in Kontakt instruments (like percussion) that were going to take up a lot of CPU but didn't need controller changes made.

(Was working great with Studio One, I'm wondering if the issue was with with Live's current problems with PDC?)
Thanks for the info. I have not read of any such issues with Logic either, so maybe you're right and it has something to do with Live's PDC issues. In terms of automation, I'm not so sure I would want any from VEP, but I may be overlooking something there. Mapping controllers looked relatively easy too - does it work similar to Live? For instance, if I mapped a knob on my controller to a plugin parameter, would my controller get updated if I change the value of the parameter on the plugin itself?

Sorry for all the questions...just want to see which of my pains this will resolve if any! I'd try a demo but you need a ViennaKey to download it. I've been looking for a decent harmonium sample bank, so I might buy that with a key and can try the demo from there.

woodsdenis
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by woodsdenis » Mon May 20, 2013 7:54 pm

I use it all the time to host Kontakt templates. No problems at all and a real innovation in a 32 bit world..

trevox
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by trevox » Thu May 23, 2013 5:30 pm

I ordered it today as I simply have to sort my Logic issue out one way or another. Hopefully I can set up my controllers the way I want as an added bonus.

trevox
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by trevox » Tue Jun 11, 2013 11:17 am

After using VEP for a couple of weeks, I thought I'd post back on my experiences thus far. It really integrates seamlessly in my setup! I thought one of the issues I might have is matching the version of the track I open in my DAW with the mixer setup, but to my surprise, the mixer settings save as metadata with the plugins in my DAW! Not once have I had any issues with a mismatch there and everything loads automatically with the track in my DAW.

The main reason I bought it for was to resolve an issue with input monitoring (16 inputs) and I can report that it has worked out great. I still have to create physical inputs in Logic and send them to VEP, but after transferring an entire track with 16 inputs and some audio tracks all sent to VEP, one core of Logic is at like 5% - that's it! And in VEP, I have put a ton of effects, have a few large sample libraries open etc and that runs at about 40% - and very stable at that percentage. Even better is that tracks load in a fifth of the time it takes other DAWS - particularly where large sample banks are involved.

The other thing was midi mapping and I can report that is lies somewhere in between Live and Logic in terms of functionality - Live being extremely good, Logic being awful. It is very easy to learn controller assignments etc, but they do not feed back to the controller like Live does. No huge deal the way I have set things up though. Automation (equally good in Live and Logic IMO) is a little bit finnicky in the way it works and I have found that some plugins do not seem to work all that well - particularly instruments. Given I use mostly hardware, that is not a huge concern for me, but it may be for others. In any case, you can still place whatever you like in your DAW, automate to your hearts content in that DAW and send that audio to your mixer.

I do realise I am on an Ableton forum and talking about other software, but from reading comments on this forum regarding summing issues (whether true or not) and PDC problems with third party plugins particularly, I think VEP would help a lot in this regard. Of course it is more suited for people using mainly third party plugins, so please don't shoot me if you use only Live's built in stuff - it is probably not such a good solution for those of you that do.

handsofire
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by handsofire » Mon Jul 21, 2014 8:38 pm

Trevox, are you using Live as your sequencer and printing audio through VEP to Logic? Also, are you using VEP on a slave or are you running both DAWs on the same computer via Rewire or something?

I'm wondering if VE Pro 5 will increase sample playback performance in Ableton BEFORE I get my slave set up. I only have 16GB on this machine and I'm starting to push the limit with these larger libraries. I'm guessing I'll have to re-create my VEP templates when I put everything onto a 32-64gb slave, but budget is a little tight at the moment so I thought I'd ask.

I'm also wondering if I can use Ableton as my main DAW/sequencer and have VEP print the audio to ProTools ON THE SLAVE machine. My mixing engineer runs ProTools and this could be useful if I don't need a third machine.

Do you have any thoughts?
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nonchai
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by nonchai » Thu Nov 28, 2019 5:12 pm

This is something I wish Ableton would fix once for all. And its been requested in Centrecode.

Currently unlike Cubase or Logic etc there seems no way of accessing MIDI ports other than 1. Hence for any VEP instance one must limit instruments in VEP to 16 max so that they all appear on MIDI port 1 and channels 1-16.

Support for VEP - as well as for very large track count templates would be so useful for those working with their orchestral libraries but who like the Ableton SESSION page way of composing from time to time as opposed to the typical linear DAW mode.

Machinesworking
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Re: Vienna Ensemble Pro

Post by Machinesworking » Thu Nov 28, 2019 11:15 pm

ShelLuser wrote:
Thu Nov 28, 2019 6:45 pm
nonchai wrote:
Thu Nov 28, 2019 5:12 pm
Currently unlike Cubase or Logic etc there seems no way of accessing MIDI ports other than 1.
So, first of all I fail to understand the relevance between this comment and this 5 year old thread. But I also question the comment itself to be honest, if you could only use one MIDI port you'd never be able to use multiple devices.

I also suspect that you meant to say channels but even that would be incorrect. For example, my Casio keyboard uses a midi channel other than 1 and I can easily use it within Live. Same applied to my MPD24 drumpad controller which sat on yet another midi channel to avoid collisions with my keyboard.

Probably needless to say; I had no issues at all using these devices within Live nor was it much of a challenge to separate incoming midi (for example making a midi channel dedicated to my mpd24 so that my keyboard couldn't trigger stuff).

So I don't quite understand where you're coming from, IMO there isn't any issue here.
I'm not in front of my setup but I think he's referring to virtual MIDI ports, not physical ones.
So a single instance of a VEP plug in, in Logic or some other DAWs can access far more than 16 MIDI channels, i.e. You get VEP 1 1-16 2 1-16 etc. This might not be the case in Live. I have VEP6, Live 10, DP10 and Logic X so later tonight I'll test it out, but I'm pretty sure that's what he means.


Personally I think VEP is a great solution to Lives CPU issues, it might not make it as efficient as Logic or DP with VEP but it does a great job.

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