Ableton Forum

Hi, I'm up-to-date with the most recently-available Live release (8.2.6, 32-bit Win7). I'm not a Live power-user, but I'm reasonably handy at diagnosing software problems... Picked up Emu Emulator X2 on the second-hand market, with an Emu Midi Interface dongle (for authorisation) and a lot of Emu disks - really like it! Great sound, powerful effects and filters, simple interface, light on the CPU, and has the ability to 'rip' synth sounds across the octaves from my hardware synths. No problems launching Emulator X2 in standalone mode, or as a VSTi in Reaper. However, I cannot instantiate Emulator X2 in Live - Live freezes.
Two things:
- Anyone experiencing this problem? What might I do to help find out why Live is freezing?
- I thought, OK Live doesn't like Emulator X2, so maybe I could rewire Reaper as a slave into Live as a host. But, when I launch Reaper in Rewire Slave mode, I cannot instantiate VSTi's! I don't have the most recent Reaper version, and don't own the full version. I've seen various other posts about VST/VSTi hosts that can act as Rewire slaves, e.g. Plogue Bidule. But I want the simplest mechanism.

Any advice? Thank you in advance!

Eanna

Like all good plots, it has thickened...

So, I installed the newest version of Reaper (v4.10), and I went to try instantiate Emulator X2 in Reaper again. This time, Reaper began to behave as Live did - freezing when I tried to add Emulator X2 to a new track.

Then I tried to launch Emulator X2 in standalone mode. Said it had a problem with the Audio settings, and when I dismissed the dialog, it immediately quit. Aha! So Live wasn't the problem, Reaper had the same problem, and now Emulator X2 in standalone mode was in trouble!

So, I stuck the installation disk for Emulator X2 in the DVD drive, and launched the installer again. It told me that I already had that version of Emulator X2 on my system, and that it would install over it. I proceeded with the installation, and after that, I was back to a happy territory of being able to run Emulator X2 in standalone mode, and as a VST in Live and in Reaper.

Hmmm... Emulator X2 is indeed a lovely program, but this kinda behaviour is a real killer. I'm suspicious that the authorisation dongle may be the root cause of the problem, or I have a deeper problem with some USB device - was getting glitching for a while with high DPC latencies reported from the USB kernel-mode driver - after fiddling around with my USB devices in the device manager, it 'went away' again - not noticably after any particular event... I'll report back with other interesting behaviours should any arise. If there is a repeatable pattern to be found, then find it I will!

The computery guy in me relishes the challenge, but the musician in me hates this stuff. So much for finishing that track tonight!

Still, doesn't appear that Reaper can instantiate VSTs/VSTi's in Rewire slave mode... Is that a restriction of the Rewire protocol? Anyone know?