Ableton Forum

You can connect multiple computers together using Reastream to sync audio and midi through Ableton, or pretty much any other combination of VST hosts. I've managed to get Ableton on my laptop and desktop synced up with essentially no latency!

Reaper (http://reaper.fm) has been mentioned here before, but not many people have talked about the free VST plugins that they've released: http://reaper.fm/reaplugs/

Among other things (such as a sidechain compression plugin for people too poor to upgrade to Live 7...) the Reastream plugin rocks my socks. Install provided plugins into your VST folder. If you don't know how, whine. I'll answer your posts later; I'm on a roll right now. Fire up live, and drop reastream onto an Audio track in ableton and click its wrench to configure it. (It's not very successful running in a MIDI track, even if you're transferring MIDI. Trust me.) You can leave this instance of reastream at its default settings to receive BOTH audio and MIDI from another computer (also running Ableton, or another VST host). Create/use a MIDI track and set your Input Type to accept MIDI from the audio track that has reastream sitting on it.

Still with me? Good.

Set both tracks' monitoring to "In" so you can tell when this is all working. In my screenshot, I've also routed my MIDI out to an external device, but you can just as easily drop an instrument on this track or send the midi to MIDI Yoke, which opens a bazillion more possibilities. [You could yoke it back into Live to MIDI-mapped controls for remote midi control over lan!]

Go to your other machine running Live, and drop a copy of reastream onto an audio track. Open it's configuration (wrench) and:
Set the identifier (I keep "default" but you can use whatever, just make it match the other computer)
Enable "Send audio/MIDI; IP:" and enter the IP address of the machine you want to send data to. [Avoid broadcast mode for now; it seemed flaky when i tried it, please post any successes with it!]
Now, send your audio/MIDI track outputs to this reastream track, and both audio and MIDI data will be transferred to the other computer. Rock on!

This is a pretty good setup if you want to run CPU-intensive plugins on a secondary machine, or you just want to battle/jam with someone else without going through a mixer. You should be able to sync midi clock by using MidiYoke; send your midi output to a Yoke and then enable that as a sync source under ableton's preferences. I've managed to get decent streaming over my wifi with minimal latency, but I've also done TCP/IP over Firewire between my desktop and Laptop, which is just screaming fast with low overhead.

This is a pretty whirlwind tour, feel free to post any specific questions. And please post any cool tricks you have to share!

--Pip

screenshot:

So I set this up and it worked easily, a little too easily. The possibilities are endless using my laptotop and my desktop together. However, I can't seem to get the midi sync to work. You only suggest that it should work through working with midi yoke but I tried every configuration I could and couldnt get it to work. Could you maybe elaborate on the midi in/out Yoke this/that configuration. Also, how did you set up the the firewire connection? Thanks

anything for the macbook? mac os x Leopard...

nice tip. i like it. cheers

First off; if you're using a mac, I've heard good things about Wormhole (and I've posted about it before):

http://code.google.com/p/wormhole2/downloads/list
http://plasq.com/wormhole/

And apparently Tiger has built-in MIDI over Lan capability.

TCP/IP Over Firewire: Here's a good quick tutorial:
http://lifehacker.com/software/networki ... 173973.php
But you basically connect two machines with a firewire cable and give them a unique IP address, and it works* [for XP, sorry, not supported under Vista]
I suggest using a 4-pin adapter if you're connecting two desktop machines, firewire carries a heckuva lot of juice, and I've had some unexpected results connecting two machines with a 6pin-6pin cable. (All of the case fans stayed running in one desktop machine after it was powered down. ... And they stayed running after it was unplugged from the wall -- the firewire cable was providing power through the motherboard. Scary.)

So my promise of midi sync was before I realized that Ableton does NOT pass midi clock or sysex to OR from any tracks or plugins. I'm hoping to find an options.txt tweak someday that changes this behavior, but right now this means an ugly hack. It's MIDI-Yoke time! Still untested, but in theory it can be done like this:

Computer #1: [ Ableton --> MIDIYoke --> VSTHost Running Reastream ] --> Ethernet

Computer #2: Ethernet --> [ VSTHost Running Reastream --> MIDIYoke --> Ableton ]

So that's a fair amount of connections, and it means running two DAW's on each machine. It's sadly a very ugly hack. I'm trying to find a better way under Windows right now, but it doesn't look like there's any free software options. I know there's a few commercial (and cross-platform!) options for midi over IP, but I don't have the bankroll to test any of them out right now. I'll try to keep everyone posted on progress!

MIDI over LAN. So hot right now. MIDI over LAN.

You know what's particularly hot about this? My MOTU Traveler doesn't play nice with my AX7 due to a slightly different MIDI implementation (read: freakoutsville). This means I can now bypass my interface and leave the MIDI data pure as the virgin slow (latency tests notwithstanding).

Top Gun tipping, cheers mate!

i dont quit understand how you connect your laptop to eachother??
can someone please help me

does it work over WAN aswell?
ive never tried it but i have tried ninjam and i was thinking that this bundled with ninjam via WAN would mean true collaboration mode over the internet which totally makes me wet.

Thanks for resurrecting my old thread! Sorry, I haven't been hanging in the Ableton forums much lately...

I think using Reastream over a WAN would induce way too much latency. (Unless you're using a point-to-point T1)
It's reasonable to expect 80ms of latency on a good day using a household broadband connection, which is very laggy for MIDI instruments, and downright unusable for MIDI clock.

NINJAM works around this limitation by time-shifting your collaboration by one measure. Brilliant, but currently no MIDI support (although they claim it is in the works).

Remember; good collaboration doesn't need to be real-time. Lifted from The Postal Service entry on Wikipedia:
The band's name was chosen due to the way in which they produced its songs. Tamborello wrote and performed instrumental tracks and then sent the DATs to Gibbard, who edited the song as he saw fit (adding his vocals along the way), sending them back to Tamborello via the United States Postal Service.

Rock on,
--Pip

yeah. im more interested in jamsessions with my friends overseas

pip wrote:Thanks for resurrecting my old thread! Sorry, I haven't been hanging in the Ableton forums much lately...

I think using Reastream over a WAN would induce way too much latency. (Unless you're using a point-to-point T1)
It's reasonable to expect 80ms of latency on a good day using a household broadband connection, which is very laggy for MIDI instruments, and downright unusable for MIDI clock.

NINJAM works around this limitation by time-shifting your collaboration by one measure. Brilliant, but currently no MIDI support (although they claim it is in the works).

Remember; good collaboration doesn't need to be real-time. Lifted from The Postal Service entry on Wikipedia:
The band's name was chosen due to the way in which they produced its songs. Tamborello wrote and performed instrumental tracks and then sent the DATs to Gibbard, who edited the song as he saw fit (adding his vocals along the way), sending them back to Tamborello via the United States Postal Service.

Rock on,
--Pip

Hi

Just seen this thread and wanted to resurrect it, as i use Reaper and am trying to find out more on Reastream

I use a Macbook Pro with, Ableton, Logic 8 etc and it has Reaper installed for mixing > I also have an older Windows XP PC connected via LAN cable between the two, running Reaper and Sound Forge editor.

Now I know that Rearoute (amazing little app from Reaper) only works on Windows so that would have been brilliant, but its a no-go with this set up

Basically as they are Ethernet connected together, and it says you can use this with differnet hosts on either platform/computer

What i'd like is :

Apple Macbook with Ableton (running AU's and sequences) > Reastream > PC recording Sound Forge

Is this possible over Ethernet and the hosts?? I'm looking at the Internet now to find some tips/tutorials, as at the moment I am doing this very badly with a wired connection from outputs to inputs which isn't great.

An Ethernet digital version would be much better (don't need the midi as much in Reastream) which is why Rearoute was perfect, but doesn't work over network or on Mac...