User manual

442
Synchronization
VST System Link sends and understands all transport
commands, so you can play, stop, fast forward, rewind,
etc. the entire network from one computer without a prob-
lem – try it! If you jump to a locator point on one machine,
all other machines will also instantly jump to that locator
point. You can even scrub on one computer and have the
video and audio on another computer actually scrub right
along with you.
Using MIDI
As well as supplying transport and sync control, VST Sys-
tem Link also supplies up to 16 MIDI ports, each with 16
channels. You set this up as follows:
1. Use the MIDI Inputs and Outputs value boxes to spec-
ify the number of MIDI ports you need.
The default value is 0 MIDI In and 0 MIDI Out ports.
2. Create a MIDI track in the Project window and open
the Inspector (top section).
3. If you now pull down the Input or Output Routing pop-
up menu, you will find the specified System Link ports
added to the list of MIDI Inputs and Outputs.
This allows you to route MIDI tracks to VST instruments
running on another computer, as described in the applica-
tion examples (see “Using one computer for VST instru-
ments” on page 443).
The “Use Selected ASIO Ports for Data only” setting
If you are sending huge amounts of MIDI data at once,
there is a small possibility that you might run out of band-
width on your VST System Link network. This will manifest
itself by notes “choking” or timing becoming erratic.
If this happens, you can devote more bandwidth to MIDI
by activating “Use Selected ASIO Ports for Data only” in
the VST System Link Setup panel. When this is activated,
the VST System Link information will be sent on the entire
channel instead of just one bit, more than enough for all
the MIDI you could ever hope to use. The downside is that
you can no longer use this ASIO channel for audio transfer
(do not connect it to a speaker!), thus leaving you only 7
channels of audio in our ADAT cable example. Depending
on how you work this might be a reasonable compromise.
Hearing the network audio
If you are using an external mixing desk, hearing your audio
really is not an issue – just plug the outputs of each com-
puter into the desired channels on the external mixing
desk, press Play on one of the computers, and you're
good to go.
However, many people prefer to mix internally inside the
computer and just use a desk for monitoring (or maybe not
use any external mixer at all). In this case you will need to
select one computer to be your “main mix computer” and
send the audio from your other computers into this.
In the following example, we assume you are using two
computers, with computer 1 as your main mix computer
and computer 2 running two additional stereo audio
tracks, an FX channel track with a reverb plug-in and a
VST instrument plug-in with stereo outputs.
1. First you want to set things up so that you can listen to
the audio playback from computer 1.
In other words, you need an unused set of outputs, e.g. an analog stereo
output, connected to your monitoring equipment.
2. Go to computer 2 and route each of the two audio
tracks to a separate output bus.
These should be busses connected to the digital outputs – let’s call
them Bus 1 and 2.
3. Route the FX channel track to another VST System
Link bus (Bus 3).
4. Route the VST instrument channel to yet another bus
(Bus 4).
!
Make sure that all computers have their tempos set
to the same value, otherwise your synchronization
will be seriously skewed.