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Synchronization
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).
5. Go back to computer 1 and check the corresponding
four VST System Link input busses.
If you start playback on computer 2, the audio should “appear” on the input
busses on computer 1. However, to mix these audio sources you need ac-
tual mixer channels.
6. Add four new stereo audio tracks on computer 1 and
route these to the output bus you use for listening, e.g. to
the analog stereo outputs.
7. For each of the audio tracks, select one of the four in-
put busses.
Now, each computer 2 bus is routed to a separate audio channel on
computer 1.
8. Activate monitoring for the four tracks.
If you now start playback, the audio from computer 2 will
be sent “live” to the new tracks on computer 1, allowing
you to hear them together with any tracks you play back
on computer 1.
For more information about Monitoring, see “About moni-
toring” on page 13.
Adding more tracks
What if you have more audio tracks than you have VST
System Link busses (physical outputs)? Then you just use
the computer 2 mixer as a submixer: Route several audio
channels to the same output bus and adjust the output
bus level if needed.
Note also that if your audio cards have multiple sets of in-
put and output connections you can link up multiple ADAT
cables and send audio via any of the busses on any of the
cables.
Internal mixing and latency
One problem with mixing inside the computer is the latency
issue we mentioned earlier. The VST engine always com-
pensates for record latencies, but if you are monitoring
through computer 1 you will hear a processing delay while
you listen to signals coming from your other computers (not
on your recording!). If your audio card in computer 1 sup-
ports ASIO Direct Monitoring you should definitely turn this
on – you can find the setting in the VST Audio System De-
vice Setup panel (see “ASIO Direct Monitoring” on page
53). Most modern ASIO cards support this function. If
yours does not you may want to change the Offset value in
the VST System Link Setup panel to compensate for any la-
tency issues.
Setting up a larger network
This is not much more difficult than a two computer net-
work. The main thing to remember is that VST System Link
is a daisy chain system. In other words, the output of com-
puter 1 goes to the input of computer 2, the output of
computer 2 goes to the input of computer 3, and so on
around the chain. The output of the last computer in the
chain must always go back into the input of computer 1, to
complete the ring.