Played the first gig my band with VST Live last Saturday in the Knust club in Hamburg after using it a while for band rehearsals only, generally a very good experience . Using a combination of many VSTs and a global stack to integrate a hardware synth. No hiccups, all fine. Really liked the easy Setlist-driven song switching including volume levels for my synth and the good integration with my master keyboard, could operate everything - switching to next song, minor volume level adjustments etc. - without ever touching my laptop. Just had it passively at the side for a quick glance at song notes when necessary.
One small problem when setting things up on stage:
In the rehearsal room of my band and on stage I use a UR22 audio interface. At home I use a X32 mixer as my interface. When loading my „live“ project I knew I had to switch the audio driver, as I did the last rehearsal at home with the X32. VST Live showed the „Generic ASIO driver“ selected, probably because last use was with the no longer present X32. When switching drivers I accidentally clicked on the X32 driver instead of the Yamaha Steinberg USB driver. Unfortunately this locked up VST Live completely. - all frozen, decided to quickly reboot the laptop to avoid any side effects from messed up drivers.
No problems after then selecting the correct driver for the connected interface … would be nice if VST Live would handle this more gracefully - but the freeze could of course be a fault of the X32 driver …
One thing I noticed I missed a bit during the show was a way to switch between mixer and notes view from the hardware buttons of my master keyboard - unfortunately it looks like this function is not MIDI learnable …
Great, thanks for sharing!
“Dilettanten Gala” right? been there Which one you played?
We actually have that high on our list, thanks.
As for the X32 freeze, that is weird. VST Live remebers up to 32 harware ports for each port in Connections so to make switching between hardware setups (Studio, Rehearsal, Stage…) a breeze. Once assigned, it remembers those connections in the project.
It will try to connect then to the selected Audio Device, if this goes wrong as appears to be in your case, that is most likely a problem of the X32 driver. We tested a lot of hardware switching, and other users have no problems with the X32 - but of course you are correct that it is advisable to select the right Audio Device beforehand.
“.VST Live remebers up to 32 harware ports for each port in Connections so to make switching between hardware setups (Studio, Rehearsal, Stage…) a breeze.”
If you go to “Devices/Connections”, each port consists of a title (name, tag) that is user defined (and is what appears everywhere that you select a port), and the connected harware port. The latter can be this on one system, and that on another, VST Live remembers up to 32 different assignments. So when “MIDI IN 1” is connected to “USB MIDI 1” on one system, and to “Network MIDI 1” on another, the project can be carried around from one system to another and automatically assigns the existing port, if the last saved was not found. Of course, the assignment has to be made once and the project saved with that.
Ok - I’m assuming that you have to manually select the interface: If I remove the interface then my system (MacBook) will default to internal Mike & Speakers for I/O. Subsequently reconnect the device and the I/O is still Mike/Speakers unless I reselect the interface. Or should the program recognise that a previously used interface has been reconnected?
Physically reconnecting any device while VST Live is running is not supported.
Logically, if a device is selected, it will try to connect to that, but not to any other device whatsoever, present or not.
Would be great if I could set a priority for the interfaces or mark interfaces like „internal audio“ I never want to use with VST Live.
Then I could really switch between rehearsal, home studio and live gigs without any further preparations.
As the keyboards in these ernvironments also differ, an optional auto-load of the matching MIDI learn mappings based on the recognized keyboard would be the icing on the cake.
I’m reconnecting before VST starts up but it still selects the previous, unwanted, internal Mike/Speakers.
Edit: Sorry - Reread your explanation and it’s doing what you described, which while logical is annoying.
I’m not quite sure, but it looks to me, that it uses the ports, with which the project was last saved on the specific device. So maybe you need to configure the interfaces once and than save the project. Next time loading the project, it should connect to these interfaces.
It doesn’t seem to do that. I have a dummy project that I load in order to reset the interface, prior to opening my main project. I’m worried that loading my main project with the wrong interface selected will mess things up.
As long as you don’t save (overwrite) it, nothing gets messed up, and even then it should re-adjust as long as the selected interface is connected. Usually you just select the correct interface in “Audio Setup”, it should re-connect ports then. If not, just start over without saving.
So - it should reconnect ports when a connected interface is selected, but not when you change hardware externally.
. Using a combination of many VSTs and a global stack to integrate a hardware synth. No hiccups, all fine. Really liked the easy Setlist-driven song switching including volume levels for my synth and the good integration with my master keyboard, could operate everything - switching to next song, minor volume level adjustments etc. - without ever touching my laptop. Just had it passively at the side for a quick glance at song notes when necessary.
Which one you played?