I’m trying to understand the best way to structure my layers. I see a few issues that I’m trying to understand why they happen so I can fix it.
I have a drum kit driven by midi and when it gets to the end of Part One and goes to Verse One, there is a slight drop out. This is not a global layer.
And while Part One is playing there is no movement in the layer’s volume slider, but when you click on the other parts (you can see the faders lit up with animation.
Obviously I don’t care about the visuals; as long as the sound is playing consistently, I am fine with it. But the sound drop outs have me worried. Should I structure the layer differently? Or perhaps avoid using MIDI all together? Or not using parts at all? I know parts can have mutes per part and other stuff, so if I’m just playing a drum backing track, should I avoid using parts at all in a live setting?
That brings me to a resulting question, even if I’m doing ONLY audio, VST Live always gives each part its own Halion, even if I don’t use it. So with 12 songs with 6-8 parts each, that’s 96 unused Halion loading. Am I missing some kind of best practice that will help me avoid this extra tax on the system?
Try using a Shared Layer for the drums - in Part1, right click and copy the layer. In Part2, right click and Paste Shared. You’ll see an ‘S’ icon to indicate it is shared. Shared Layers allow you to have the same VSTi instance across many Parts. That should fix your dropouts. The Layer controls in each Part are unique to the Part but there is the option in Preferences to make the Volume controls act across all Parts.
As for Halion - you have a default layer set up. You can change preferences so that no default layer is used. You can also change which VSTi is used for the default layer if you decide you do want one. You can always delete a layer if you’re not using it.
There is an option to turn on multi processing under the audio tab in the preferences. Try turning it on and see if that helps. If not, maybe try to increase the buffer size to the next step.
I’m still hearing a click, and I was also displeased with the midi timing performance so as an experiment I set my audio latency from 1024 to 256 and the timing issue disappeared (snares and kicks that were supposed to be happening at the same time were slammed slightly).
But the “drop-out” was still there. and while I call it a drop out, it’s not like an audio drop out due to latency. it’s more like it cuts off the tails of sounds that are playing.
Ok so that’s not a drop out. This is happening because the layer fade out default setting is set to 0.5 seconds. Set it to the highest setting which is 10 seconds and that will solve your problem.
I did try that. I was all the way down to the 64 on the buffer and it was fine until I turned multi processor on. Then I got proper drop outs. So I put it back to 256 and it was fine. I should mention I’m on an M1 Max Mac Studio with Apollo Twin X so I have tons of power.
Yup, the multi processing setting doesn’t always play well. You should always experiment with it in each project and see if it has a positive or a negative effect.
If using a separate VSTi in each Layer then the fade issue will happen because it’s switching from one instance to the next - even if you have the same VSTi in each Part. Shared Layers are the same VSTi across the Parts so no fade.
This shouldn’t be happening then. But as a workaround, if the drums preset doesn’t change between parts, it’s best to use a shared layer as @CliveJ suggested.
Just to add to the complexity - You can change programs across parts even with a shared VSTi - if the VSTi supports program change (VST2’s support this, not all VST3’s do).
Appreciate the help. Fiddling around reveals a couple things. (I’m on 3.0.10.88 FYI)
It happens almost 100% of the time jumping from part 1 to part 2. It almost never happens on subsequent parts. I do notice that randomly, the animation showing the levels will disappear. This has to be a bug.
You can see it bouncing away with the drums, but if I’m just clicking between the parts as it plays, it stops appearing on any part. Then it might randomly reappear when I click back to another part and then I also hear a “tick.” it also happens if I’m in Tracks view. I was hoping it wouldn’t because then I could link it to this visual bug. I’ll play around for a bit longer; I’m just trying to learn VST Live for use with my band as our setlist is getting too unwieldy for me to keep everything in my hardware sampler and stem player.
When I logged in today, I saw the update. I’ll give it a try. It says they “improved the engine” and some other generic fixes. I’ll update if anything helps.
FYI: haven’t seen a fix to everything with the new update, but I’ll play with it and try and recreate the previous issues.
But this does raise that Best Practices question: what’s less taxing for the system? have a midi track driving a drum VST, or just having the drum parts stemmed out to audio files?
My songs are pretty lightweight, mostly just drum machines backing our three-piece. Eventually I want to fold in some DMX or video into the set, but for now it’s just just 6-10 tracks per song with NO effects (baked in after bouncing in Cubase). I have to feel like that’s better for performance than 10 songs with their own instances of Addictive Drums or Roland TR plugins.
