Running Cubase8pro with VST Connect Pro and a remote VST Connect Performer.
Recording works fine and the HD recorded files are clearly available and properly named on the remote system but they don’t appear in the Recordings list. They do, however show up in the Manager but trying to retrieve them from there just gives me no feedback. Also it clearly says “Available HD files: 0”
Lets say I want to workaround this and copy them manually, where would I place them as “Local files”? In the Audio directory directly?
For separate tracks, you have to record enable those channels in the VST Connect Mixer (top row, only available with the PRO version).
Perhaps you have activated the “Get HD” function already and retreived those files without noticing. If you did not record enable separate tracks as described above, this will merely replace the live recorded stereo track with the HD version on the same track which you may not have noticed (it shows “HD” in the name of the audio event then).
If you did record enable separate channels, “Get HD files” should show an according number, and then a new track is automagically created for each enabled channel.
To use the “Get local” feature you can copy the Performer folder to any location you like, VST Connect PRO will ask for it when you start that function. The folder should have the same name as the Cubase/Nuendo project.
Hope that helps.
I record enable (turn on red “LED”) a mono instrument track in the remote performer. I record as normal and end up with the normal stereo track. I then want to retrieve the HD tracks but there seems to be none available. It’s easy to tell them apart because the one I have is stereo and also contain input from the microphone (since that can’t be avoided) and not just the instrument.
The performer tells me there are recorded files on his end which I’m expecting would be the HD files. Is it possible no HD files are being recorded? How can I tell and why wouldn’t there be any HD files?
Oh, switching on rehearsal mode when recording produces the appearance of files but when you try to retrieve them it just pops up a message saying “receive file empty”… there seems like there were never any files named “*-HD.wav” on the performer side.
Of course, but now it records nothing but silence from the performer when you’re not using Rehearsal mode…
But as it turns out this was because I had the time delay set to 0.25s. After increasing it to 0.5s I could both hear and record the performer and it seems to work with the HD files now too. We tried alot of different ASIO settings on the remote end that might have been the solution. I feel it’s still quite unclear at this point.
I guess there is a warning (once) when you do that telling you you should only mess with this if you know what you do. If there isn’t, we’ll add one. It was a user request and I knew it would “strike back” someday…
You should really leave this set to “auto” unless you understand what it does (true for rehearsal mode, too).
In general, if you set buffer sizes too low (on either the Performer or Cubase/Nuendo side) you may run into trouble (not only with VST Connect but in general). ASIO Guard may also be critical even though it should work with VST Connect now, but there are still cases where it may get in the way. Other than that, be careful not to mess with settings that aren’t entirely understood, at least set it back to what it was before you changed it if it doesn’t help.
On another note, recordings are not named “HD” on the Performer machine, only after they have been retreived in Cubase/Nuendo they get appended the “HD” tag.
Only the Chat latency has an “auto” setting. I’m not sure what the default setting for “Remote Delay Seconds” was set to but setting it “too low” (lowest seem to be 0.25s) seem to result in the behavior "everything seems to work fine but once you start recording you cannot hear the Performer, you get nothing recorded (silence recorded), and you get a wave file on the Performer side but trying to retrieve it you get notified that the “receive file empty”.
I am guessing this is a conflict between the buffer size on the performer side and the delay I set. While I was interpreting the Remote Delay Seconds to mean “Add this amount of delay on top of whatever else gets delayed” I’m now understanding it to mean “Pad delays to make them consistently aligned with this time.” in which case I guess the system should be able to realize if the number is lower than the actual delay of the systems and network.
What still confuses me is that the “live recording” of master out (not the HD recording) works when you are using Rehearsal Mode even if the Remote Delay Seconds is “too short”. I guess it does something to make the delay shorter, but the behavior is quite confusing when trying to understand how it works.
VST Connect knows two states: one is when Transport is not started (chat) and the other when Transport is running (playback and recording).
Chat latency works best in auto mode. It adaptively estimates the necessary buffering when you talk to and see each other. The Chat Latency setting has been added on request of users who wanted to make this as short as possible in order to avoid larger “telephone delay”. I never had any problems with the default auto setting.
Remote Latency (and chat latency) is described in the manual which i recommend for you to read. In short, when you start transport in Cubase/Nuendo, it “hesitates” for the time set here (default is 1 second btw). During this time, the cue signal is sent to the Performer to hear and perform to, and the Performer sending his signal back to Cubase/Nuendo for buffering. After that time, presumably the performance audio is buffered on the DAW side and ready to be played back in sync and possibly recorded.
Now that means that all buffering stages have to have sufficient time to do their job: buffering for network output on the VST Connect side, the internet latency, buffering on network input Performer, buffering on network output Performer, the internet once more, and buffering for network input on the Cubase/Nuendo machine again. Add to that audio latency (buffer size) as set in the audio system (ASIO), that means four buffer stages (i/o DAW, i/o Performer).
Well, the internet is very jittery so you have to acount for a significant delay here. To make it short, unless you want to connect to the other side of the planet, minimum you can set Remote Latency to is .5 seconds (more likely .75 seconds) unless you work on a local network connection. This is the only reason why you can set it as low, which doesn’t mean you should. In fact, if you want to be on the safer side or looking to cure problems, you should enlarge all these values (audio buffer size too) instead of reducing.
VST Connect does realize if the system is not capable to fullfill the task in time and indicates this with a red LED. Unfortunately network delay is very unpredictable so you should always provide sufficient headroom to compensate for jitter.
What I don’t get at all is how you can record the Performer at all because when you set Remote Latency so low, it is impossible for the Performer to hear anything useful from the cue mix. So pls set everything to default or try higher values instead of lower ones. Increasing Remote Latency merely has the effect that you have to wait slightly longer for playback to start when you hit the Start button, it`s really no big deal so there is no reason to mess with this (other than possibly increasing it). Also Rehearsal mode is…well, for rehearsing. It should not affect the general operation though, so we’ll try to reproduce your problem and see if there is possibly something wrong with it.
Yea, to be clear, I only lowered the remote latency to 0.25s which is the lowest it allowes, and never cared to change the chat latency option.
The Red SYNC LED was certainly the indication, I just had no idea what it was indicating to me other than “something isn’t working” which was already clear. Now I know what it means.
Latencies shouldn’t be such a big issue most of the time unless you traverse large distances or many operators. I expect to have no more than 10ms between other peers in my city and our sound cards rarely delays more than 5ms. Especially now that fiber to the home is so common. This should in most cases be fast enough for jamming together live but not for effect processing.
Now I know what it means.