VEP 5 Routing Question

Cubase
1

Ok, I apologize in advance for any dumb questions, I’m just hoping to save a few hours of trial and error before I stumble on a solution.

So, I’m demoing Vienna Ensemble Pro 5, and -for now- I’m just using it to access some plugs - mainly TC Electronic MD3 and Brickwall Limiter - on my old Powercore cards, which are in a 12 year old PC. I’m running Cubase Pro 8.5 on a Macbook Pro/Apollo Twin combo, and so far I’ve got the two machines connected successfully. I’ve got a VEP Audio Input on the last insert on a song’s stereo bus, assigned to Input 1 & 2 on the slave machine. When I play the song, I see the signal on the slave running through the plugs inserted there and registering on the meter.

Not sure where to go from here, or where to start over/modify. What’s the best/right way to process this signal and return the audio into Cubase?

2

Ok, I just wanted to wrap this up, in case there’s anyone else thinking about doing this. Got it all figured out and working perfectly now. I’m completely thrilled to be able to use my old TC Electronic plugs again. VSS3 and NonLin 2 reverbs, MD3, Brickwall Limiter, etc…these are seriously great plugs that I paid quite a bit for back in the day.

Don’t let anyone tell you differently (like somebody told me): Vienna Ensemble Pro 5 works perfectly with Windows XP, Service Pack 3 on a nearly 13-year old PC. It’s just that VSL no longer officially supports Windows XP (can’t blame them). Connected to my new Macbook Pro running Cubase Pro 8.5, the program runs the two machines together flawlessly.

Before I started, I directed VEP5, on the slave machine, to scan one folder inside the Steinberg VST folder, the one with the TC Electronic plugs. This was because the program choked and froze when I first had it scan the entire VST folder…guess it didn’t like some of the older plugins. I’d suggest you scan a folder at a time to know where any problem plugins might reside.

Ok, so I needed to process my two-buss mix, but I can see that the process would be similar for processing an individual track, as well. I started by opening VEP5 on the slave machine and created an input channel to go along with the Mix Buss, which is there by default. Then I opened an existing Cubase project on the new Mac and created a VEP5 VST instrument track, assigned to the slave machine. Next, I created a group track and routed all audio tracks, FX tracks -everything- to that. Then, I dragged all the effects I had inserted on the original output channel to the new group channel. The last insert on that group channel was a VEP5 Audio Insert assigned to the slave machine. That sends the two-buss mix over ethernet to the slave machine, running through the channel there, with the plugs inserted, and then sends the audio back into the VEP5 VST instrument track, whose output is the main Cubase audio output channel.

I wasted a lot of time because someone had told me I needed to have Cubase open on the slave machine (Cubase 4 on my old PC)…not true at all. Anyway, I hope this helps someone who might be in the same boat. I don’t plan to use VEP5 for more than this right now, but…well, you never know, might come in handy for something else in the future!

3

Yes that helps! Good thinking! Luckily for me my old UAD1 cards have 64bit drivers (but only 32bit plug ins so I use Jbridge). But I am on the lookout for a second hand powercore…

4

lol, me too…firewire (400 w/adapter). At least I was until now (less eBay competition for you). :slight_smile: There are lots of other good plugs on the Powercore platform - Virus, for one. Not sure I ever found a reverb to replace VSS3, and definitely never found a replacement for MD3 and BWL. Sure, there are drivers available for these TC plugins, but my problem is that mine are on three old PCI cards. I can’t tell you how much time and money I’ve spent on external chassis, PCI adapters, etc, trying to get it all to work with newer setups. So VE Pro is just a Godsend.