Hello all,
Decided to post something on here. I’ve been using Cubase for what feels like centuries and Nuendo for a while now and have never ever chimed in here yet. I’ve just always been able to fix my problems through scoering the internet and forums, until now! So my first post then… And it’s a long one!
I got REALLY excited when I saw what VST Connect was offering, did a quick test with SE, which seemed to work okay (Did little real testing) and decided to buy VST Connect Pro 3. I’ve seen people on Youtube and such having great experiences and I’d love to be one of them, but my story is a little more rough, so I was hoping someone on here had some more experience to get this to work.
My problem isn’t one thing really… I have a couple, which summed up makes the experience… well… unusable…
I ran 2 tests, and both of them went simillar and rather difficult so I’ll just talk you through them.
The first was over LAN, connecting a PC running Nuendo 7 (latest version) with an RME Fireface UFX and VST Connect Pro 3 (latest version) to a Macbook Pro, using internal hardware (Nothing else available at the time) running the VST Connect Pro 3 performer app (latest version)
It being a test I started from scratch. Clean session, I clicked Project → VST Connect → Pro → “Create VST Connect”.
First off: Why is SE not in this menu? Why is it in VST Cloud? And Why isn’t Pro in VST Cloud? Or the other way around? Confusing to me…
Anyway…
So an input channel was created, a Cue send was created, VST Connect Cue was installed on the Cue send, and VST Connect Monitor was installed on my main output. Hoever, VST Connect itself wasn’t installed on the input channel! I have my input channels hidden by default, so it took me a while to figure this out, and after having fiddled with the plugin a little bit it wouldn’t install it anymore because ‘an instance of Connect Pro is already running’. Also, clicking ‘Check and repair configuration’ did nothing and clicking ‘Remove VST Connect’ would remove everything but the input channel. Clicking on create again would add everything back in, also adding a second VST Connect input, but no Connect plugin! After having 7 input channels, and no VST connect window I decided to clean the whole thing up and
Reboot.
Fresh start!
I tried again, again no instance of VST Connect on the input channel, so I added it myself. It seemed to have found the monitor and Cue plugin, so all seemed to work! No Performer audio channel, but clicking ‘Create Performer Channel’ fixed that. So we where set to go I guess!
Let’s connect! Right?
It took (quite) a while for the performer app to find the VST Connect pro plugin over LAN and ended up working when I clicked the ‘power’ (bypass?) button on VST Connect, and clicking it again to power it back up, but this might also have been due to me clicking the login button about every 30 second trying to see if refreshing it would bring it up. Anyway, after it found the session and joined we got a VERY shaky connection. Lot’s of dropouts (when not recording), slow refresh rates of the webcams, and all sorts of weird feedback. Also the manual states that, in order to hear the performer, you need to open the monitor for the performer channel, but I was hearing the performer all the time already, and turning the monitoring on for the performer audio channel would result in the performer coming through twice, once delayed. Turned out this had to do with the ‘monitor’ plugin on my output, but then, the manual makes no sense!
Recorded some stuff and this did seem to work, however the connection was so shaky, that we decided this was unacceptable for any real world recording situation. After some google work we found that using internal hardware is very much recommended against, so maybe that was the case, and we decided to give up for now.
Test number two was even less succesfull. the same platform running Nuendo and a remote mac running Yosemite WITH an audio interface.
Connected where a Rhodes, and a mic. The first attempt connected, and showed the meters in Connect pro working, but no audio whatsoever on my end. Rebooting the connection gave audio, but again with LOADS of dropouts. Also the sync light was red on my end all the time, and the meters to the right of the Sync light showed no activity whatsoever. (same as the first LAN test by the way!). We where both running a 150 Mbit download and about 20 Mbit upload so that does not seem to be the source of the issue… We tried playing around with the upload and download settings but couldn’t find anything to smoothen the experience. In fact, turning the quality levels UP seemed to give better results, however still far from acceptable.
Forget about chatting, let’s record!
So I hit the record button, and recorded about 5 minutes of complete silence.
The signal went dead, and appearantly the monitor plugin muted itself, because I heard nothing whatsoever.
Okay, so maybe I had to engage the monitor button on the performer channel? Would the monitor plugin shut itself up when in record maybe? Tried that: Weird echo’s all around, and still silence on the performer channel when recording.
Okay let’s see if the guy on the other side could hear the drumloop I imported!
He did, but still silence from his channel whenever I was recording. It seemed to me the monitor plugin on my main output was alowing me to hear whatever was going on at his side, but I wasn’t getting any audio from the VST Connect plugin to record! (Channels where record enabled in the VST Connect plugin by the way…)
Alright, last chance: Let’s see what happens if I transfer the HD files from his computer.
Alas, they too where empty… No audio recorded…
Long story short:
I have absolutely NO idea where these problems come from.
- The connection is fine. Fast, and even LAN has these issues.
- VST Connect plugin does not load when clicking Create VST Connect: Why?
- Adding VST Connect manually to the input channel works… but… Does this work? Or does it screw with the way things should be setup?
- Incredebly slow connections, loads of sync problems while the connections are (as mentioned above) super fast and could hardly be the culprit.
- Sometimes there is no audio coming from the VST Connect app. Taking it out, and reinserting it sometimes fixes the issue, but still recording anything is flakey.
It almost feels like there is something hardcore wrong inside my system, and I need to do a clean install… Will try on different systems to get it to work and keep you up to date about that, but if anyone has any ideas: PLEASE let me know!
Finally two thoughts:
- I haven’t opened a port on my router. It says everywhere that this shouldn’t be an issue, but isn’t it? Will try this too…
- Over the years my Cubase/Nuendo setup has gotten pretty customized… Custom metering settings, custom keyboard shortcuts, etc. Could this be a problem? Is the “create VST connect” some kind of batch command using a key command that I may have altered in my setup maybe?
Sorry for the long post!
Thanks!