I’m getting back into Cubase after a few years away and the version 6 upgrade. I had initially installed the 64-bit version of Cubase, but the repeated problems with my 32-bit plugins (Korg and Arturia being the most critical to my work) have caused me to downgrade to the 32-bit version.
This got me thinking about the “distributed VST” that Steinberg announced a few years back, and I see nothing mentioned about it recently. VStack (the remote host) doesn’t even list Windows Vista support, but at least the download is still there on the site.
I’d really like to explore this more as a solution to this. It would be very easy for me to set up a second computer running Windows XP or Windows 7 32-bit so I could handle all of my “legacy” plugins in a different engine and keep my main Cubase instance 64-bit to take advantage of max audio tracks and the newer 64-bit instruments.
Is this even possible any more in Cubase 6? Is anyone using this?
Interesting…don’t have an answer for you, but you know that all that really was, was a way to link via audio connections…all of that is still possible. I had a friend with a 3 computer VST Link network. It offered a few GUI things to be linked, but end of the day, not much other than the audio routing.
I think most are using something like Vienna Ensemble Pro on the slave machines–because it will carry audio and MIDI over ethernet, so you don’t have to buy all the audio/midi hardware IO for all the computers involved. Use RDC to connect to it–keep that minimized…
I have a feeling when they implemented external instruments/FX and full IO compensation, they figured that was how people would link multiple machines.
Have you tried J-Bridge for the ones that you need? It tends to work a little better than the built in bridge. It will bridge Waves plug ins if you use Shell2VST to make them individual DLLs…
End of the day, I have both installed. Doing audio work, there’s no need for 64bit…and the WaveShell organizes them better, IMO, so I launch the 32bit version…then when I need to do VI work/strings, I launch the 64bit version.
I really want to get around the hassle of linking audio and midi in general, and I’m in the process of selling off all of my hardware synths (except the Waldorf Blofeld, DSI Tetra, and my Eurorack modular) so I can get back to basics and forget about the web of connections.
I’ve done some more research on this tonight, and there are some Ethernet-based products that seem to show a lot of promise. My home network is all gigabit so I have a low-latency high-speed duplex connection ready to go.
I’ll also take another look at the external instruments, that’s also new since I last used Cubase.
Jbridge failed miserably on my system, Cubase wouldn’t even start up when I had the jbridge output plugins in my VSTi path.
Ve Pro is startlingly good at connecting MIDI and audio via Ethernet, or so many of my composer friends are telling me. For me, it was a godsend because on Mac, it allowed me to use all of my 18 gig of RAM when I was running Cubase at 32.
Wow, VE Pro seems to be exactly what I’m looking for! As I was looking through my old sample library, I realized that I was using Siedlaczek’s Orchestra on SampleCell format so I needed to upgrade that anyway!
I’ll keep on tracking these and report back on my findings.