Switching between instruments using Program Change messages

[ccherrett]

I will let you know right up front. I paid over $5000 dollars for VSL Pro Cube and The Performance Set and have been asked to share my libraries and knowledge with people in here that downloaded the same samples over torrents. I am not into stealing anything for anyone, so I do not want facilitate that in here if at all possible. If I find out anyone I am helping is stealing samples I am done helping.

So that is where I stand. Now for the help:

Question: What is the problem with The Performance Tool under wine? You did not say anything about what is wrong.

P.S. Go to the VSL website and download the proper copy of The Performance Tool as per the instructions I posted to you in the P.M. I sent you.

Thanks!

[ccherrett]

You will want to have the latest version of wine installed. The new version of wine has support for showing alsa port names instead of just the names of the program that created the port. For example you will see:

Linuxsampler: 1st Violin

instead of

Linuxsampler

What was happening in The Performace Tool was if you had 90 midi ports it would show 90 entries that all said Linuxsampler.

Hope that helps.

[Alex]

Just to let you know Chris, that you'll have Mod support in dealing with any approachs for info based on torrented or any other downloaded, non paid for, libraries.
There's not always a lot we can do, given the fairly anonymous nature of the net, but where we can, we will.

The team at VSL are a good bunch, and i've had the pleasure of conversing with them in their forums more than once. Herb and the crew put a lot into creating a great set of libs that have certainly raised the bar of excellence in the sampled library world.

They may be a commercial company, but they're decent people too, and have helped many outside of their company remit, with advice and suggestions for recording in general, more than once. For just one example, Dietz is a gifted engineer with accolades acknowledging his skills (Amadeus awards being just one example), who has put a lot of time into helping new sample lib users get started, and that includes with other libs, as well as the VSL collection.

Personally, i have a great deal of respect for people who have the...class, to find a great balance between promoting their own products, and selflessly help others with more general tips, suggestions, and advice, should the situation arise.

Imho, VSL's a great example of a opensource community spirit, in the commercial world.


Keep us posted.

Alex.

[kmiya100]

By the way, we paid the student price for 1st ed (and I believe for Performance Set), and 80% for Special Edition Complete. We also paid 80% for other sets and Vienna Keys. I believe we have $5,000.00 or more invested in the library, and have mainly been using the new sets on our Macs and Windows machines. When we did the license transfers, Vienna only listed the newer products under our profile, so we couldn't access the Performance Tool. We asked them about this, and they set our profile to show licensing of 1st ed. We were thus able to download the tool. I only mention this to clarify that we too are supporting legitimate use of libraries and software.

OK, a couple of questions:

First, when you install the Performance Tool, it asks whether to do online or offline activation. I couldn't get it to work with online, but was able to put in the response key using offline method and got it working (I had to add a .dll as well, and do a little tinkering). I'm wondering if you were able to do online activation, or had to use the same method as me. Also, can I install this on a Windows machine, or do I only have one install? This is probably a VSL question, but I was just wondering if you knew.

Second, you mention specific alsa port names. Are you talking about this showing up in qsampler or performance tool? The midi inports list jack-midi, through, and my audigy card. Midi outports list several client-128 (130), jack-midi, through, and linuxsampler. I've been able to use midi through for in, and linuxsampler for out, and have gotten it to work with qsampler. I haven't figured out how to configure multiple ports, as this seems like I'm using only one port. When I use Patchage, it shows a Wine Midi Driver with one in and one out. I am using Wine 1.01; should I be updating this? Any help would be great.

[dahnielson]

First, when you install the Performance Tool, it asks whether to do online or offline activation. I couldn't get it to work with online, but was able to put in the response key using offline method and got it working (I had to add a .dll as well, and do a little tinkering). I'm wondering if you were able to do online activation, or had to use the same method as me. Also, can I install this on a Windows machine, or do I only have one install? This is probably a VSL question, but I was just wondering if you knew.

A lot of software have trouble with network access under Wine. Off-line activation is usually the only thing that works.

[kmiya100]

I found out that to see midi inports and outports on the Performance Tool, I need to have Jsampler up and running with the ports I want, as well as Rosegarden; after both are up, then I can run Performance Tool and see the ports. I think my wine version is too old as the names just show up as Linuxsampler or Rosegarden.

I'm not trying to be at all negative about Vienna's player, but Jsampler/Linuxsampler with Performance Tool seems to be much faster, and I can load more instruments with less memory on a much slower machine. I really like Vienna's proprietary player which has some powerful features, and may be more more useful in the long run. For now, however, linuxsampler seems to actually work better; I'm not sure I can really hear the difference between the 16 bit samples and their newer 24 bit ones. Am I just imagining that samples load more quickly, and that I can load more samples into less memory? I can also do program changes on one midi channel. In the Vienna player it seems every new instrument is on a new port with a new instance of the player, not just a different channel. Maybe my Protools setup just isn't as good. If anyone else has compared both, let me know pros/cons of both setups.

Also, does anyone know if Vienna has plans to port things over to linux? I tried installing our newer Vienna Instruments, but was halted due to the Vienna Key not being read properly. I bet the software part would work fine under wine if linux could read the Vienna Keys. Has anyone got the Vienna Key and VI working in linux? I have solo strings only in the new format, so it would be nice to get all these running in linux.

[dahnielson]

For now, however, linuxsampler seems to actually work better; I'm not sure I can really hear the difference between the 16 bit samples and their newer 24 bit ones. Am I just imagining that samples load more quickly, and that I can load more samples into less memory?

IIRC, someone demonstrated not long ago on the LAD list that the difference between 24 bit and 16 bit is negligible when it comes to human hearing. Sure the step from 8 bits (or 12 bits) to 16 bits once upon time was a big one, but the law of diminishing returns comes into play with higher bit depths so to speak. Yes, you definitely get quicker load times and can load more into memory with 16 bit samples.

E.g. Troels Folman from Tonehammer have said this about 16 bit vs. 24 bit:

We record everything in 24 bit, but after years of field and studio recording, making music and doing sound design, we’ve come to the realization that it’s not worth the extra disk space, bandwidth and memory footprint. The only truly important technical metric is how awesome an instrument sounds. It makes a lot more sense to offer more layers and round-robin variations per instrument, while remaining memory efficient so that users can think more about making music and less about the nuts and bolts. We work with great microphones, great recorders, effective recording and editing techniques and a whole lot of time and care. Our focus is on musicality and playability over fancy specifications. And we want to reach all users, not just those who can afford the best hardware. Eventually, we plan to move toward higher fidelity audio specs, once affordable computers can deal with it as efficiently and effortlessly as they handle 16/44 audio now.

Also, does anyone know if Vienna has plans to port things over to linux? I tried installing our newer Vienna Instruments, but was halted due to the Vienna Key not being read properly. I bet the software part would work fine under wine if linux could read the Vienna Keys. Has anyone got the Vienna Key and VI working in linux? I have solo strings only in the new format, so it would be nice to get all these running in linux.

It would be cool if VIs would work under Wine. But from what I understand all dongle-protected software are troublesome under Wine.

[Alex]

Quite some time ago, i and others asked Dietz and CM if a linux performance tool was possible. They said it wasn't on the radar, as they were, at the time, working on building the players.
They were very decent and open minded about the whole thing, but i don't think we'll see anything linux from VSL in the near future, if at all.

At least not until our quest for global domination bears more fruit.

Alex.

[kmiya100]

Now I have another question:

I would like to change between two instruments using my mod wheel controller like they do on the Performance Tool DVD. I want to switch between a legato instrument and a portamento one. I've been able to do this using a program change, but would rather do it with mod wheel. How would I go about doing this?

[ccherrett]

Quite some time ago, i and others asked Dietz and CM if a linux performance tool was possible. They said it wasn't on the radar, as they were, at the time, working on building the players.
They were very decent and open minded about the whole thing, but i don't think we'll see anything linux from VSL in the near future, if at all.

At least not until our quest for global domination bears more fruit.

Alex.

Just so you know the VSL crew is in my corporation bad books for lying to all their customers about always maintaining their upgrade path and never loosing their investments in older sample libraries. I bought Opus 1 and 2 (not cheap) and had plans to buy the full cube and performance set when I could afford it. I ran this all by Christian at VSL and they knew what I was up to (getting VSL running under linux) from before I purchased.

They then decided to develop the Virtual Instruments. When the Vis were ready they went back on their wird and said you had 1 month to upgrade to the VIs or they would no longer let you upgrade and you would loose your investment. They also killed the discounts from one old library to another. So Opus 1 and 2 was a complete loss as far as counting towards anything else I bought. I managed to get the second last Cube and Performance set in the world for a decent price on sale, however the practices of VSL was down right nasty.

The VSL forum has a 20+ page discussion of this event.

So moving on I have been working on getting VSL running under linux for many years. So far I have created mappings between Linuxsampler, Rosegarden, Ardour3.

My friend and I wrote a script that does the following:

• Takes an existing lscp mapping file and creates a Linuxsampler studio with it, all instruments become a port and matching stereo channels with matching names

• Creates a Rosegarden Studio with named instruments

• Creates an Ardour3 Studio as midnam with all mappings

Ardour3 will allow switching between instruments and articulations on the fly:


The proposal for bank/program changes in rosegarden I am working on:


This mixed with The Performance Tool in linux running in wine will in my opinion make linux a much better environment for running VSL samples. I hope a lot of the people with old samples switch back to using them and come over to Linux for a ride

VSL promotes that with VIs you can run 64 bit and with the old Performance Tool it only ran 32bit, so you could only access 4 GB or RAM, and now you could access much more with VIs. They seemed surprised when I anounced I had 32bitThe Performance Tool running on my 64bit machine with 8GB or RAM, talking to all my 64bit apps through wine!