Multi-timbral VST workarounds in Reason

[adfielding]

So - I recently picked up a Virus TI Snow. I've always wanted to own a Virus device, so finally picking one up was a bit of a thrill for me and, while the Virus Control VST works brilliantly in Reason, there is one glaring problem - I can only use one of four parts at a time due to Reason's lack of support for multi-timbral VSTs via MIDI channels. Yep, bummer.

The main issue (besides Reason's lack of VST MIDI channel support) is that the Virus doesn't allow for direct MIDI input while using the Virus Control VST... because, y'know, this isn't an issue for any other DAW out there! I've toyed with trying to find a solution to this problem in the past (having to fire up one Kontakt instance per instrument part isn't exactly conducive to a smooth workflow, but it works for most things), but this is the one that's got me well and truly stumped. I've tried using the EMI with a virtual MIDI cable routed to a VST wrapper with the virtual cable set to an input, I've tried using the VC VST in another app in a similar fashion... whatever I try, it doesn't seem to want to play ball and I was curious as to whether anyone has come up with a suitable workaround, no matter how bonkers.

For what it's worth - right now I'm happy to use the Virus as a single-part device and bounce parts to audio as needed, and I'd really prefer to keep using the Virus Control VST as it allows for multiple audio outs (which aren't physically present on the unit outside of the USB out), and makes it a lot easier to program (it's a TI Snow, programming patches on the unit itself is an exercise in mad menu-diving... doable, but not ideal).

It's especially infuriating because no other DAW I have installed has this problem, but Reason has flat-out spoiled me lately and I'd much rather keep everything within Reason if I can! I'd love to know if any of you good folks have tried anything, and figured this would be a fun opportunity to open the floor to weird and wacky workarounds.

fwiw I'm using Windows 10, but I'm also curious as to how you Mac folks are faring!

[koshal]

I don't know much about the Virus or its control VST application but not sure why the following wouldn't work...

1) Host the Virus VST in another DAW that can slave to midi clock (like REAPER, Ableton etc). Perhaps some of the standalone VST wrappers could also do this

2) Setup a virtual midi cable (like loopbe1) and send as many channels as you need out to it via EMI devices in Reason. Also send MIDI clock out over this virtual midi port

3) In the other DAW setup loopbe1 midi as an instrument (varies by DAW) and route all the incoming channels from loopbe1 midi to the same instance of the VIRUS VST (again routing varies by DAW)

4) Assuming you want individual channels of audio back into Reason, you'll need to figure out a solution for that. Easiest in my opinon is a 2nd audio interface running the 2nd DAW and have its outputs go into available inputs to your audio interface running Reason. Of course the more open ports you have the easier (look into things like SPDIF/ADAT connections for extra ports). There are also probably virtual audio cables or a virtual mixer you could use for this but I find that a bit more messy. You'll need to make sure you do the output routing correctly from the VIRUS VST to the audio outs of your 2nd interface/DAW/virtual mixer

5) Create audio tracks in Reason for the new interface inputs you setup and monitor/record normally. You may have to do some adjustments for the roundtrip latency.

So, in this case you're basically treating the VST like it's still hardware. I've done similar things syncing two DAWs (by treating one as hardware). Sounds like you sound tried something similar since you mentioned EMI and a VST wrapper, so I'm not sure were you got held up but it's worked for me before when I experimented with it.

[sonicbyte]

Yesterday I post this to know if it could be a solution

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7513005

Check the video

[adfielding]

Yesterday I post this to know if it could be a solution

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7513005

Check the video

Awesome, I totally missed that - I'll check that out!

[Oquasec]

You open up fl studio, insert some midi outs (midi outs do this)
and in a multitimbral vst select the midi channel input for each midi out
Open up Reaper, do same over there.
---
At least until propellerhead makes their own.

[adfielding]

Thanks, all! I appreciate the suggestions, though I get the feeling that folks are glossing over this sentence in particular...

It's especially infuriating because no other DAW I have installed has this problem, but Reason has flat-out spoiled me lately and I'd much rather keep everything within Reason if I can!

I mean, I could just fire up Cubase and write all my music in there, but there's a good reason why I'd rather not do that - I love using Reason! I've been spoiled with keeping everything in one place, and part of the appeal of grabbing the Virus TI in the first place was that I could treat it like another plug-in. It's just irritating that there isn't a simple internal solution that does just this.

Well, actually... I tell a lie - there is.

After reading Koshal's comment again (thanks!) I decided to re-try LoopBe1. I thought "surely there's something out there that will take a MIDI signal generated from an EMI set to output to a LoopBe1 channel and feed it into a VST", and it turns out that there is. There's a plug-in host called Element that does just that, among a myriad of other things that... well... I don't really need it to. Unfortunately it's not free, and only the $199 Pro version supports this (it's currently on sale for $50), but it's a step in the right direction. DDMF's wonderful Metaplugin VST offers a lot of similar functionality, but no other VST seems to support hosting another VST that receives MIDI data from another source beyond whatever the DAW is feeding it. Nyrv's Agent plugin looked like it might be able to pull it off, but it crashes as soon as I throw the Virus Control VST at it.

In any case, it feels like I'm making a little bit of progress, and if anybody has any suggestions for VST hosts that work within Reason that allow for independent MIDI inputs I'd love to hear them!

[sonicbyte]

As I mention in the other post, I really need the ability to use multiple midi channels for kontakt, I'm doing cinematic / epic music with orchestral libraries and is mandatory for performance and for saving Ram, to avoid using one kontakt per instrument.. it will really help if Mattias or someone at PH could tell us if at least is in the priority list for future releases.
I know they don't want to talk about that, but man it will give me a lot of peace of mind if I know this update will eventually come to Reason.

[chimp_spanner]

Yeah multitimbral midi is a must for next version. All we need is a MIDI channel drop down on the seq channel at the least. Repurposing the left browser zone to be a multi tabbed area with MIDI channel controls would be even better though (like the track inspector in Cubase). Could select channel there, apply grooves, transpose, humanise, etc. That’d be really neat.

Also multiple MIDI clock destinations are super important. Currently I have to choose between syncing the arp and note repeat on my MPK249, or my HD Pro Guitar processor. But not both.

[adfielding]

Yeah multitimbral midi is a must for next version. All we need is a MIDI channel drop down on the seq channel at the least. Repurposing the left browser zone to be a multi tabbed area with MIDI channel controls would be even better though (like the track inspector in Cubase). Could select channel there, apply grooves, transpose, humanise, etc. That’d be really neat.

Also multiple MIDI clock destinations are super important. Currently I have to choose between syncing the arp and note repeat on my MPK249, or my HD Pro Guitar processor. But not both.

I was thinking a similar sort of thing, keep it in the sequencer. I hadn't even thought about multiple MIDI clock destinations, though - I can definitely see how that could be problematic!

I'm definitely leaning toward picking up Element both for this purpose and because I think it'd be a useful tool to keep handy, but it's a bit of a shame that I'm having to consider a workaround at all, really. Would be incredibly useful, though. If anyone's curious, I'd be more than happy to explain how I've got it working here although it's pretty straight-forward.

[Lempface]

Hey Adam, I made this guide a while ago, is it of any use?
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=7505340&p=375845#p375845

One other thing is Bidule let's you rewire Reason into any DAW. I've been sequencing in Bitwig and using Reason synths this way and it's been great!

[adfielding]

Hey Adam, I made this guide a while ago, is it of any use?
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=7505340&p=375845#p375845

One other thing is Bidule let's you rewire Reason into any DAW. I've been sequencing in Bitwig and using Reason synths this way and it's been great!

I was actually considering Bidule for a little while before I came across Element! That's a nice guide right there. It looks a lot like you're using a similar approach to me, just using Bidule to wrap the VST instead of Element. I should have figured someone would have beaten me to it

[Spryx]

Tried Bidule myself, but noticed my midi output from Kirnu Cream was missing notes.
Also have a TI2 Polar and have been patiently awaiting Reason to support RealTime export and multi-channel VST/midi. I have used Reason since v1.0 and while it is my WOC, I can't deny how tempting it is to switch Studio One just for workflow enhancements. The development pace at PH is just so incredibly slow (granted, nothing like it used to be prior to v5).

Hey Adam, I made this guide a while ago, is it of any use?
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=7505340&p=375845#p375845

One other thing is Bidule let's you rewire Reason into any DAW. I've been sequencing in Bitwig and using Reason synths this way and it's been great!

[adfielding]

Tried Bidule myself, but noticed my midi output from Kirnu Cream was missing notes.
Also have a TI2 Polar and have been patiently awaiting Reason to support RealTime export and multi-channel VST/midi. I have used Reason since v1.0 and while it is my WOC, I can't deny how tempting it is to switch Studio One just for workflow enhancements. The development pace at PH is just so incredibly slow (granted, nothing like it used to be prior to v5).

I'm afraid I can't help you with real-time export (I'm still using loopback channels to record my Virus audio), but I'd be happy to explain how I got Element/loopBe1 working in Reason to support multi-channel MIDI input using my little Snow TI via the Virus TC VSTi if that'd be of any help.

[Lempface]

Tried Bidule myself, but noticed my midi output from Kirnu Cream was missing notes.
Also have a TI2 Polar and have been patiently awaiting Reason to support RealTime export and multi-channel VST/midi. I have used Reason since v1.0 and while it is my WOC, I can't deny how tempting it is to switch Studio One just for workflow enhancements. The development pace at PH is just so incredibly slow (granted, nothing like it used to be prior to v5).

Hey Adam, I made this guide a while ago, is it of any use?
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=7505340&p=375845#p375845

One other thing is Bidule let's you rewire Reason into any DAW. I've been sequencing in Bitwig and using Reason synths this way and it's been great!

I haven't tried with Kirnu Cream but I've had perfect success with Cthulhu, Chordz, Consequence, Kontakt Sequencers that output midi, HY sequencers, BlueARP, InstaChord, InstaScale, Thesys and Scaler. I'm sure I've tried a few others too, but never had any issue w/ dropped notes.

[LupNub]

Have you compared the mqs.ini file on both servers for the queue manager?

[Spryx]

I would be interested in how your setup works. Perhaps I could do something similar with the TI Polar. Also unrelated, but I am a big fan of your music and have learned a lot over the years from your racks. Cheers.

Tried Bidule myself, but noticed my midi output from Kirnu Cream was missing notes.
Also have a TI2 Polar and have been patiently awaiting Reason to support RealTime export and multi-channel VST/midi. I have used Reason since v1.0 and while it is my WOC, I can't deny how tempting it is to switch Studio One just for workflow enhancements. The development pace at PH is just so incredibly slow (granted, nothing like it used to be prior to v5).

I'm afraid I can't help you with real-time export (I'm still using loopback channels to record my Virus audio), but I'd be happy to explain how I got Element/loopBe1 working in Reason to support multi-channel MIDI input using my little Snow TI via the Virus TC VSTi if that'd be of any help.

[Spryx]

Interesting, I will try another VST arp, maybe Nora this time.

Tried Bidule myself, but noticed my midi output from Kirnu Cream was missing notes.
Also have a TI2 Polar and have been patiently awaiting Reason to support RealTime export and multi-channel VST/midi. I have used Reason since v1.0 and while it is my WOC, I can't deny how tempting it is to switch Studio One just for workflow enhancements. The development pace at PH is just so incredibly slow (granted, nothing like it used to be prior to v5).

I haven't tried with Kirnu Cream but I've had perfect success with Cthulhu, Chordz, Consequence, Kontakt Sequencers that output midi, HY sequencers, BlueARP, InstaChord, InstaScale, Thesys and Scaler. I'm sure I've tried a few others too, but never had any issue w/ dropped notes.

[Boombastix]

Did you try this one if it meets your needs?
https://www.image-line.com/support/flst ... odular.htm

[adfielding]

Did you try this one if it meets your needs?
https://www.image-line.com/support/flst ... odular.htm

I haven't tried that, though am I correct in thinking that it's part of FLStudio? Alas, FLStudio is one of the few DAWs I don't own - I was tempted to look into it as a solution (as you can run FLStudio as a VST), but decided against it as it seemed too pricey and a bit excessive for what I was trying to do.

I would be interested in how your setup works. Perhaps I could do something similar with the TI Polar. Also unrelated, but I am a big fan of your music and have learned a lot over the years from your racks. Cheers.

Thanks, that's really nice of you to say! As for the setup - I'm currently using Element (which is currently on a 75% off sale) as a VST host inside Reason via a virtual MIDI cable (in this case, LoopBe1). Inside the Element plug-in you can create MIDI inputs independent of the host DAW, so while I'm using my Nektar GX61 as a main MIDI controller in Reason, the VST contained within Element is receiving MIDI from the LoopBe1 MIDI device. This means you can fire up an EMI device in the rack, set it to output to the LoopBe1 MIDI device, and control the MIDI channel from there. Here's what that looks like:

Annotation 2019-07-24 093423.jpg (181.89 KiB) Viewed 14536 times

In this example, I've got the Virus TI Snow VST hosted within an instance of Element. The LoopBe Internal MIDI input is being routed to the Virus TI Snow VST, and the audio output from the VST is coming out on channels 1-6 (the Snow allows for 3 stereo outputs via USB) - right now I've only got one mixer channel set up, but there's nothing stopping me from creating a couple more for the other outputs. The EMIs on the left are set to send MIDI data to LoopBe Internal MIDI.

So far this has been working without any hitches - unfortunately you need the pro version of Element to add MIDI inputs inside Element, but I figured it was worth picking up both so I could use it as a workaround in this instance, and also because I figured it'd be useful to have a bit of a plug-in "Swiss Army Knife". You can also use it to host VST3/AU plug-ins as well, which is a very nice bonus.

[Boombastix]

Did you try this one if it meets your needs?
https://www.image-line.com/support/flst ... odular.htm

I haven't tried that, though am I correct in thinking that it's part of FLStudio? Alas, FLStudio is one of the few DAWs I don't own - I was tempted to look into it as a solution (as you can run FLStudio as a VST), but decided against it as it seemed too pricey and a bit excessive for what I was trying to do.

Nope, it is 100% free, and quite capable.

[adfielding]

I haven't tried that, though am I correct in thinking that it's part of FLStudio? Alas, FLStudio is one of the few DAWs I don't own - I was tempted to look into it as a solution (as you can run FLStudio as a VST), but decided against it as it seemed too pricey and a bit excessive for what I was trying to do.

Nope, it is 100% free, and quite capable.

Damn - well, in that case... I wish I'd seen that sooner, good find!

[Lempface]

Nope, it is 100% free, and quite capable.

Damn - well, in that case... I wish I'd seen that sooner, good find!

It crashes constantly in Reason, though I do really like it as a host. It seems to work pretty well, but if you delete the device it crashes your whole session, and crashes on load quite frequently from a saved project. Now that I have Bidule it doesn't do much for me. I haven't tried since 10.0 or so though so it might work now. It doesn't have a way to bring in a midi port, only midi routed to it from the DAW. I don't think it would work for what Adam was trying to do.

If anyone tries it, let me know your experience w/ crashing and other bugs.

[adfielding]

It crashes constantly in Reason, though I do really like it as a host. It seems to work pretty well, but if you delete the device it crashes your whole session, and crashes on load quite frequently from a saved project. Now that I have Bidule it doesn't do much for me. I haven't tried since 10.0 or so though so it might work now. It doesn't have a way to bring in a midi port, only midi routed to it from the DAW. I don't think it would work for what Adam was trying to do.

If anyone tries it, let me know your experience w/ crashing and other bugs.

Interesting. I tried out a few VST wrappers, but none of the others I tried featured independent MIDI inputs which was a bit of a deal breaker. I'd love to know if there are any others out there though, for what it's worth I've had zero issues with Element since I picked it up - if I was still running macOS it would have also made a neat AU wrapper for the one AU-only plug-in I happened to be using over there.

[Lempface]

It crashes constantly in Reason, though I do really like it as a host. It seems to work pretty well, but if you delete the device it crashes your whole session, and crashes on load quite frequently from a saved project. Now that I have Bidule it doesn't do much for me. I haven't tried since 10.0 or so though so it might work now. It doesn't have a way to bring in a midi port, only midi routed to it from the DAW. I don't think it would work for what Adam was trying to do.

If anyone tries it, let me know your experience w/ crashing and other bugs.

Interesting. I tried out a few VST wrappers, but none of the others I tried featured independent MIDI inputs which was a bit of a deal breaker. I'd love to know if there are any others out there though, for what it's worth I've had zero issues with Element since I picked it up - if I was still running macOS it would have also made a neat AU wrapper for the one AU-only plug-in I happened to be using over there.

Bit off-topic, how is the switch to Windows going and any luck getting your streaming stuff set back up? Last live streams were great! Gettin' itchin' for another.

[Boombastix]

Damn - well, in that case... I wish I'd seen that sooner, good find!

It crashes constantly in Reason, though I do really like it as a host. It seems to work pretty well, but if you delete the device it crashes your whole session, and crashes on load quite frequently from a saved project. Now that I have Bidule it doesn't do much for me. I haven't tried since 10.0 or so though so it might work now. It doesn't have a way to bring in a midi port, only midi routed to it from the DAW. I don't think it would work for what Adam was trying to do.

If anyone tries it, let me know your experience w/ crashing and other bugs.

You're right, now it crashes Reason upon deleting it. I think I had it working in 10.2, but not 100% sure, maybe 10.1. Too bad. I did not test any further in 10.4.