Using East-West Symphonic Choirs

[DonaldM]

I've recently got the Cloud version of East West and have been playing with Symphonic Choirs and Wordbuilder. Two things. A couple of times, it seems that using Worldbuilder causes PT to crash. My screen goes pale, and PT shuts down and re-boots. Then everything seems to work okay. Anyone else had an issue with that?

Secondly, on the "how to" vid with Nick Phoenix, he's showing Wordbuilder and Choirs in standalone mode and has both the WB screen and the Play screen open side by side...which is nice. I can't see how (or if) that can be done with Choirs open inside PT? Is there a way to have the WB and Play screens for the Choirs both open at the same time side by side? Sure would be nice if possible. If there's an option for that, I'm not seeing it. Thanks!

[John_Toolbox]

Are you mixing PLAY with other VI's?

If so, try putting all PLAY inst tracks at the top of your session. This seems to help especially if you are using Kontakt.

The only way to see wordbuilder and the PLAY UI at the same time is to use the standalone version of wordbuilder, which will require some clever MIDI routing. Also, one common mistake with this product I see a lot is when people try to load other instruments in the same instance of PLAY, do not do this it will cause mayhem. Each Choir section needs it's own dedicated instance of PLAY, due to the fact that wordbuilder uses multiple MIDI channels to create words.

[DonaldM]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

Are you mixing PLAY with other VI's?

If so, try putting all PLAY inst tracks at the top of your session. This seems to help especially if you are using Kontakt.

The only way to see wordbuilder and the PLAY UI at the same time is to use the standalone version of wordbuilder, which will require some clever MIDI routing. Also, one common mistake with this product I see a lot is when people try to load other instruments in the same instance of PLAY, do not do this it will cause mayhem. Each Choir section needs it's own dedicated instance of PLAY, due to the fact that wordbuilder uses multiple MIDI channels to create words.

John, thanks for the tips. In this case, I was only using Play, and not other VIs. I had 3 instances of it: one with Choirs, one with Stormdrum2 and one with RA. Also, I only had one Choir loaded when this happened. So not sure what the issue is/was. I'll keep working with it and noting the set up if the crash happens again.

I kinda thought the stand alone was the only to have both screens up. Maybe a future version will allow the split...woould be nice.

[DonaldM]

When you talk about not using multiple voices...I assume you mean with Choirs? Because with RA, I set up 3 instruments in one instance of RA, assigned MIDI channels to play the parts and routed the audio out to separate PT Aux tracks. No issues at all with that.

[ChazC]

Pretty much everything that John has said.

The new version of Play is having a few issues that EW are aware of. 4.2.2 is a lot more stable (still far from perfect though) but not sure you can use that with the Cloud licences.

Probably not a help to your session as described but Play seems a lot better when you only use a single patch in each instance. If you're using bass strings, viola & violin for example, EW themselves suggest using three instantiations of Play each on their own track. From my personal experience, this does seem to help when using the larger patches.

Finally, Wordbuilder is built into Play now. If you can be bothered to set up virtual MIDI ports and follow the old video tutorials on YouTube it is pissible to run it the original way of having Word Builder as a separate program. Having tried it this way a while ago I really wouldn't bother - there was horrendous MIDI latency issues.

Thanks for the tip on putting Play tracks at the top of the session John - I'll give that a try myself as I have a lot of trouble in sessions with Play and Kontakt.

[John_Toolbox]

Originally Posted by DonaldM

When you talk about not using multiple voices...I assume you mean with Choirs? Because with RA, I set up 3 instruments in one instance of RA, assigned MIDI channels to play the parts and routed the audio out to separate PT Aux tracks. No issues at all with that.

Yes, this is only an issue when using choirs with wordbuilder. When you load a wordbuilder patch, for example Sopranos WB, you'll notice there are actually several "instruments" loaded for it, each one using a different midi channel.

[DonaldM]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

Yes, this is only an issue when using choirs with wordbuilder. When you load a wordbuilder patch, for example Sopranos WB, you'll notice there are actually several "instruments" loaded for it, each one using a different midi channel.

Yes, I was aware of that and thanks for the tips. I'm new to all things EW, so I just have keep working with it and see what works best.