Interapplication audio with Pro Tools

[Londoner]

Greg (and plurye), please forgive me posting to this 3-year-old thread, but...

I've been persuaded to buy the VSL Solo Strings, which sound fantastic on the VSL web site demo pages. I need a good sound for string quartets and other chamber music.

AFAIK, there is still no RTAS support in this package. From reading many posts, my options for routing audio seem to be (I'm on PT LE 7.4 but that may make no difference):

a. VI -> Bidule -> ReWire -> PT
b. VI -> Fxpansion -> RTAS -> PT
c. VI -> Vienna Ensemble -> PT
d. VI -> Kontakt -> PT

a.
Greg, you seemed pleased with Bidule three years ago. And it looks like it contains added functionality which I may some day look into. Would you still recommend it?

b.
If the other options seem impractical I may opt for Fxpansion, as it seems simple. But it does only one thing for a price comparable to Bidule's price.

c.
Vienna Ensemble sounds fantastic. Unfortunately the only slave machine I could offer is an 8-year-old Dell with 256MB memory and no great sound card. I'd hate to buy a new computer just to get solo string sounds.

d.
I'm not sure about this option but I saw someone post about it. I have Kontakt 3.5 which is fine except for solo strings, harmonics, tremolo, all the things VSL does.

One worry I have about options a, b, and d is whether the non-VSL layers would render the "Performance Detection algorithms" of the Vienna Instruments Engine useless.

Again, sorry to go over ground you may have experienced long ago, but I'm desperate to find a solution to what started as a very simple problem. Thanks for any advice.

[Marsdy]

Londoner
Vienna Ensemble Pro is far and away the best solution. You don't need a second computer, it will run alongside PT on the same Mac. You need a Mac that's reasonably powerful but that also applies to Bidule>ReWire.

I found Bidule>ReWire unusable in Logic and especially PT even at high buffers. ReWire will only use one core at the moment. It clogs up really quickly and craps out.

The current Vienna Instruments don't work in Kontakt, they are standalone virtual instruments. There are some VSL samples included in Kontakt but it's pretty basic stuff.

[Londoner]

Dave, many thanks for the info. Following up your lead, I've checked the details of VE Pro which verifies it can do RTAS and works with PT. So far so good.

My only worry is where the site says it requires "Intel Core 2 Duo/Xeon with Mac OS X 10.5 or higher (PPC/PPC64 works but is not actively supported)".

I have a PPC, which is not much of a worry as they say it works. I'm on OS X 10.4 which is a bigger worry, as they don't say whether this works. As far as I know, I could upgrade my PowerBook G4 1.33GHz 1.5GB to run OS X 10.5, and pray that it doesn't grind to a halt.

Just one question for you, if you don't mind please. It's not obvious (or I'm too thick to see) whether VE runs on the PT host or the slave host or both; could you tell me? This question might arise if my PowerBook is inadequate to the task, and I'm forced to get a second machine to run alongside it.

Again, many thanks.

[Marsdy]

To be honest, I don't think you're going to get very far with PowerBook G4 1.33GHz. It's just for too slow for these modern VIs.

VE Pro runs on the host machine, slave machine or both at the same time. It works great with PT.