MIDI plugins don’t like VE Pro - skipped notes+latency

[Marsdy]

Delighted to see MIDI Plugins in Pro Tools.

However, I’m having an issue using them with VE Pro. I have a couple of hundred Instrument Tracks routed to VE Pro in my template session. For each track, MIDI is routed to an individual VI (or an individual MIDI channel of an instrument) within VE Pro. The audio input of the Instrument Track is routed from an individual output of VE Pro.

If I insert a MIDI plugin on one of these Instrument Tracks, it doesn’t work unfortunately, at least not here! MIDI doesn’t pass through to VE Pro, even when the MIDI plugin is bypassed.

As a workaround, I’ve created a new Instrument Track and inserted a MIDI plugin on that. Then on the VE Pro Instrument Track, I’ve set its input to the MIDI Chain output from the new Instrument Track. This works if both MIDI tracks are record enabled but…. The latency is terrible and I’m getting a lot of random missing notes when using say EON-ARP. It’s unusable unfortunately.

So a bit disappointing! Is this a limitation of the new MIDI Plugin architecture, a bug or am I doing something wrong?

And regarding MIDI Plugins - to forum mods, would a separate AAX plugin in forum be a good idea? Also, can we have a page on the Avid site that lists available third party AAX MIDI plugins like there is for audio plugins?

[skylar_battles]

I believe it's just a limitation of the new system unfortunately. If you use an "individual targets" as the MIDI output of a track with MIDI FX, the track will make no sound. At least in this test I just did with Riffer going into Xpand!2...

This thread may be helpful, if you haven't seen it: https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=427895

Quoting myself from that thread in case it is helpful:

1. Virtual instrument must be after MIDI FX
2. To monitor the data through another instrument or print it, you need to set up an additional MIDI or instrument track and set the input to the chain output of the track's data you'd like to use. No way to print the data offline unfortunately.
3. Also "not all virtual instrument plugins support passing the midi chain data" so I could only assume at the present moment this only works for the newest versions of Avid plugins

Regarding the last point though, I could only imagine the MIDI plugins are also incompatible with almost all virtual instruments currently offered since feature is brand new, so that probably adds to your issues as well.

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by skylar_battles

I believe it's just a limitation of the new system unfortunately. If you use an "individual targets" as the MIDI output of a track with MIDI FX, the track will make no sound. At least in this test I just did with Riffer going into Xpand!2...

This thread may be helpful, if you haven't seen it: https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=427895

Quoting myself from that thread in case it is helpful:

1. Virtual instrument must be after MIDI FX
2. To monitor the data through another instrument or print it, you need to set up an additional MIDI or instrument track and set the input to the chain output of the track's data you'd like to use. No way to print the data offline unfortunately.
3. Also "not all virtual instrument plugins support passing the midi chain data" so I could only assume at the present moment this only works for the newest versions of Avid plugins

Regarding the last point though, I could only imagine the MIDI plugins are also incompatible with almost all virtual instruments currently offered since feature is brand new, so that probably adds to your issues as well.

Thanks skylar.
Your point two is essentially what I’ve tried but I’m getting terrible latency and a lot of missing notes. Perhaps it’s because the Instrument Tracks I’m using for VE Pro don’t actually have a VI instantiated, I’m using them to send MIDI to and return audio from VE Pro.

One major limitation of the way MIDI plugins have been implemented is that you can’t actually use them on MIDI tracks!

[Marsdy]

Ignoring my issue with VE Pro, I’m getting note dropouts recording the MIDI Chain output of an Instrument Track to another Instrument Track.