Rewire / Vsti Question

Help, Support & Bugs
1

Hi,

I have no had much time to play with rewire yet, but I am really excited about it. I have one question - Renoise as Master, Cubase as Slave. If I open up a VSTi in Cubase (in this case, the Virus TI). Am I somehow able to use control this synth in Renoise’s pattern editor? Like automation of it etc…? Or does this have to be done in Cubase?

Looking forward to an answer like a little schoolboy!

Cheers
Klaus

2

Rewire has two main purposes.
One is to connect and control other slaves as instruments in the master.
The other one is to synchronize the transport controls in several apps.

In the first case you can for instance use Renoise as Master and reason as slave.
If you add a instrument in reason you will be able to control that instrument from renoise using Rewire Midi. The instrument will show up as a Midi device in renoise.

For the second use: if you start to play the song anywhere in cubase or in Renoise you will start both applications synchronized.

For the audiosignal: Slaves feed the master with audio channels. The master have control over the soundcard.
So if renoise is master you can select any channel from the slave in the ReWire Device in Renoise.
This way you can mix everything in the Rewire Master.

And last. Cubase can not be a ReWire Slave. It can be master only.

Please read more in the Rewire FAQ/How to
and
Available Rewire Slaves & Masters, & Compatibility with Renoise

3

Thank you Pysj for the excellent answer! My problem is this. The Virus TI plugin does not work well in Renoise, however it does in programs like Cubase and Ableton Live. I would love to be able to control it via Renoise. I gather renoise needs to be the master for that to work?

If I buy Ableton Live, can I control the Virus TI via Renoise?

Thanks again!
Klaus

4

As long as you want to use Renoise as the master you will probably not be able to do this with Albetron Live since what I have heard it does not support VSTi:s in ReWire slave mode. But if you find a slave that can handle the Virus VSTi and that also implement MIDI transfer in it’s ReWire implementation you should be able to control it as a regular MIDI device if Renoise is the master. If you use the other host as master and Renoise as slave it can maybe be possible with some MIDI reroutning (if it is possible to hook up the master as a MIDI device in Renoise, I’m not sure about this) and then maybe it is even possible to do this with Albetron Live, but it will probably be a bit bushy than to do it the other way around.

I do not use Albetron Live myself though so I can not confirm anything of the above ;) so do not take my word for it

5

It depends on what you mean by “control it via Renoise”.
What do you wanna control? Trigger notes, automate parameters, or process the incoming sound in Renoise directly?
If you just wanna trigger notes from renoise you can either use the Rewire midi output from Renoise, or you can use a virtual midi cable to transfer the midi data to the other host.
If you wanna automate you have to use Midi Control Device in Renoise with the above.

If you want the incoming sound from the Virus vsti into renoise through another host, then yes, Renoise must be the master.

However Ableton Live will not allow you to use vst’s in Rewire Slave mode (Edit: as twilek said :)). But some other hosts do.
I’m sorry I can’t be more precise then this. The VirusControl thing is a kinda special case, I have not read the manual on that thing, so you just have to try this out yourself or perhaps some other virus owners here can help you.

6

hi xer, if you only want to send midinotes from renoise to ableton live or cubase running your plugin of choice, run renoise as rewire slave host, configure IAC (on the mac, its built-in) or install a virtual midi port on the pc and have renoise send midiout to , say, a port called “to_live” and have ableton live have a midi-instrument track which runs your virus TI vsti that receives note from to_live_channel1 for instance.
thats how id try this, hope this helps.

7

… and if its just about the TI you could also try out Reaper.

Also i nthe latest 2.1 beta the TI should at least work a lot better in Renoise. Pending problems are:

  • timing is way off with the “static buffer” option in Renoise disabled
  • rendering the TI won’t work because we do disable Audio while rendering, while the TI needs it to work correctly

So with the static buffer option enabled for the TI (click on the small ? button next to the ext editor button in Renoise to set this option) it should at least be usable.