Saw a promotional pricing email for MusicLab products, and one of the products: MIDIoverLAN CP appears to be a solution for connecting 2 or more PC’s or Macs and share MIDI devices and software across the computers through a LAN connection.
Curious if any Cantabile users have or have tried (a demo is available) this product?
I have a studio setup at home and also use a desktop PC in my office, where I experiment and learn capabilities of products like Cantabile and SONAR, but have to duplicate files and software across 2 PC’s. I also have various MIDI external devices which I cannot duplicate across the two environments. This MIDIoverLAN product “appears” to enable me to do such things as build a Cantabile Song or rack that accesses VSTi instruments located on the studio PC without having to load, for example, a second copy of Kontakt 5 with all the sounds, onto my office PC. I just downloaded the manual and the demo and hope to try them out this weekend, but would appreciate any comments if someone has used this product.
Hi there,
I did look into their product at one time. The majority of my work involves large orchestral templates for movie scores, and networking computers is pretty much the way you have to go in those situations. I didn’t end up using their product because I wanted something which could reliably handle midi AND audio over LAN.
The solution I ended up with is probably the mostly widely used in our industry, and it’s the Vienna Ensemble Pro.
Yes, it’s more money, but it does way more.
Firstly, all you need on your slave machines are the plugins you require and the VEP software. (You get licenses for 3 machines and you can purchase more if your rig expands beyond 3 computers)
You don’t need to have audio or midi hardware on any slave machine
All you need is an Ethernet cable directly from one machine to the other, or via a router or switcher.
I have found that any modern router does the trick, even if it’s not connected to the internet.
The beauty of this software, especially when using huge orchestral templates, is that you can leave so called ‘frames’ loaded with plugins, which can remain in RAM even if you switch projects in your DAW - or Cantabile.
Any host which can run a VST plugin can be used a master for a VEP network. Not that I really need to do this for the occasional live work I do, but you can have major desktop computer, loaded to the gills with plugins, and address them all from Cantabile on a laptop. Use Remote Desktop, and you don’t even need a screen or mouse/keyboard for the slaves. You can even use it to bridge 32 bit plugins.
You can load a Cantabile song and any slaves will automatically load their contents for that song, as if they were part of the Cantabile project. (Or Cubase or PT or whatever host it is.)
Most importantly, this setup has been reliable. As long as everything is plugged in correctly with no IP conflicts, it works great. It can appear complex at first, but once the basic concept is understood you see how powerful this is. A gateway between PC and Mac, between 32 and 64 bit - and no additional audio hardware required.
Check it out!
Brief note - it is possible to take out the additional latency buffering completely, if your setup is solid.
Interesting product and thanx for the in-depth explanation.
One question from your writeup… Does the connection between PC’s require a physical Ethernet cable connection or can one use a Wifi connection? It would be difficult to run an Ethernet LAN cable between the two rooms.
I have not looked at this product, but I am using RtpMIDI (which is free) to use Cantabile on one PC to send note triggers over a network to another PC to trigger video software when Cantabile starts a song.
I don’t think it runs on OS X but it claims to be compatible with CoreMIDI
Just curious, not to derail this thread, but what video software responds to MIDI commands? (I am only familiar with a few editors and your typical players.)
Show Cue Systems Professional Version is what I use. The user interface is a little clunky, but it is reasonably priced (far cheaper than the others I looked at). It supports MIDI Machine Control and MIDI Show Control, but I have it just setup to respond to Program changes and Note Off commands that are setup to be triggered in each Cantabile song when the transport starts or stops.
What I am after is something similar to what happens in this flute performance video. (See the text at the bottom of that page.)
I don’t care about triggering it via a wrist-worn accelerometer like she is using, but I do want instant response to a programmed playlist of files or, even better, of file positions.
I guess this is getting deeply off-topic for this thread! But still in the realm of remote-control, at least!
