It’s not anything too tricky - there’s no free lunch!
What jbridge can do is allow you to place an additional buffer into its path.
All of us are trying to get the lowest latency, reliable, performance. A hog like Diva could make it tough to run the rest of a setup at super low latency. Jbridge’s ‘performance mode’ targets the one plug in, doubling the current ASIO buffer.
So, if your system is set to 64, jbridge can run a plugin at 128, and lower the demand.
128 becomes 256 etc.
Still totally playable without sacrificing the entire setup.
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I believe jBridge also runs the plugin in a separate process, and the extra buffer is dedicated to that plugin, rather than sharing, which is why it can be helpful for plugins that show high load values.
But I think I remember Brad saying jBridged plugins don’t contribute to the displayed load values, which is why the drop in load can be dramatic. The danger is that you’re running a plugin “blind”, with no visibility of it’s own separate load, or whether it’s hitting close to 100%.
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Exactly - you need to watch for loading outside of Cantabile.
However - an extra buffer is an extra buffer and if you watch the system performance meter with jbridge perf mode on or off, you see that you’re winning when running diva this way.
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@Ade @Neil_Durant This is very cool info guys…thank you so much for sharing this. I took the plunge and downloaded Diva last night. Omnisphere is just around the corner.
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Good to see another G2 fan. I purchased mine for £400 in 2006, and have seen them going for £1200 now, but I will never sell mine.
It is funny, when I used to gig it (before the Kronos), a lot of musos would want to know where I was getting my lead sounds from. When I pointed out this bright red 1U rack with two LEDs and an on/off switch for a user interface, they were stunned. With the Kronos and AL-1 I have managed to reproduce my G2 Floyd leads to the point where they are good enough, but different. But I think I still prefer the character of the Nord. It’s just that taking out less wins me over these days, which is where the Kronos scores (as will a laptop and Cantabile and a pile of VSTs when I get time to set it up!).
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Although I haven’t had much time with it yet, I got Zebra for Christmas and am very impressed with it. I can see myself getting more UH-E soft synths. 
It does in deed. The other host is named ‘auxhost.exe’ and basically a ‘pipe’ between Cantabile and auxhost.
One can use COM or even TCP/IP to connect the two hosts programs. In a similar manner to using Maple midi etc to connect a sequencer program to Cantabile.
Naturally the combination of Cantabile and auxhost uses more overall system resources than Cantabile loading the library directly. However there are advantages to be had that offset this.
I’m not too familiar with the inner workings of jBridge however I would guess the trick here is the extra layer of buffering.
When unbridged the entire plugin processing needs to be done within the current audio cycle.
When bridged, the inputs to this audio cycle are passed to the plugin but it doesn’t need to wait for the output because instead the outputs from the previous audio cycle read back and become the output of this cycle. ie: on the host side there’s no “inline” processing of the plugin it’s just the communication to the separate process. So long as the processing is finished by the next cycle it can take as long as it likes.
But… the output has one audio cycle extra latency (and no visibility into how long it’s really taking).
It sounds like magic, but in reality it’s bit of “smoke and mirrors”. You’re better off running in-process when you can because there’s more work in running the plugin bridged (the overhead of those cross process calls) and that processing overhead needs to come from somewhere.
I helped Joao a little with the early versions of jBridge and while I can’t remember the details it didn’t use COM back then. Pretty sure it’s built out of regular synchronization primitives like events and shared memory.
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Oh dang! How could I forget the Korg 01/W! That was my absolute main board for pretty much the 90s. Anyone heard the story that it was actually supposed to be the M/10 but they silkscreened the protoype upside down?
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That makes a certain sort of sense! 
Speaking of hardware synths … I just saw a Yammi CS-80 on ebay for over $27,000 AUD
I reckon there are a few sorry people around who ditched theirs for a few hundred bucks …
Yep, amazing. I sold My MemoryMoog stone dead for $1,700 10 years ago and it would probably get a lot more now. It was unmodded so it wasn’t particularly reliable but if it was like a Toyota truck the CS-80 was a Triumph TR-7… never working! Just too big, always overheating. They probably should have built water cooling into it lol Same deal with my Prophet-10. Bought that for $400 in the early 90s and it still wasn’t worth it.
(BTW I’d be a little shocked if he gets that for the CS. It’s worth a bundle for sure but that sounds a bit optimisitic. Let us know if it sells for that!)
I remember not too long ago, Frank Zappa’s CS80 was up for sale. The asking price was not even close to that.
CS-80 was the only synth that I would occasionally rent, back in the day - and that was after having toured with one as (wait for it) Cliff Richard’s keyboard player back in 1979, at the time of ‘We Don’t Talk Anymore’.
That song was full of CS-80 with one iconic ribbon controller slide at the end of every chorus.
One night the CS-80 went down just before that song. The only other ‘synth’ on stage was a Roland VP-330 string machine/vocoder.
There was a general awareness on the stage, probably due to me jumping up and down on the CS-80 and looking like I needed to find a toilet really quick, that all was not well.
The song is already in full swing with the piano player doing his best to cover all the synth parts on a CP70 Piano (not convincing) and when that crucial moment came for the glide I just went for the VP-330 - which was the only string machine on the market to have a pitch slider. A few eyebrows went up as the glide went down '_
We don’t talk any mooooorrrre_ … _mmmmeeeeeow!
_… but at least it wasn’t silence!
I did love that synth but keeping it together on the road was not for the faint hearted.
I now use my Elka MK88 with poly AT, the Arturia CS-80V and a Kurzweil ribbon controller if I want to feel something like a CS-80 under my fingers. Buying one now is like buying a vintage car. You’d better make sure you’re the mechanic or you know a mechanic who has all the parts - cause you’re gonna need 'em!
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Well, I’ll jump in.
I ended up selling most of my old gear over the years. Couldn’t afford to keep it, and probably didn’t have room to do so anyhow. That’s the bittersweet part of all of this. I was really jealous when I got to hang in my friend CJ’s “vintage” room, though wasn’t playing any of them 
Now I’m almost entirely in the VST camp, and trying to work out the live gig setup with Cantabile.
Current keyboards in use
MOXF8
Yamaha CS1x (has been in its case for a couple of years)
Alesis QS8 (stays in my office @ work)
Alesis QS7 (2nd keyboard @ live gigs - stays at the rehearsal space)
Hammond RT3 (1960 vintage) and Leslie. little known or understood model, it’s the B3’s big brother.
Soon to be on the eBay auction block
Motif Rack XS (MOXF8 has the same sounds)
Studiologic Numa V1
Stuff I can’t bear to get rid of even though I don’t use them
TXRack
DX7 (been in Shuttle Bag in the rafters for decades)
D550
Stuff I wish I still had
A lot of stuff,but at the top of the list:
Fender Rhodes (Mark I)
Arp Odyssey (black face)
OB8 (even though it was flaky thanks to a bad line of assembler code that they figured out 3 months after I traded it in for a loss)
Minimoog model D (wasn’t working when I got it in the late 80’s)
Stuff that got swapped for new stuff
Emulator II, Casio FZ1, TX7 (for TX rack), tons of drum machines, Ensoniq ESQ-M, CP70 (for DX7), Farfisa Compact and Compact Duo, Multivox string machine (predecessor to the Crumar Orchestrator), Yamaha SY55, etc. etc. etc. Just a ton of stuff over the years.
Ah, nostalgia.
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My first proper synth was an 01W/fd. I sometimes wonder if my life would have been different had it had resonance on the filter, though the waveshaping did make it an interesting beast. The electro-luminescent screen is now well-faded and its psu recently packed in 2 days after I spent several hours servicing every blinking key.
Other bits and bobs along the way to C3 and vsts.
Roland D5
Alesis SR16 (I think they actually still sell these)
Ensoniq EPS16+
Casio FZ1
Cheetah MS6
Yamaha RY30
Jen Electronics SX-1000
Kawai K4
Roland JD990
Kawai MP9500
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I think we are spoilt these days with reliable equipment. I recently read an article with Rick Wakeman, where he said in the 70s that if he got to the end of a gig where everything was still working, then it was a rare luxury. But i guess it taught you how to workaround problems as best you could.
I think on the current ARW tour he has four minimoogs as he needs at least two working. That’s the overhead of going out with vintage gear.
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Now the MiniMoog… I bought mine in '78, got it cleaned and serviced maybe around '90 and still used it regularly until 2003 or so and never had any problems. Especially in that initial period it went on the road for about 11 solid years gigging 5 or 6 nights a week and as long as I recalibrated the oscillator cards every couple weeks I simply never had an issue apart from a dirty pot now and then. Mine was a tank.
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Hi everyone. This is my first post here and I am VERY much inspired by this thread. There’s some great gear and cool stories here. 
Ade, much of the music you have helped create is pretty much a backdrop to my teenage years in the 80s. Cliff Richard, Mike & The Mechanics (Genesis have also been one of my primary influences), Toyah (Anthem especially) - I had a huge crush on Toyah (but what teenage male who knew her didn’t?!!)
I’m a sound engineer, musician (keyboards are my main instrument but I also play guitar, bass, drums and trumpet) and electronics tech currently living in Adelaide, South Australia.
I’ve just purchased Cantabile Solo for use in my studio to run some of my software synths on a dedicated PC alongside the hardware for improvisation and recording and it is a fantastic piece of software (great work Brad)!
Anyway, I thought I’d add my input here and show you all my current rig. I’ve been collecting this gear for around 30 years now and have done plenty of custom mods to much of it.
The list below is copied from the top section of the full gear list on my synth website. Here’s the list and a photo:
Moog
Minimoog Voyager – Electric Blue Edition analog synthesizer
Roland
System 100 analog synthesizer/step sequencer
System 700 custom modded analog step sequencer
2 x JP-08 synthesizers
Juno 6 custom modded analog synthesizer
Juno 106 analog synthesizer
JX-3P analog synthesizer with PG200 programmer and Inque MIDI mod
SH-09 custom modded analog synthesizer
V-Drums TD20 expanded / TD12 custom drum kit with V Expressions packs
Yamaha
SY77 custom modded digital AFM/AWM workstation synthesizer
DX7 Mk1 custom modded digital FM synthesizer
TX802 digital FM synthesizer
KX-8 88 note weighted MIDI keyboard
DGX-630 digital grand piano
NP-31 Piano (as MIDI controller)
YTR2320s trumpet
GC1 baby grand piano (not in photo)
MidiSizer
MidiGAL MIDI signal processor – Used primarily for spreading polyphony over the two Roland JP08 synthesizers
Hammond
2 x 9922K organ / Leslie speaker
Kirkman (not in photo)
Antique (180 years old) upright piano
Geo P Bent (Crown Organ) (not in photo)
Antique (120 years old) Harmonium/Reed organ
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Love that pic!
You have a Sys 700 sequencer!!
I still have fond memories of visiting Roland in Sydney (I think) back in 1978 when touring there. I may have been in the same room as your sequencer! 
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