PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums RealBand Fine tuning the Realband’s handling of Midi and Vst plug ins in tracks.

Hi all.

Fine tuning the Realband’s handling of Midi and Vst plug ins in tracks.

Just spent some more hours (days) on getting Realband to work the way I like to work.
So thought I would pass on my findings, hope it saves some head scratching for some, one day.
Note this only works if you save the file in Realband’s native seq file format.
Midi files do not store this sort of track data .
So if you save as Midi then import the midi into say Sona you would have to set this up Sona’s way re insert soft synths in the synth rack and the save as a Sona project cwp file.

So back to Realband
For simple every day use I would set my midi settings to
Route MIDI playback to my default Dxi/Vst synth.
And this is fine if that is the only synth I need in the project
But see below .

One of my must have preferences is to have the selected track voice play thu from the midi keyboard not the default piano.

This is easy in Realband’s Options / preferences / midi /midi thru / set track specific
This way if I am recording a trumpet by playing notes into a track while recording I hear a trumpet or what ever other instrument I choose on any track I hear that tracks voice .

Ok we are looking good, now here comes the rub.

Lets say I have the first 5 tracks going to my default synth via the afore mentioned
Route MIDI playback to my default Dxi/Vst synth.
Fine I hear these and my thru voice is true to the selected track voice.

For track 6 I Insert Kontakt as a Specific vst synth for midi track
Load up an instrument from my Kontakt library.
Realband sets up the fist available free port for this on this track in this case it would be port 17.
Fine any midi data coming from data recorded on track 6 is routed to my Kontakt selection and plays that voice, and the other tracks play the default synth voices.

Unfortunately the Thru voice for track 6 still gets sent to the default synth
As per my. Route MIDI playback to my default Dxi/Vst synth
And plays the default piano (as there is no other voice specified for that track
As it is specified in Kontakt on port 17.
The work around for this is to un tick the box in midi set up for Route MIDI playback to my default Dxi/Vst synth.

Now I hear the Kontakt voice as the play through voice on track 6
The other 5 tracks now go to what ever I have set as my mid out device with I might say any latency derived from that trip, but I do hear the track specific voices.

So to get it back to my preferred synth for those tracks I have to :
Assign each track to its own instance of my preferred Dxi/Vst synth.
Its not really a separate instance as such it is the same synth inserted on port 32 once used multiple times.
This way I get no latency and every track 1-5 and the Kontakt track have the track specific play through voice..
Don’t forget.
If you save the project and re open it in Realband, you must at least start the transport then stop it to send the track voices / patches to the inserted synths.
For play through track voice to work.

Hope this helps some one some time it been quite a trip.
Mike

Kontakt users read on..
Having sorted that lot out I had a go at multiple instances of Kontakt
On different tracks.
And a single instance of Kontakt used multiple times from different tracks calling a Kontakt combi different instruments on different channels.
First a word about Kontakt 5 full version.
This comes with 3 different Dlls, Kontakt, Kontakt 8 out. Kontakt 16 out.
The plain Kontakt version is in fact up to 32 out
The two lesser ones 8 and 16 are for slower and less well resourced PCs with slower processors and Daws that can only handle a small number of outputs from plug ins
A plug in VST has to advertise how many outputs it has to the host daw so that the host can make use of them..

If you are not likely to need more than 3 separate instances of Kontakt in your project then it is simplest to add all 3 versions to your available VST via add vst plug ins.
This will allow you 3 completely independent instances of Kontakt on 3 separate tracks as each DLL is a separate version of Kontakt.
If you set each Kontakt input midi to omni it will pick up and play the incoming data from the track and the play thru voice if you have set up as above i

The other option is to use a single instance of Kontakt but make it a multi
Each separate instrument in the multi will be available on any track that you insert it into .you will see it in each track .
To control which track plays which instrument of the multi do not use omni as the midi input use a channel number.
For each separate instrument in the multi use a different channel number.
Meanwhile back in Realband.
Set the channel number in the real band tracks ch no field, to the channel you want inside the multi that is already inserted as the VST for this track

You can then insert the same Kontakt vst multi to other tracks and set the channel number to correspond with the instrument you want from the multi’s instrument channel number
Reads more complex than it is, but it works and you get the right play through voice for any selected track where ever it comes from !

A word about channel numbers

As I said before I like my Channel numbers to match my track numbers.
This means that drums will therefore normally live on track 10 so I don’t use that for anything else unless there are no drums in the project and I am not using a GM synth.
In the above discussion you remember I had already used tracks 1 to 5 before I started inserting my Kontakt multi
So therefore the first track / channel I used for my first instrument in the multi was
ch 6 in keeping with my normal lay out However as the instance of the Kontakt vst is on its own port I could have used any channel as each port has its has its own 16 channels.
but I decided to stick with my system regardless of the port being in used
this is fine for up to 16 tracks after that I would have to rethink my system.


Important note

My Additional Default Channel Settings in Realband.
To have my own control over channels and tracks in Realband I always set all Traks to normal for new projects, and if I have opened a MGU / SGU from BIAB , in the track menu, as I would not be sending a song back to BIAB with all these extra channels,tracks and Kontakt inserts.
This way I do not get the BIAB forced midi channels imposed on my project like channel 10 drums on track 2 etc etc.

I also have set in my Realband Options / Preferences / file:

Don’t save forced mid ch meta event in midi file

Automatically re channel track data when saving to midi

Not that I would be saving this type of project as midi anyway as explained above.

Ports
Realband assigns ports automatically when you start to insert DXI/ VSTs into tracks
In the example above it issued port 17 for my Kontakt multi
And while I was sending all midi via Route MIDI playback to my default Dxi/Vst synth. by ticking the box in RBs midi settings it sent this to port 1

Now that I have un ticked the box and send to specific vst multiple times for track 1-5
It has chosen port 32 for this job but left my Kontakt on port 17

Long post hope you are still with me

Best regards
Mike