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Hello Bob,

What VST plugin are you having trouble with? I have never encountered a proper VST plugin that does not work in RealBand or PowerTracks.



Then you've never used one that can create it's own parts probably because they're all fairly expensive.

I'm referring to the very well known tempo lock problem with VSTi's that can create their own rhythms like Jamstix, BFD, some of the guitar ones, some effects like delays or phasers that can be locked to the tempo of your song so they pulse along with the beat. I have Jamstix, it loads fine as an instrument so I can use the great sounding kits to play prerecorded drum tracks but the biggest part of JS is the "brain" that will create and modify a completely new drum part on the fly based on a very cool drum pattern creation display. It works much like the Biab styles except it's drums only. You can pick a style and then tell it to change virtually any part of the kit according to certain parameters like changing the attack on the ride, add some ghost hits to the snare, a double back beat on the kick, etc all within any style you choose and they have pretty much any drum style you can think of based on famous drummers just like Biab's soloists. That requires some further VST work in RB.
Ralph at Rayzoon commented that PG's VST implementation must be incomplete if those functions don't work. The symptom is the drum track tempo starts to run away as soon as you hit play and whatever pattern that's supposed to play begins to randomize to the point it's just a mishmash in a few seconds.
I thought there was something wrong so I corresponded with Rayzoon's tech support who told me the problem was here so then I corresponded with PG's tech support. This was maybe three years ago. After a few days they emailed me to say this was more complex than they thought and would get back to me sometime later. It was about a month or so when they said nothing could be done at this time, sorry. I commented during this last beta that Peter said two years ago that he was aware of this problem and you guys were working on it. Not a peep since.
There's a lot of frustration about this because the Jamstix brain and sounds with some Real Tracks and/or some Biab midi tracks would be awesome, same with Steinberg's Virtual Guitarist. Now of course, the workaround is to use another DAW and D & D those tracks into it but that sure seems clunky considering virtually any DAW you've ever heard of except for PT/RB has no problem with this including several freebies like Savihost. You may recall that Mac passed on the last PT 12 beta test because of this issue. Real Band of course is an entirely different animal with a lot of very cool features in spite of this glaring problem.

Bob



What Bob says here - ditto.

However, let's start with something even much simpler. How about using a delay that locks to tempo of the song? My favorite delay for 'composition' purposes, as well as it's excellent analog tape delay emulation, is a freeware called 'bionic delay' Don't let the 'freeware' title fool you - I learned that lesson long ago. It doesn't even have time controls, delay functions are purely note values. You simply lock it to repeat how often on a note value basis with a radio button and voila - no calculations necessary. Nearly all my mod effects that I use work this way. The classic series from Kjaerhus, etc. Link to bionic delay: http://www.interruptor.ch/vst_overview.shtml

Link to Kjaerjus' classic series delay: http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/classic-delay.php

Once you work this way - by note value link to host tempo, you will not go back to calculating these out on a calculator and entering ms values. I'm an engineer, I like calculating things, but only when necessary to do a better job. In this case, there's no advantage calculating manually when tools are available to do that work for you and allow you to think musically rather than computationally right out of the box.

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