Anybody using Steinbergs V-Stack?

[Jan Folkson]

Looks like I need it or something like it to run VSTi's on my XP system. Good news bad news or alternatives appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[RABid]

I have looked at this. Unless you are using the Steinberg link system between the two PC's there are some features missing. I use Sonar II and the connection between the PC's would be through MIDI so I backed out. Now I am considering Chainer or EnergyXT.

 

Robert

[burningbusch]

I'm using it and I think it's absolutely terrific. My setup is Protools TDM on the Mac with a PC for Giga/soft synths. The PC sound card is a MOTU PCI-324 (1224) digitally connected to PT. MIDI comes from a Lynx One card.

 

First, it's one of the few products that I've found that lets you set up the various soft synths on a specific MIDI input channel. In the song that I'm currently working on I have:

 

- Kontakt [omni] (internally set to channels 1, 5, 7)

- Culture [ch. 2]

- Atmosphere 1 [ch. 3]

- Plugsound [ch. 4]

- Atmosphere 2 [ch. 6]

 

On my 1.8GHz P4 this consumes up to 50% CPU. The Bardstown Bose is in Kontakt on ch. 1 using streaming. All of this works flawlessly. I've NEVER had V-stack crash. The audio card is set to 256 samples, though with a better ASIO card I'm sure I could do better. I've tried other products but found them to be either unstable or incompatible with certain VSTis. If a VSTi can't run under V-Stack or Cubase, it really shouldn't be called a VST. I save the sessions within V-Stack and they load up exactly as I they were previously.

 

I am using it with the following products:

NI: Kontakt, Pro-53, B4, FM7, Battery

Spectrasonics: Atmosphere, Trilogy, Stylus

Plugsound: Plugsound Box

IK: Sample Tank/Sonic Synth

Edirol: Super Quartet

Yellow Tools: Culture

Steinberg: X-phraze, a-1

misc. other VSTis.

 

I have Halion 2 on order and expect it to replace Kontakt. It is supposed to be more transparent and I expect that it will translate Giga file better than Kontakt (which is nit and miss). I will still use Giga, but for working up song ideas it's great to have access to all the various VST soft synths.

 

Issues

Authorization: If you buy V-stack as a download you get one authorization. It is tied to the computer that you install it on. I recently tried to repartition my boot drive and though it seemed to go OK, XP wouldn't start afterwards. I reloaded XP and my aaplication software. The V-stack authorization survived all of this, but I don't know if it would have survived a format. If you buy the CD version of V-stack, I believe you might have more flexibility with authorization (though I don't know for a fact). The other side of it is, it's only $50.

 

Tempo: Some great VSTis, like the Wizoo Groove Agent, Virtual Guitarist, and even X-phraze really need a host which can supply tempo. V-stack does not supply it, nor does it send incoming MIDI timecode to the VSTi. So these VSTis are of little use. This is a big complaint and I believe Steinberg will address it in the future. As a side note, if you do want to use an occasional tempo based VSTi you could install the demo version of Cubase SX. This works just fine, but doesn't allow you to save. You also get the A1 synth, which is quite nice, for free.

 

Personally, I don't really care when the various soft synths are coming available on OSX. I don't plan on running them on the Mac. I've determined that, by far, the majority of my DAW computer problems have come from trying to do too many things on a single platform. PT6/OSX was crashing for me on a daily basis. I found that by not using the Spectrasonics/Plugsound soft synths I completely eliminated my crashing. Stuck notes, latency, crashing etc. just go away when you separate the DAW and the soft synths, at least that's what my experience has led me to conclude. Note: I'm not a "sample accurate" kind of guy. If a soft synth can provide performance on the level of a hardware module, I'm happy. And I'm very happy with V-Stack.

 

Busch.

[Geoff Grace]

Good answers so far.

 

Jan, for what it's worth V-Stack, and Culture for that matter, are both reviewed in the current (July 2003) issue of Keyboard magazine.

 

I was also told by a Steinberg rep that a Mac version of V-Stack is in the works, in case that matters.

 

On a side note: Busch, I'm curious; could you tell us what if anything you were charged to crossgrade your VSTis from Mac to PC? Thanks.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Magpel]

I'm a huge fan of Chainer. I recommend you take a look at it before deciding.

[progfusion74]

Take a look at Chainer or EnergyXT (standalone for this is in beta). Console is a Japanese host that I am not too familiar with, but has been favorably compared to Chainer.

 

prog

[daBowsa]

I third chainer and also suggest AudioMulch . These are PC programs available for download, are you using a Mac?

[Jan Folkson]

This is for my XP system. I tried the demo of chainer yesterday and it instantly crashed my machine as soon as I chose my Dakota card for sound output.

 

I use my PC exclusively for soft synths and I bought Culture not realizing that it didn't have a stand alone app. So now I've gotta get a VSTi host app.

 

Geoff, I did see the review, but I just wanted some additional opinions and options.

 

Thanks all.

[progfusion74]

As a standalone system, Chainer is probably the best thing going. I am suprised about the crash, since I have not had one in 6+ months.

 

Anyone else using it with xp?

[Magpel]

Wow. Chainer has performed flawlessly for me, the only VSTi host to do so. But then I'm running Win98se on my softsynth machine so our setups are not really comparable.

[burningbusch]

I did get Chainer to load. Somethings are neat, like the ability to place multiple VSTis on a single channel. Layering looks easy. I can understand from its feature set why it would be attractive to many people.

 

Didn't really like the interface. To me the standard mixer model is easier to deal with, YMMV. It wouldn't load the Cubase SX VSTs/VSTis, while V-Stack does it fine. Also, when you set a channel to all (omni), it always responds. This is different than in V-stack where if you set a channel to omni, you can then set the VSTi to multiple channels if it supports it. This is how I use Kontakt/Halion. Different samples are set to different channels running under one instance of the sampler. To do this in Chainer you would have to run multiple instances of the sampler. It appears you can only set one stereo output in Chainer, while V-stacks supports all the outputs of the ASIO sound card you have installed as well as multiple MIDI ports/cards. The Tempo feature is nice start, but I really need it to sync to incoming MIDI clock from Protools in order for it to be useful. I quess finally for me this is becoming a pretty damn important application in my setup. I run it essentially all day long and it's running in the background while I'm doing other things. V-stack just comes off as a more professional app, more mature.

 

I read the Keyboard review of V-stack and thought it was a bit unfair in that the reviewer blamed V-stack for the poor performance of certain soundcards. Poorly written ASIO drivers are not V-stacks fault. IMHO, both Culture and V-Stack (at $50, gee wiz) are Key Buys.

 

Geoff, I was going to respond to your other thread but I'll just do it here. Don't know about running VSTi hosts on the Mac with Rewire. I plan on just sticking with Reason and maybe Live. I think the Reason-Protools connection should be well tested and supported. I heard that the synths within Reason will be available individually within PT. That could be really cool. V-stack on the Mac would be terrific. There are a lot of people with ibooks/powerbooks which could be utilized very effectively as soft synth engines. This shouldn't be a big port for Steinberg as V is essentially a scaled down version of SX.

 

As far as cross platform is concerned, the only additional charge I can ever remember incurring was with FM7 which came out on one platform first, then I had to pay ~$20 for the crossplatform CD. Otherwise it has been a non-issue. I think they all support providing you with licenses for both of your systems, under the notion that you will not be running them simultaneously. So all of my soft synths that can run on both platforms are installed and licensed on both, eventhough I tend to run them on the PC.

 

Jan, did you have specific questions regarding V-stack? I recommend that you download the Cubase SX demo. This will give you a basic feel for how things work in V-Stack. If Cubase SX runs solidly on your system, V-stack should as well. Cubase SX does not support setting up VSTis on different MIDI input channels which is key.

 

Busch.

[Geoff Grace]

Busch, thanks for the info. I appreciate it!

 

Jan, I'm glad you asked for additional opinions and options. This thread has been helpful for me as well. Thanks all.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Magpel]

Well, I hadn't heard of Culture until this thread. Now I'm very interested. Any user reviews?

[Jan Folkson]

I've got Culture installed, I just can't use it yet. As soon as I do, I'll let you guys know.

 

I'm not really sure what's up with Chainer. The demo just didn't work. I wonder if it's an incompatability with the Dakota card

[Magpel]

Jan, if you haven't been there already, KvR is the big (and bustling) repository of information on all things VST. They have quick links to all known synths and hosts, and then of course lots of user reviews and discussion.

 

Who knows? Maybe the "SVH" or whatever it is called (a free and simple host from one of the smaller VST synth developers) will work for you. All I wanted was something stable, easy to use, and without all the sequencer baggage I don't need. Chainer fit the bill perfectly.

[RABid]

Originally posted by Magpel:

Well, I hadn't heard of Culture until this thread. Now I'm very interested. Any user reviews?

There was a lot of talk about it on KvR but no user reviews yet. Only threads a few months ago. One of the mags just did a review on it but I don't remember which.

 

Robert

[Magpel]

Here\'s a review of Culture from AudioMidi.com.

 

Incidentally, I like AudioMidi's reviews, even though the implicit intent is clearly, um, commercial, the reviews are pretty infromative.

[RABid]

Now that I rebuilt my second machine I will start using chainer whenever GigaStudio is not running. V-Stack is out of the question for me because the like of midi timing.

 

Robert

[burningbusch]

Robert, how do you interface with the second machine that's different when using Chainer vs. V-stack? I don't understand the difference.

 

Busch.

[RABid]

The difference to me is the ommission of MIDI tempo in V-Stack. I view that as criticle. Otherwise, I would not have a preferrence.

 

Robert

[Jan Folkson]

Ok, so chainer doesn't like the Dakota card as soon as I set it as the audio device my machine goes down faster than a $7 hooker.

 

I can set chainer to use ASIO but the buffer won't go below 512 samples making it useless for music.

 

As Mr. Busch suggested, I did download the Cubase SX demo and that ran everything just fine, so I'm assuming that V Stack will do it for me. I'm not using anything on my PC that needs midi clock, I could just run that stuff off one of my macs.

 

So I played around with Culture today and I've gotta say that I'm really impressed. Craig's review was right on the money. The sounds are great and they're laid out in a really musical way. For $300 it's a no brainer!

[burningbusch]

A small update on what I posted. Halion 2 isn't panning out as expected. It seems to have a considerably higher CPU hit than Kontakt with the same libraries. For the most part it does translate Giga better, but I've run into issues in that department as well. CDxtract is proving to be the best approach all around. It translates things into Kontakt that the Kontakt import utility butchers.

 

Rewire is amazingly solid with PT 6.0. I've been running it non-stop, Reason-PT, for the last two days and haven't seen even the hint of a glitch. One of the best implementations available.

 

Busch.