VST Connect & VST Connect SE - Solution Thread

I have used with any sound card on my Mac: build-in (normal and optical), Saffire, Blackmagic.

You need minimum Windows 7 or 10.7 on mac.

Where is this stated by Steinberg, that Windows 7 is necessary to run either the performer side or the engineer side? I can’t find it in the manual or on the website or forum other than your post. I have a friend running Windows 7 very successfully on XP Pro x64 and he wants to run it on that system.

Thanks,
Paul



@musicullum; Great feedback on this thread, hope you remain a regular and good to know LAN and Midi are functions that already exist and due to be enabled. Great tool with uses beyond those advertised.

@Helge; A proposed update, functionality roadmap would be useful. A hint at some point in the distant future is hardly worth mentioning if unaccompanied by detail. Cubase isn’t a toy for most of us and a heads up on what’s coming (functionally speaking) etc helps us plan. Keep up the great work.

Hi, old time Cubase user here, Seven is a great tool indeed but Vst Connect (sorry Steinberg) is poorly supported, the pdf manual scratches only the surface of this tool and I will not buy an upgraded version in the future until this version will not make the job as promised. To cut a long story short, in our studio we are unable to connect performer and studio. And, yes, we did the port forwarding stuff, and on both sides of the connection we do have a fast wired dsl and two Windows 8 64 bit pc’s. Each time we try to estabilish the connection the “sorry” no answer from the server message pops up at the same time on both computers screen. Do you guys here have any clue?
Cheers :angry:

Yesterady, a new update of Cubase 7 has been released (7.02) which comes with new versions of all VST Connect SE components. Did you try it? There were quite some improvements reg. connectivity. If you still have problems pls feel free to write me a PM, so we can work it out.

[/quote] Yesterady, a new update of Cubase 7 has been released (7.02) which comes with new versions of all VST Connect SE components. Did you try it? There were quite some improvements reg. connectivity. If you still have problems pls feel free to write me a PM, so we can work it out.[/quote]
Yes! And thank you for your support
Today, with the same firewall-router settings, the connection is working, fast & reliable
:sunglasses:

I tried the new version yesterday and it worked more or less flawless at the highest video and audio settings. Good work! :slight_smile:

Some thoughts, I understand the need for synchronized recording but I think it’s equally important to be able to play music and be able to play or sing along with it, to show the singer how he or she should sing. It’s not possible right now. Being able to talk freely with the talent is as important as the recording itself.
Cutting the talkback communication is also annoying when working online. I understand that potential problems could arise if the control room playback is sent back to the talent during recording, but due to the fact that latency is a part of the work process both parties need to be on headphones anyway, thous no problem if the producer wants to coach the talent during recording or rehearsal. The talent will only hear his or her voice and the music, and hopefully the producer as well in a future update.
Everytime the audio cuts and the communication goes away both parties are made aware of the fact that they are working by remote (potentially killing some of the mood of creating music). Vocal talents can be delicate butterflies…

So, please consider enabling the possibility to playback the Cubase project without cutting communication, even if it means that the sync isn’t perfect. And the choice of sending producer/engineer talkback during recording (user enabled or disabled).

And maybe extra play functions: play with low latency (producer/engineer singing in sync with the music played, sync play (buffered playback and vocal talent in sync with the music), sync rec (like it is now with talent in sync).


Cheers
Fred

You can override talkback cut during playback by simply engaging it (click the talkback enable button while it is playing). Admittedly that is a bit stressing if you want to do it all the time as you have to click it every time after playback is started. We’ll add a preference for that.
As for your final thoughts I don’t quite get what you want…you can record yourself along with the performer (but he can’t hear you in sync), and “low latency” jamming is quite a different beast. There are some tools that try to acheive this with more or less success; VST Connect explicitly does not try to acheive it because that requires a massive amount of development while still beeing impossible to get, except when the participiants are close enough and have a very good connection - speed of light alone takes over 60 ms from Europe to Australia, and during many tests we have rarely come across an internet connection with constantly low latency below 25 ms which most musicians render useless. You can do loop jamming like in the old ResRocket days though, but again VST Connect is dedicated to sample accurate (“no latency”) recording in one direction.
Thanks for the input!

Vst connect works fine with me. We are having sync problems. Seems the performer’s track is about a quarter second behind the backing track. We just lined it up after recording though. It may be because I am on wireless. Gonna run a cat 5 cable this weekend to see if it fixes that problem.

Most enlightening, thanks!

Hi Musi

Thanks for the reply!

Perfect! Good to know! That will solve the talkback problem. In my opinion talkback should never be cut during a recording session - “open communication” is vital during a recording session in my humble opinion.

That’s what I mean. If there was a play option available that lets me as the producer sing along to the music and send it in sync to the vocal talent, it would make collaboration easier. Then I would be able to sing along with the music and show how the melody should be sung and such. It’s a vital part of recording. Now I have to record the guide melody and play it along with the music, which is okay. But in the heat of the moment it would be great to have the possibility to sing along with the music without having to record it first.
If you don’t add that feature I will be forced to play the music from another program, send the audio into Cubase and sing along with it - which would be unnecessary extra work. Maybe I can put the different song parts mixed down on GrooveAgentONE pads and hit them accordingly… LOL!

I hear you. Low latency jamming is probably only possible on very stable fiber connections. Yamaha Netduetto comes to mind.
Still any effort to ease the strain of working with latency should be examined and evaluated, because online collaboration is of course not just about recording a signal in perfect sync - communication and workflow plays equally large roles. There is a bit of a learning curve getting into online collaboration, with port-forwarding in the vocal talents router being the first obstacle to tackle. However, once the port is set and people understand how useful the system can be, I’m sure they will accept the somewhat different workflow.


Cheers
Fred

Seems like releasing a product - the “SE” version, without telling folks it’s crippled in the first place everyone will test it is pretty poor planning.

The 1st thing anyone is going to do the moment this is released is exactly what I did.

Fire up my main Cubase PC, get it set up, and then grab a laptop with a dinky USB ASIO interface and give it a shot.

Of course it failed, as you told no one in the first place this wouldn’t work. You opened yourself up for a flood of negative feedback.

So when is the full “VST Connect” version coming out?

Peace

Michael

Good point…we might have a “rehearse” button which keeps it in “chat mode” even when playback is engaged.

With the new version, port forwarding should not be necessary anymore in most cases, most connections should work right away.

Perfect! Rehearse and chat mode sounds like the kind of functions that will get the creativity flowing. :smiley:

Of course there will be times when the producer presses the wrong button and the talent starts singing out of sync, but it’s better than not having the possibility to “rehearse” and when record is engaged Cubase should automatically switch into proper sync mode.

How about I accidentally engage play in “rehearse”-mode, the talent starts singing out of sync and I just disengage the [Rehearse]-button and suddenly get the talent singing in sync without disturbing the playback to the talent. He och she will never know the difference, that would be perfect.

So please add a “Rehearse” button in chat mode enabling the playback along with low-latency chatting and producer singing. :smiley:

I’ll send you a virtual beer, mate!

Perfect! I mean Skype can tunnel through pretty much any intranet without loosing contact.

Thanks for considering my proposals. VST Connect is going to be a killer Cubase feature once it all works. This along with the new Chord Track are the best things Steinberg has come up with since the introduction of the VST plug-in.


Cheers
Fred

Ah, cheater :slight_smile:
No, that would of course not work: in chat/play mode, delay compensation would have to be switched off, and changing any plugin compensation delay involves stopping Cubase/Nuendo.
Otherwise we’d have jamming in perfect sync, which isn’t possible over WAN.

Most likely you didn’t put the “VST connect cue mix” plugin in a group channel .
First you have to create a group channel labelled “playback” in which you route all your playback, then from this group channel , you make a “send” to another group channel labelled “to performer” in which you insert the vst connect cue mix plugin.
It looks a little bit complicated but from what I understood, create a playback group channel and SEND the audio ( not route the output ) from it to another group channel is necessary to make the delay compensation work properly and have everything synced.

Hopefully some of you who have got this working can help me out here.

I am using the included template as a starting point. So I open the main vstconnect window, and my performer runs the stand alone at his and, and connects.

Video works, we can both see each other, he can hear the music mix I am playing at my end, and he can also hear me talk into the mic at my end.

but…I can hear or record him.

At first I thought it was because his inputs were set incorrectly. So I remote desktoped to his pc to check all was fine…and it seems to be.
He has a mixer connected to the line-in on his oundcard, and the mic is connected to his mixer. He can hear himself in his speakers ok, and when we do a local record at his end, it records fine (so his inputs are set up ok)

It just in VST Connect, I get nothing of him (other than video) at my end.
If I look at the config page, everything looks fine there.

Anyone point me in the right direction here?

You don’t need a secondary Group Channel. Create just one, put the VST Connect SE Cuemix plug in there and use sends to transmit whatever the Performer wants to hear to that channel. It’s simple: the cuemix plugin sends whatever it gets to the Performer. You (engineer) don’t want to hear this yourself, so lower the volume of this one Group Channel to zero but don’t mute it. It may also be vital that this Group Channel is sending to the Cubase Master output even though the engineer doesn’t listen to it because of the way delay compensation works.

When the Performer can hear himself thru VST Connect SE Performer (meters move when he speaks? Is it louder for the performer when he raises the Mic Volume fader to the left?), all should be well. Are you sure you have a track set to monitor on your end?
We did have a case where the audio stream just wouldn’t work (fixed in a future version). The workaround is to change the Performers’ audio upstream rate after the connection is established, so give that a try. You can drop me a PM if the problem persists.