I will start with my big issue here of trying to get multiple computers to send and receive MIDI and Audio over a Local Area Network using Studio One as the first DAW tested.
Here is the big technical wall to climb which resulted in success but still working on getting Studio One to Filter MIDI channels instead of using one port for one channel as each port should be capable of 16 channels but so far no luck… I will keep trying but here is some great tech advice on a MIDIOverLAN MOLCP IPMIDI Alternative. Mac and Windows can both be used. Here is my original post made at Presonus while test driving their Studio One.
MIDI Channels how to filter out all other MIDI channels but one & send from one LAN computer to a second???? Still working on the channel part but the below info will explain how to send multiple streams of MIDI and AUDIO over LAN quite successfully.
So here is the situation.
Computer one with Studio One 3.0.2 Sends MIDI to computer 2 also with Studio One 3.0.2 over LAN using rtpMIDI.
Computer one has USB keyboard playing into an empty instrument track. This track is set to receive MIDI from USB keyboard and the instrument output is MIDI going out over the LAN using rtpMIDI to computer 2.
Computer 2 receives the MIDI by way of rtpMIDI over LAN and the MIDI is received at a VSTi Instrument track say the ImpOSCar synth.
The keyboard played on computer one successfully sends MIDI over LAN and is received at computer 2 where the VST Synth is now heard to play.
Here now is the problem. It is desired to be able to send multiple MIDI streams from one computer to another… Say computer one sending MIDI information to a synth on computer two over MIDI channel 1 and computer 1 sending a piano track of MIDI over LAN to computer 2 on MIDI channel 2 while computer two hears only MIDI channel one for the synth and only MIDI channel 2 for the piano.
In the setup in Studio One options the split channels have been selected and the relative MIDI channel is only selected but the VST instruments on computer two hear all MIDI as if they were listening in OMNI MODE.
How does one go about finding a vst MIDI filter that will only allow one MIDI channel through to the VST instrument on computer 2 and only allow computer one to send on one MIDI channel so there is MIDI channel separation.
I was thinking of using Multi-Instrum,ent and placing a MIDI channel filter above a VST instrument but cannot figure out how to do that as placing a filter and then an instrument into the Multi-Instrument places each instance side by side and not the MIDI filter over the Instrument allowing first the MIDI signal to be filtered before reaching the instrument.
does anyone have any idea if there is a simple or even complicated wayto send MIDI over LAN and keep the MIDI channels separate so each instrument only plays the track intended for it?
Funny how no one has the answer… Lucky for me I am a bulldog and can’t sleep very well until I discover the answers. And have I discovered the absolute BEST! Answer! Are you ready for this!?
Follow me if you can as I will try my best to explain in words:
You have two computers on the same network preferably on a very fast network. Each computer has Studio One V3.0.2 installed and of course this is what it was tested on but newer versions will surely be available in time.
Now you also have installed on each machine rtpMIDI >http://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/rtpmidi.html Hopefully this will be a link for years to come but if not, hopefully I will have placed a copy on my gmail account to always find it. If you are reading this years later and can’t find it, hopefully I am not dead and you can contact me here.
There are two more pieces to the puzzle you will want. That is Wormhole2 and JBridge for at the present moment at these links Wormhole 2 >https://code.google.com/p/wormhole2/ and Jbridge >https://jstuff.wordpress.com/jbridge/ The first two are free and the second has a demo and will probably work as you only need to bridge one file anyway.
Now that we have the needed tools out of the way let’s look at the SOLUTION!
Running Studio One V3.0.2 32bit on both computers. Sure you can try 64bit but this was tested on 32bit as most plugins on 32 are numerous.
Wormhole 2 does not work in Studio One at this present writing so you need to use JBridger to convert the 32bit pklugin to 32 bit plugin and place the newly converted plugin with it’s new additional file into your VST plugins folder. Don’t ask me why you need to convert a 32bit plugin to 32bit again but this allows Studio One to see and use Wormhole2.
Both computers must have rtpMIDI installed as well.
Now for the FUN part!
rtpMIDI when opened has a window divided into sections. On the upper left is the “My Sessions” section and below that a + and – button. On the Mid left is the “Directory” Section and below that a + and – button and a “connect” button. On the lower left is the “Who may connect to me” section has a selectable wide button which should say “Anyone”. On the right is the “Session” section with 6 field areas and a checkbox. The order of the elements in the “session” section is first the checkbox “Enabled” and to it’s right a filed area labeled “Port” below those are two more fields one on top of the other, the first labeled “Local name” and just below that one labeled “Bonjour name” and then below those two an area labeled “Participants” then below that a button called “Disconnect” and below that a label “Address” and below address something I pay no attention to so same probably goes for you.
So there is the layout of rtpMIDI:
Here is where things are amazingly great!
In the “My Sessions” area you will click the + button and give this new session a name in the right section area where the field label says “Local name” In my case, I was using two Alienware computers… One named Alien1 and the Other named Alien 2. I am first working on the computer “Alien 1 in rtp configuration window. So after clicking the + button in the “My Sessions” section, the default session name is displayed in the “Sessions” section with a checkbox to it’s left and in the section to the right in the fields “Local name” and “Bonjour name”, that same default name appears… so in those two fields I change the label names both to “Alien1-1” and check the box labeled “Enable” Take note that in the “Port” field the port number 506 will be displayed.
Now let’s get redundant and start clicking the + button in the left section labeled “My Sessions” until you have a total of 16 new sessions created each with a checkbox to it’s left.
Just copy your steps from the first session you previously created and labeled.
Do this by clicking on each new session you just created and changing it’s name in the “Session” section. In my case I filled in the “Local name” and the “Bonjour name” with sequential names for each of the 16 new sessions and selected the enable button for each one after labeling them. So it looked like this…
Alien1-1
Alien1-2
Alien1-3
and so on until all 16 were labeled and enabled
I did the same on the second computer but had different names so it looked like this
Alien2-1
Alien2-2
Alien2-3
Very Important: In The rtpMIDI configuration panel you must select click to highlight one of your newly created sessions on your machine one rtpMIDI configuration panel and with the “My Sessions” window and viewing your newly created sessions below highlight one of them by clicking on it. Then go to the “Directory” section and click and highlight on one of the sessions in that directory that represents the computer two and once both are highlighted you are going to connect them so that they communicate with each other. Do this by clicking the connect button below the directory window.
When you start Studio One, you will want to go into the options menu “Studio One” > “Options” > “External Devices” > “Add” >”New Instrument” and label that instrument as “Alien1-1 and select the “Send To” as Alien1-1″ at least that is how I had them labeled and yours will of course have different names. I then selected MIDI channel 1 and clicked “OK. So this was done 16 times and each time incrementing that name by one higher number and also selecting the “Send To” by one higher session name from the previously setup rtpMIDI sessions.
On machine 2 I did the same except for the difference of creating new “Keyboards” in the “Add Device instead of “Instruments” each rtpMIDI session created shows up in the receive and send fields of the “Add Device” options area of Studio One.
I am sure I may have left out a few minor details but I am trying to give you the ability to create a massive sequencing music production farm where all MIDI and Audio signals travel on the network from the master computer to the other computers thus allowing sequencing on the main computer and all CPU hogging instruments to be used and connected on the other machines and all done with next to zero latency.
With both machines now on and the rtpMIDI setup, I fired up Studion One and on computer Alien1 created an instrument track with no instrument, had my USB music keyboard connected and selected as the MIDI input for that track and as the instrument I had selected one of the rtpMIDI session names. What this did on machine one was allow to you play notes on your musical keyboard into computer one’s instrument track which then sent the information to the second computer via rtpMIDI.
Machine two received this MIDI signal and with a new instrument created on machine 2 and an rtpMIDI keyboard being selected as the MIDI input source, and using the same rtpMIDI port number one machine one in this case “Alien1-1” and the same port number on machine two in this case “Alien2-1” and having connected the two with the connect buttons in the rtpMIDI control panel / configuration window, you now had the USB keyboard playing into machine one on an empty instrument track which sent it’s signal to machine two and was received on the new instrument track and was heard to play with next to 0 latency.
The reason for setting up so many sessions in rtpMIDI is to overcome the lack of MIDI channel separation when sending from one machine to another. You use each session as if it were a MIDI channel.
The only last part was to drop “Wormhole2” on the instrument track of machine two and drop wormhole2 on a stereo audio track of machine one and configure wormhole to send audio from machine two to machine one and the MAGIC was complete!
This allows an unlimited number of computers with an unlimited number of MIDI channels to be created in a most massive Production farm over known to man!!! Well… maybe not but it sounds fun to say.
[whohit]Music Production Tech Advice[/whohit]