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Re: thinking about moving from rack to laptop...advice please!



On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Jeff Larson <jeff.larson@sailpoint.com> 
wrote:
> I haven't had a chance to study this in detail but it appears that
> Mainstage requires that anything the plugin wants to have controlled by 
>the
> user has to be exposed as an AU parameter (or whatever the equivalent of 
>a
> VST parameter is in AU, I forget).  Beyond parameters there are 
>apparently
> "actions" as well; one-shot commands that don't have a range of
> values.
>
> It's more like VST parameter automation in a DAW, the plugin never
> gets MIDI directly.  This is kind of annoying for complex plugins
> (like say multi-track loopers) because you have to expose a bajillion
> AU parameters and actions to make the most of Mainstage.  This is all
> redundant if the plugin also needs to respond to MIDI for the
> "primitive" hosts like Bidule.


Hi guys,

I just have to comment here to set the record straight ;-)

Bidule uses a similar system as Mainstage. You can check it out in
Bidule by clicking at "Parameters". What you get then is a huge list
of all modules and plug-ins used in your session. Every module or
plug-in header can be opened to list its parameter and there may
indeed be thousands of parameters listed. But that's no problem since
they appear in alphabetical order. And you don't have to open up the
Parameters window to manually bind carriers and parameters together -
you can use the Click MIDI Learn" method, just as in Mainstage.

I must say that I'm finding the concept of sending external control
MIDI directly into a plug-in a bit tedious and time consuming in
Bidule. That is because you have to build the MIDI paths and include
MIDI event filtering that makes sure only the needed MIDI events get
through to the plug-in. If I was given the choice I would prefer the
parameter linking method.

But if talking Mobius in particular, this all doesn't apply since
Mobus AU doesn't yet declare its parameters to the host. So you have
to use the MIDI direct routing. And that's very easy to do: Just open
Mobius MIDI Device Selection window and set it to fetch MIDI directly
form a physical MIDI In port on your system. It doesn't harm OS X or
Mainstage if this happens to be a physical MIDI In port that also
Mainstage fetches MIDI input from.

Per