Question for Reaper MIDI Users

[Paul[_13_]]

I've downloaded it, and was able to MIDI trigger CVPiano
as a VST, and it sounds pretty good, although just like
Cubase LE4, it begins to digitally skip when I keep the sustain
pedal down, and exceed a certain number of voices. However,
I haven't yet turned off the reverb, or tried other ways to
reduce CPU usage, so it may not be that bad.

But the main thing, is that although I can trigger and
monitor CVPiano real-time, when I finish recording, the
track file has "OFFLINE" written over it, instead of my
MIDI notes, and when I try to play the file, there's
nothing. I'm also not able to see the notes in the MIDI
editor. I also tried "RECORD OUTPUT", which records the
VST output as a wav file, and I was able to see the audio
waveform. But when I finished recording, it gave me "error
opening recorded media".

?

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Paul wrote:
>
> I've downloaded it, and was able to MIDI trigger CVPiano
> as a VST, and it sounds pretty good, although just like
> Cubase LE4, it begins to digitally skip when I keep the sustain
> pedal down, and exceed a certain number of voices. However,
> I haven't yet turned off the reverb, or tried other ways to
> reduce CPU usage, so it may not be that bad.
>
> But the main thing, is that although I can trigger and
> monitor CVPiano real-time, when I finish recording, the
> track file has "OFFLINE" written over it, instead of my
> MIDI notes, and when I try to play the file, there's
> nothing. I'm also not able to see the notes in the MIDI
> editor. I also tried "RECORD OUTPUT", which records the
> VST output as a wav file, and I was able to see the audio
> waveform. But when I finished recording, it gave me "error
> opening recorded media".
>
> ?


I think maybe yer box is hainted. Maybe take up mandolin?

:) ( I keed ). But really... run a good malware
and virus scan. Maybe even rebuild it....

I've only demoed Reaper and have not fully embraced it, but
*every* single time I hooked up a VST MIDI doohickey ( read: SFZ )
it sailed smoothly and without incident. When you talk about the sustain
pedal - are you trying to use the thing as a sound module?

Yeah, I would not do that with any VST. Google "Alesis QSR Craigslist",
peel off a Benjamin and use that for real-time piano. Use plugins for
rendering tracks. I can't stress this enough.

Not only that, but the CPU usage was never more than 20%, no matter
what plugs and such I used. This on a 3.0GHz XP box from the old
days. Maybe CVPiano is not a good plug. Render the piano track as
a .wav and try that.

Finally, the guy behind Reaper is not doing this to make
his fortune - he's already *made* his fortune ( on Winamp ) and
it has a very lively support infrastructure. They're extremely
nice and straightforward, and I bet they'd find that configuration
highly interesting as a test case. I straight-up told 'em about
my problem ( event rate for driving a Fostex VF16 chasing MTC
was inadequate to keep said VF16 from kicking out of sync ) and said
"nossir, it won't work for that." No fuss, no games, just
information. Almost without a doubt the best support
experience ever.

Not to discourage the Usenet traffic, but I betcha you will
learn a lot from the good folks over there. If that doesn't
work for you, try the Sonar demo - it has lots of fancy plugin
management and diagnostics.

I have resisted the temptation to try CVPiano. Sounds like I
will continue that policy.

--
Les Cargill

[Paul[_13_]]

On 8/8/2011 7:25 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
> Paul wrote:
>>
>> I've downloaded it, and was able to MIDI trigger CVPiano
>> as a VST, and it sounds pretty good, although just like
>> Cubase LE4, it begins to digitally skip when I keep the sustain
>> pedal down, and exceed a certain number of voices. However,
>> I haven't yet turned off the reverb, or tried other ways to
>> reduce CPU usage, so it may not be that bad.
>>
>> But the main thing, is that although I can trigger and
>> monitor CVPiano real-time, when I finish recording, the
>> track file has "OFFLINE" written over it, instead of my
>> MIDI notes, and when I try to play the file, there's
>> nothing. I'm also not able to see the notes in the MIDI
>> editor. I also tried "RECORD OUTPUT", which records the
>> VST output as a wav file, and I was able to see the audio
>> waveform. But when I finished recording, it gave me "error
>> opening recorded media".
>>
>> ?
>
>
> I think maybe yer box is hainted. Maybe take up mandolin?
>
> :) ( I keed ). But really... run a good malware
> and virus scan. Maybe even rebuild it....
>
> I've only demoed Reaper and have not fully embraced it, but
> *every* single time I hooked up a VST MIDI doohickey ( read: SFZ )
> it sailed smoothly and without incident. When you talk about the sustain
> pedal - are you trying to use the thing as a sound module?
>

Of course not, because the lag is waay too much for me.


> Yeah, I would not do that with any VST. Google "Alesis QSR Craigslist",
> peel off a Benjamin and use that for real-time piano. Use plugins for
> rendering tracks. I can't stress this enough.
>
> Not only that, but the CPU usage was never more than 20%, no matter
> what plugs and such I used. This on a 3.0GHz XP box from the old
> days. Maybe CVPiano is not a good plug. Render the piano track as
> a .wav and try that.
>

Yeah, there's something weird with my system. I
know I currently cannot defrag my drives (it says I need to
CHKDSK), so I know something is wrong, but as you know, it's
a pain in the ass to re-format and re-install Windows (and
most everything else).

I've got a Pentium 4, 3.0GHz, 2.5Gigs RAM, so I don't
think it's a hardware issue.

Yes, "Record Output" is supposed to record the VST output
as an audio file, but it still doesn't work...I'll play with
it more.



> Finally, the guy behind Reaper is not doing this to make
> his fortune - he's already *made* his fortune ( on Winamp ) and
> it has a very lively support infrastructure. They're extremely
> nice and straightforward, and I bet they'd find that configuration
> highly interesting as a test case. I straight-up told 'em about
> my problem ( event rate for driving a Fostex VF16 chasing MTC
> was inadequate to keep said VF16 from kicking out of sync ) and said
> "nossir, it won't work for that." No fuss, no games, just
> information. Almost without a doubt the best support
> experience ever.
>
> Not to discourage the Usenet traffic, but I betcha you will
> learn a lot from the good folks over there. If that doesn't
> work for you, try the Sonar demo - it has lots of fancy plugin
> management and diagnostics.
>
> I have resisted the temptation to try CVPiano. Sounds like I
> will continue that policy.
>

It sounds pretty damn good, especially for free. Many
folks feels it's the best free piano VST.

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Paul wrote:
> On 8/8/2011 7:25 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

>>
>
> It sounds pretty damn good, especially for free. Many
> folks feels it's the best free piano VST.


I mean absolutely no offense, but it sounds to me like it
is beating you like a rented mule.

--
Les Cargill

[Paul[_13_]]

On 8/8/2011 9:26 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
> Paul wrote:
>> On 8/8/2011 7:25 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
>
>>>
>>
>> It sounds pretty damn good, especially for free. Many
>> folks feels it's the best free piano VST.
>
>
> I mean absolutely no offense, but it sounds to me like it
> is beating you like a rented mule.
>
> --
> Les Cargill
>

I'd like to see how it treats you....

I need to play around with it more....

[Paul[_13_]]

On 8/8/2011 10:58 PM, Paul wrote:
> On 8/8/2011 9:26 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
>> Paul wrote:
>>> On 8/8/2011 7:25 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> It sounds pretty damn good, especially for free. Many
>>> folks feels it's the best free piano VST.
>>
>>
>> I mean absolutely no offense, but it sounds to me like it
>> is beating you like a rented mule.
>>
>> --
>> Les Cargill
>>
>
> I'd like to see how it treats you....
>
> I need to play around with it more....


Ok, I've re-downloaded Reaper onto my C drive, and
saving projects on another separate drive, and it works now.
Other people had the same problem, and apparently it's
problematic to save your audio files to the same partition
as the application.

CVPiano sounds decent on MIDI playback, but still skips
when I get close or beyond the maximum voice # of 60.

I'll bet it'll work better on dual or triple core...shopping
time!

[Sean Conolly]

"Paul" > wrote in message
...
> Ok, I've re-downloaded Reaper onto my C drive, and
> saving projects on another separate drive, and it works now.
> Other people had the same problem, and apparently it's
> problematic to save your audio files to the same partition
> as the application.

Odd, I've never had that problem on three or four different systems wuth
Reaper. But if it works, it works!

> CVPiano sounds decent on MIDI playback, but still skips
> when I get close or beyond the maximum voice # of 60.
>
> I'll bet it'll work better on dual or triple core...shopping
> time!

Is it a multi-thread plugin? Most aren't, and will not perform any better. A
dual core works great just to keep the OS clear of the recording app. I
thought there's an option in Reaper to run your plugins on one core or all
cores, though I can't seem to find it now.

Sean

[Paul[_13_]]

On 8/9/2011 9:02 PM, Sean Conolly wrote:
> > wrote in message
> ...
>> Ok, I've re-downloaded Reaper onto my C drive, and
>> saving projects on another separate drive, and it works now.
>> Other people had the same problem, and apparently it's
>> problematic to save your audio files to the same partition
>> as the application.
>
> Odd, I've never had that problem on three or four different systems wuth
> Reaper. But if it works, it works!
>
>> CVPiano sounds decent on MIDI playback, but still skips
>> when I get close or beyond the maximum voice # of 60.
>>
>> I'll bet it'll work better on dual or triple core...shopping
>> time!
>
> Is it a multi-thread plugin? Most aren't, and will not perform any better. A
> dual core works great just to keep the OS clear of the recording app. I
> thought there's an option in Reaper to run your plugins on one core or all
> cores, though I can't seem to find it now.
>

I'm not sure if CVPiano is multi-thread, but Reaper definitely has
a place where you can choose how many cores you have.

The reaper site mentioned that one way to help with digital
skipping was to defrag your drives. My windows xp is screwed up,
and won't defrag. I'm gonna look at some dual or triple cores
anyways....

[Sean Conolly]

"Paul" > wrote in message
...
> The reaper site mentioned that one way to help with digital
> skipping was to defrag your drives. My windows xp is screwed up,
> and won't defrag. I'm gonna look at some dual or triple cores
> anyways....

Yes, defragging can help, but sometimes a faster drive makes all the
difference too. For my old laptop I picked up an external USB2 drive and I
was astonished to find that it was about five times gaster than using the
internal drive.

I'll also recommend the Intel Core 2 Duo E4700 as a powerful and very cost
effective dual core CPU. Not relly a gaming CPU but plenty powerful enough
for DAW work, IMHO.

Sean

[Paul[_13_]]

On 8/11/2011 6:03 AM, Sean Conolly wrote:
> > wrote in message
> ...
>> The reaper site mentioned that one way to help with digital
>> skipping was to defrag your drives. My windows xp is screwed up,
>> and won't defrag. I'm gonna look at some dual or triple cores
>> anyways....
>
> Yes, defragging can help, but sometimes a faster drive makes all the
> difference too. For my old laptop I picked up an external USB2 drive and I
> was astonished to find that it was about five times gaster than using the
> internal drive.
>

Perhaps I'll try saving a project to my external USB2 drive,
and see if things get smoother....


> I'll also recommend the Intel Core 2 Duo E4700 as a powerful and very cost
> effective dual core CPU. Not relly a gaming CPU but plenty powerful enough
> for DAW work, IMHO.
>
> Sean
>
>

[Trevor]

"Sean Conolly" > wrote in message
...
> Yes, defragging can help, but sometimes a faster drive makes all the
> difference too. For my old laptop I picked up an external USB2 drive and I
> was astonished to find that it was about five times gaster than using the
> internal drive.

You were right to be astonished, something is seriously wrong with the
internal drive if a USB2 drive is anywhere near as fast, let alone 5 times
faster! Even the slowest internal drives should outperform a USB2
connection. Check the drive for problems and file system errors, or simply
replace the internal drive with a new one.

Trevor.

[Sean Conolly]

"Trevor" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Sean Conolly" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Yes, defragging can help, but sometimes a faster drive makes all the
>> difference too. For my old laptop I picked up an external USB2 drive and
>> I was astonished to find that it was about five times gaster than using
>> the internal drive.
>
> You were right to be astonished, something is seriously wrong with the
> internal drive if a USB2 drive is anywhere near as fast, let alone 5 times
> faster! Even the slowest internal drives should outperform a USB2
> connection. Check the drive for problems and file system errors, or simply
> replace the internal drive with a new one.

It was an old laptop ('04), and yes the internal drive really was that slow.
I suspect that HP had things throttled down to conserve power, also. On the
network it was faster to use an exported drive off my desktop, over a 100mb
connection!

It's been replaced with a much better laptop, but I'm out of the location
recording business (well, hobby really) till I get a better interface.

Sean