BBC Symphony Orchestra & Vienna Ensemble Pro (VEP) HOW TO SET UP PLEASE

JimmyD

Hi

I just bought the BBC Symphony Orchestra Professional and downloaded the Template for "Protools". I opened up and although still downloading the files (another 12 hours because of my poor speed of connection here in the Philippines), all looks good.

My question is that I will use VEP on a separate computer to supply the samples to my main computer, I am not sure how to set up now.?

I will have the samples folder on a SSD supplying my slave PC, on the slave PC is Vienna Ensemble Pro and I have Spitfire downloader as I have a few LAB products there.

How to set up Protools.?, will I have to replace every BBC Plugin with a VEP Instance on every channel and have an instance of every BBC Plugin as an instance in VEP on the slave PC?

Thanks for any advice

Jim D

Luke Wood

How to set up Protools.?, will I have to replace every BBC Plugin with a VEP Instance on every channel and have an instance of every BBC Plugin as an instance in VEP on the slave PC?

There are different ways to set up the instruments and route them between VEP and PT, so it's worth having a bit of a think about how you'd like to run your template. I wanted to keep as much control in Pro Tools as possible with VEP just hosting the library and doing any initial volume balancing, so I went for a VEP Server instance for each section of BBCSO (Strings/Brass/Winds/Percussion) with 3 channels for every instrument section (longs, shorts, legato) all feeding into corresponding instrument tracks in Pro Tools. The MIDI output from each instrument track gets routed to a channel in VEP with an instrument section loaded, and then the audio output of that channel gets routed back into the input section of the instrument channel in PT.

There's no need to have an instance of VEP on every track in Pro Tools though as the plug-in has multiple channels available and every instrument within an instance can be routed to seperate outputs. Once you've got a single instance loaded onto a track in Pro Tools then all of the inputs/outputs for that instance become available in your drop down routing menus on each Pro Tools channel. Simply click on the input/output box, and the drop down menu will give you an option of "interface", "bus" or "plug-in", under the "plug-in" menu your VEP instances show up and you can route to/from any of the channels within that instance. There's an option in the settings of VEP to select how many channels you want available.

Getting it set up can be a fairly long job depending on how complex you want your template to be, but it's well worth the effort.

JimmyD

Thank you Luke, this is very helpful for me and I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience

Regards

Jim Donnachie

jerry_hammack

HI Luke - thanks for the information. A few things I'm not clear on with VEP as I'm considering it for my setup. If you don't mind the questions? If you do, of course, you don't have to answer! Thank you regardless for the above.

First as to the instances of VEP. Would you have an instance that was, for example 'woodwinds' and then within that single instance, host ALL the instruments and articulations available in BBC Pro? And then replicate that for each of the choirs? So when you are running the session in Pro Tools, you would have instances in VEP open for woodwinds, horns, percussion and strings?

Then as to any changes in the specific instrument. Let's say I want to adjust the mic positions on a violin. Would I perform that change in VEP's interface or Pro Tools?

Lastly, if the changes I made to the violin are only specific to the Pro Tools session I am on (Song 1), and I close the session to open another (with VEP running the whole time) (Song 2), do I have to do anything special to save the information about the mics in Song 1 with the Pro Tools session? This would of course relate to any modifications I made on any plugin. Just wondering if there's a risk of losing that work.

Anything you can clarify is very much appreciated!

Cheers!