Hi! I appologize if this is already been addressed and I missed it.

When I bought VDL 2, I though that using the mod wheel to change things, like different mallets and rolls, was a great idea! Unfortuneately, the feature is nearly unuseable for me.

There is significant (well near an eight note @ 95bpm) delay between when VDL2 recieves a mod wheel change and when  it responds to it. The little mod wheel in the player does change when it recieves the command to. The player just responds late.

This delay means I have to initiate the modwheel change at least an eighth note early, and it is impossible to use in complex passages.

I am hosting it within Bidule on an AMD 64 3500+ box with a gig and a half of RAM. Soundcard is an Audiotrak Maya 7.1.

I don't think this is a latency on the MIDI line because I also use the Garritan Personal Orchestra, which is modwheel intensive, and it responds to modwheel commands in realtime on the same setup.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Hi there. Welcome!

Hmmm. You should see similar performance from GPO to VDL2 since they both use the same Kontakt Player engine. Since mod-wheel in VDL2 is generally used to change to a drastically new sound set (i.e regular notes to rolls, or rims to dreadlocks), the midi messages are such that they're more drastic (say, from value 1 to 120), rather than occuring gradually over time (as may be more the case in GPO when using it for expression).

I haven't encountered this problem though, but I do generally place these midi messages a shade before the note I'd like them to affect. An eighth note does seem a bit extreme though - shouldn't be the case. Out of curiosity, have you tried testing this while running VDL2 in standalone mode (not in Bidule)? If your results are better in that scenario, I'm wondering if there is some sort of extra lag being introduced by Bidule that might be tweaked with a buffer setting of some sort within that program.

For heavy lifting with several instruments loaded at once, I've been having good success loading VDL2 sounds directly into Kontakt 2 in stand-alone which should also be able to load your GPO sounds (though I've heard there are a few glitches with how K2 interprets some of the fine programming details within those instruments). Granted, that may or may not be a solution you're interested in. Just thought I'd at least mention it.

I hope this gives you a little something to try, and please feel free to keep us posted of your progress.

Just did some more tests. I get the problem in standalone, as well as on another soundcard entirely (Creative Audigy 2 Plat).

I've also noticed that the delay is a little shorter than I originally thought. It's only about a sixteenth note. But it is still a problem with complex passages.

I am not able to purchase Kontakt 2 at this time (though I intend to eventually), so it will be a while before I can try that.

Thanks for looking into it further. I'll do the same on my end and let you know if I come up with any suggestions. I'm not familiar with the Maya cards, but I do know the Soundblasters (while great for the gaming/home theater crowd) aren't necessarily the first choice among audio professionals. Do you have the latest/greatest ASIO drivers for the Maya? If so, are you using them as your default audio interface within Bidule? I'm still wondering if there may be some sort of latency issue that's causing a hiccup for you. Something that I'd guess isn't as obvious when playing more gradual mod-wheel messages in GPO. Perhaps it's been there, but hasn't been noticeable until you're needing a drastic/sudden change from VDL2 instruments.

With that in mind, maybe you can give me a few examples of instruments/MW settings that you've been having troubles with, and I'll try to reproduce on my end. Also, what are you using as a VMC (virtual midi cable)? Something like Maple or Midi Yoke I presume? It may be a long shot, but perhaps that driver may be contributing to the delay as well. Just thinking out loud.