I have not had many problems with VDL since it came out, but if I did, it wasn't anything that searching around this forum wouldn't take care of. However, now I've got a problem I don't what to do about.

I recently finished my school's opener for next marching season on my iMac (Leopard 10.5.1) using Sibelius 4. Playback with Sibleius 4 and VDL 2.5 with Kontakt Player 2 worked great. What I normally do after this is save the file as MIDI, import it into Garageband (currently running iLife '08), edit the track's instrument generator to KontaktPlayer2 and the appropriate sound, listen to double check things and then go to Share>Send Song to iTunes.

Now, I've been through all of these steps, but when I go to listen to the whole file, it only plays one track (currently the Marching Snare Drum track). I have gone into each individual track and am able to hear the sounds when I click on the MIDI info on the screen, and I can even press some keys on my MIDI controller and get other track sounds. If I mute the snare sound, I get nothing; if I solo another track, I get nothing. I have even tried moving on and sent the song to iTunes, only snare sound.

I know that this forum is mainly for direct help with VDL, but I wanted to come here because you guys are a lot smarter. What I want is Garageband to play all of my sounds, and let me dump the track to iTunes. Any ideas or solutions?

Thanks a lot!

Hi Mike,

I did not notice any playback issues at all or hang ups. It worked great!

Bob

MacBook Pro 17";
2.33 GHz intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Bob,

Did this slow your computer down a ton?�� I would like to make a few recordings before I can afford to get more audio programs, and this seems like a good way.�� iLife is already here!

Mike

[quote author=Jim Casella link=topic=2282.msg12919#msg12919 date=1208823569]
[quote author=RGrifa link=topic=2282.msg12918#msg12918 date=1208822952]
Jim,

I'm a little confused about the use of GarageBand with midi files and VDL 2.5. It seems like many folks here are using GarageBand successfully although I'm not actually sure HOW they are using it. I've read this tutorial [url=http://Using VDL2 with Garage Band]Using VDL2 with Garage Band[/url] so it seems it is possible. I think I understand what you are saying as well. I tried to use lite versions of xylo, bells, vibes, marimba. I loaded the sounds into GarageBand and saved each sound. I then had the exact same issues as stated above. Only one instrument would play at a time.

Thanks!

Bob

MacPro
VDL2.5
Leopard 10.5.2
[/quote]

Exactly. I think what you're pointing out here is the limitation I was describing above. Kontakt Player has the capability of playing back simultaneous differing channels (that's what I mean when talking about ";multi-timbral";), however Garage Band will only play the first channel. To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't recognize multi-timbral VI plugins. Instead, the alternative would be to load a separate instance of KontaktPlayer for each track in your GB file, then assign a unique instrument to each instance. If you have numerous tracks, this may put a heavy CPU burden on your machine - I'm not sure. If you wanted multiple tracks to route to one common instance of KP2 via different MIDI channels, you'd probably want to look at something like Logic Express or Logic Pro. Garage Band is a slick little program, but for heavy lifting with multiple midi tracks you may encounter its limitations rather quickly.
[/quote]


Jim (and those that are using GarageBand),

I was able to have playback of my midi file by using your suggestion of using multiple instances of Kontakt Player. FYI, the file is for bells, vibes, marimba, vibes, timpani, and 4 percussion parts.
One cool thing about this is that a year ago I wasn't even using VDL and wouldn't have really understood what I just wrote or your response above!

Thanks,
Bob

Jim,

Thanks for your quick response!

Bob

[quote author=RGrifa link=topic=2282.msg12918#msg12918 date=1208822952]
Jim,

I'm a little confused about the use of GarageBand with midi files and VDL 2.5. It seems like many folks here are using GarageBand successfully although I'm not actually sure HOW they are using it. I've read this tutorial [url=http://Using VDL2 with Garage Band]Using VDL2 with Garage Band[/url] so it seems it is possible. I think I understand what you are saying as well. I tried to use lite versions of xylo, bells, vibes, marimba. I loaded the sounds into GarageBand and saved each sound. I then had the exact same issues as stated above. Only one instrument would play at a time.

Thanks!

Bob

MacPro
VDL2.5
Leopard 10.5.2
[/quote]

Exactly. I think what you're pointing out here is the limitation I was describing above. Kontakt Player has the capability of playing back simultaneous differing channels (that's what I mean when talking about ";multi-timbral";), however Garage Band will only play the first channel. To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't recognize multi-timbral VI plugins. Instead, the alternative would be to load a separate instance of KontaktPlayer for each track in your GB file, then assign a unique instrument to each instance. If you have numerous tracks, this may put a heavy CPU burden on your machine - I'm not sure. If you wanted multiple tracks to route to one common instance of KP2 via different MIDI channels, you'd probably want to look at something like Logic Express or Logic Pro. Garage Band is a slick little program, but for heavy lifting with multiple midi tracks you may encounter its limitations rather quickly.

Jim,

I'm a little confused about the use of GarageBand with midi files and VDL 2.5. It seems like many folks here are using GarageBand successfully although I'm not actually sure HOW they are using it. I've read this tutorial [url=http://Using VDL2 with Garage Band]Using VDL2 with Garage Band[/url] so it seems it is possible. I think I understand what you are saying as well. I tried to use lite versions of xylo, bells, vibes, marimba. I loaded the sounds into GarageBand and saved each sound. I then had the exact same issues as stated above. Only one instrument would play at a time.

Thanks!

Bob

MacPro
VDL2.5
Leopard 10.5.2

I may not be correct on this, but from what I know in the past, GarageBand is not capable of harnessing the multi-timbral aspect of multi-timbral plugins. For example, KP2 is 16-part multi-timbral - meaning, you can access sixteen separate channels from within that one instance of the plugin. However the ";host"; program (in your case, GarageBand) must be capable of handling that. You can launch an instance of KP2, but as I currently understand it, you'll only be able to access one channel within that one instance of the KP2.

What you're describing may be better suited for Logic Express.

This would be a good question for this site:

http://discussions.apple.com