6.0

506
Synchronization
Hearing the network audio
If you are using an external mixing desk, hearing your audio
really is not an issue – just plug the outputs of each com-
puter into the desired channels on the external mixing
desk, start playback on one of the computers, and you are
good to go.
However, many people prefer to mix internally inside the
computer and just use a desk for monitoring (or maybe not
use any external mixer at all). In this case you will need to
select one computer to be your “main mix computer” and
send the audio from your other computers into this.
In the following example, we assume you are using two
computers, with computer 1 as your main mix computer
and computer 2 running two additional stereo audio
tracks, an FX channel track with a reverb plug-in and a
VST instrument plug-in with stereo outputs.
Proceed as follows:
1. Set things up so that you can listen to the audio play-
back from computer 1.
In other words, you need an unused set of outputs, e. g. an analog stereo
output, connected to your monitoring equipment.
2. On computer 2, route each of the two audio tracks to
a separate output bus.
These should be busses connected to the digital outputs – let’s call
them Bus 1 and 2.
3. Route the FX channel track to another VST System
Link bus (Bus 3).
4. Route the VST instrument channel to yet another bus
(Bus 4).
5. Go back to computer 1 and check the corresponding
four VST System Link input busses.
If you start playback on computer 2, the audio should “appear” on the in-
put busses on computer 1. However, to mix these audio sources you
need actual Mixer channels.
6. Add four new stereo audio tracks on computer 1 and
route these to the output bus you use for listening, e.
g. to
the analog stereo outputs.
7. For each of the audio tracks, select one of the four in-
put busses.
Now, each computer 2 bus is routed to a separate audio channel on
computer 1.
8. Activate monitoring for the four tracks.
If you now start playback, the audio from computer 2 will
be sent “live” to the new tracks on computer 1, allowing
you to hear them together with any tracks you play back
on computer 1.
For more information about Monitoring, see “About moni-
toring” on page 30.
Adding more tracks
What if you have more audio tracks than you have VST
System Link busses (physical outputs)? Then you just use
the computer 2 mixer as a submixer: Route several audio
channels to the same output bus and adjust the output
bus level if needed.
Ö If your audio cards have multiple sets of input and out-
put connections, you can link up multiple ADAT cables
and send audio via any of the busses on any of the cables.
Internal mixing and latency
One problem with mixing inside the computer is the latency
issue we mentioned earlier. The VST engine always com
-
pensates for record latencies, but if you are monitoring
through computer 1 you will hear a processing delay while
you listen to signals coming from your other computers
(not on your recording!). If your audio card in computer 1
supports ASIO Direct Monitoring you should definitely turn
this on. You can find the setting on the VST Audio System
device panel for your hardware (see
“ASIO Direct Monitor-
ing” on page 97). Most modern ASIO cards support this
function. If yours does not, you may want to change the
Offset Samples value on the VST System Link page to
compensate for any latency issues.
Setting up a larger network
Setting up a larger network is not much more difficult than
a two-computer network. The main thing to remember is
that VST System Link is a daisy chain system. In other
words, the output of computer 1 goes to the input of com
-
puter 2, the output of computer 2 goes to the input of
computer 3, and so on around the chain. The output of the
last computer in the chain must always go back into the
input of computer 1, to complete the ring.