Apple Notes

Published in SOS February 2003
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Technique : Apple Notes

Reason running as a sound source for Sibelius.

If you think it's not possible to make music with VST Instruments with Logic on OS X, think again...

The move to OS X and the various issues raised by the mutually exclusive approaches to plug-ins adopted by Steinberg and Emagic has begun a debate that will rage for a good while yet. Steinberg's Cubase SX continues to use the VST standard, with existing VST plug-ins needing to be 'carbonised' to work under OS X, while Emagic have opted to support only Apple's Audio Units API, which aims to define a new system-wide standard for audio plug-ins. Apple's decision to sell machines that won't boot into OS 9 (except in certain areas like the education market) from January 2003 will begin to force the issue, as new users are obliged to choose one approach or the other.

All of Steinberg's latest plug-ins since Plex have shipped with both Mac OS 9 and X versions (along with a Windows version, of course) in the box, including the recent Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition and Halion Strings Edition releases. However, Steinberg aren't forgetting that those users upgrading to Cubase SX on OS X will still want to use their existing plug-ins, and are offering free downloadable updates to older releases like Waldorf's PPG Wave 2.V, Attack and D-Pole. By the time you read this, updates will also be available for LM4 MkII, Virtual Guitarist, Voice Machine, Model E and both volumes of GRM Tools. OS X versions of Nuendo 2, Halion and The Grand are slated for release during the first quarter of 2003, with Warp, Mastering Edition and Surround Edition bringing up the rear with release dates to be announced. See the OS X news page on www.steinberg.net for more information.

News from Waves, manufacturers of many highly-regarded plug-ins and suites, is that OS X VST versions are scheduled for early 2003, with Audio Units versions to follow around Spring time. Native Instruments, who make VST Instruments like Kontakt and the highly regarded B4 Hammond organ emulation, are another small company with a big reputation, and their official line is that OS X versions will be made available during the course of 2003. So now could be a good time for someone to release a 'wrapper' that would enable VST plug-ins for OS X to be run as Audio Units in programs such as Logic, and while no such application is currently available, shareware writers are releasing some interesting solutions.

Had I known about it earlier, a certain piece of shareware would have also helped me avoid slight embarrassment at the hands of QuickTime Musical Instruments. When giving a demonstration of Logic to music technology teachers in London recently, I wanted to show how the use of MIDI controllers and tempo could turn a mouse-written part into a more musically satisfying performance. Without a keyboard to hand, I set Logic to use QuickTime Musical Instruments as a sound source, only to discover that they can suffer from vague tuning problems, which intermittently rendered the opening of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto into the queasy whining of a drunken snake-charmer.

Logic playing a VST Instrument under OS X? Well, kind of...

Buried deep within some extremely hardcore threads on the Core Audio developer's mailing list was a post that caught my attention as it seemed to offer the solution to the problem I'd just experienced. The author described a method of connecting the output of Sibelius with the input of Reason (effectively using it as a sound source) using a shareware application called iMIDI, which is available at http://homepage.mac.com/grantedsw/Menu6.html and written by Robert Grant. Although iMIDI is designed to connect musical applications from computer to computer via Ethernet, it can also be used to interconnect applications on the same machine, much as IAC busses do in OMS.

Once iMIDI is running in the background, Sibelius can be set to use local.iMIDI in its Devices dialogue, and Reason can be set to receive iMIDI input from its Preferences MIDI panel. Effectively, Sibelius will now be connected to Reason and can use it as a sound module. In the example shown on the previous page, an instance of Reason's NNXT Advanced Sampler Module was loaded with a clarinet sample from the supplied Orkester Sound Bank. This was used as the sound source for the excerpt written in Sibelius, and each channel coming in on Reason's Bus 1 would require a new instance of NNXT loaded with the appropriate sample.

The potential of an application like iMIDI is enormous: there would, for example, no longer be the need for a separate host computer and MIDI interfaces for standalone virtual instruments (although iMIDI can achieve a similar result over Ethernet). While Logic doesn't support VST instrument plug-ins under OS X, it can communicate via iMIDI with both stand-alone instrument applications and host applications capable of running VST Instruments, even Logic alternatives like Cubase SX.

To try this out, I set Logic to talk to Reason using the same musical example as in the Sibelius set-up above: Logic's track output was set to local.iMIDI, while iMIDI was chosen as the MIDI input in the MIDI panel of Reason's preferences. But I also tried using Cubase SX to run a VST Instrument — in this case, LinPlug's daOrgan Hammond simulator — which was triggered by Logic with the MIDI connections being much the same as in the previous example (see screen above). Virtually connected via iMIDI, MIDI notes from Logic played sounds from a VST Instrument in Cubase!

By the time you read this, MOTU will have released final versions of OS X-compatible drivers for the 828 and 896 audio interfaces. This is a obviously a significant move on their part, since it should mean the removal of several restrictions: notably, lack of ADAT sync, lack of optical input and output, and lack of synchronisation between multiple interfaces. This last point may be highly significant, since Core Audio only currently allows the selection of only one audio interface at a time, so either Core Audio will see multiple interfaces as a single unit, or an update to the OS is in the pipeline that will allow for multiple interface selection.

While this is pure speculation, I think this may be the result of Apple seeding an update to the Mac OS (10.2.3 is the suggested designation) to developers, which may be officially announced at the Mac Expo in San Francisco on the 7th January 2003. With NAMM happening on the 16-19th, January looks set to be an exciting month for announcements in the Mac-based music world!

Closing The Wind Tunnel In Mirror Door PowerMacs     Also referred to as the leaf-blower effect and 'Hoover noise', PowerMacs purchased after August 2002 (which can be identified by their double-mirrored drive doors) have gained a certain notoriety amongst users of music applications. Although you might not realise it if you keep your Mac running OS X all the time, if you boot one of these machines into OS 9, the processor fan briefly enters a high-speed mode for a couple of seconds during the boot-up procedure — some users have also reported that this noise reoccurs intermittently during use. It's quite an awesome noise that I initially thought was indicative of a major hardware fault, but there's now a firmware update available from Apple that deals with this problem. It's available either by running Software Update, or, if your Mac isn't connected to the Internet, via the web at: http://kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/kbase.woa, entering 120171 in the search field. Here you should find the firmware updater for download, and instructions on how to implement it. It has to be said that the current G4 is the loudest PowerMac yet released, noisier by quite a large margin than predecessors such as the G4 450DP, and unfortunately the firmware update seems only to deal with the leaf-blower effect on the mirror-door machines, and not general operational sound levels on all G4s. This update has itself been the subject of some discussion since many people expected it to deal with more general fan-noise and power-supply hum issues surrounding the new PowerMac, which it sadly doesn't. So we can only hope that Apple are dealing with 'noise' if they really are taking the audio community more seriously.

Scurrilous Rumours — Multi-channel Audio Support For QuickTime?     Writing for this column just before a Mac Expo is always difficult — you never know what's going to be public knowledge by the time SOS comes out. Much gossip is doing the rounds at the time of writing that support for 5.1 audio will finally make an appearance in QuickTime, either at Mac Expo San Franscisco or, as has been the way in the past, a few days before, so that people can download it and watch the keynote speech in better quality. Of course, multi-channel support is already available in OS X, but there's currently no way to make 5.1 files available in a QuickTime-friendly format for downloading or streaming purposes over the Internet. There are plenty of Mac-loving artists I know of who would dearly like to be able to offer QuickTime examples of their music in surround — for example Peter Gabriel and also the Pet Shop Boys, who are planning a surround concert for early January which they'd like to stream on the Net. At present, however, their only option lies with Microsoft's Windows Media Player. I'd like to be able to say that by the time you read this, things will have changed, but at the time of writing, it's impossible for me to say! Paul Wiffen