Hello vcvrack. I’m trying to use my Osmose as mpe controller for external gear using vcv as a router. I found elsewhere that hosted vsts are not able to get mpe midi from vcv? I’m assuming this would be the case for external synths as well? I would want to use the stock vcvrack “cv to midi” converter to do so.
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I play a LinnStrument and I’m speaking here based on my personal experiences. Every indirection in the MIDI signal flow makes the playing experience worse, because:
- it adds some latency
- some systems like most DAWs do MIDI data reduction
If you use the VCV Rack as a router to access hosted VSTs, you will add latency, depending on the buffer size used in the VCV Host module.
If you use the VCV Rack as a MIDI router in general, the MIDI data will be converted to CV signals and then back to MIDI data. This will change the MIDI data, at least a little bit.
Therefore I recommend connetcting external synths directly to the MPE controller. For playing a synth built from VCV modules, I recommend using VCV Rack in standalone mode.
I also developed my own MPE MIDI input module that fits my personal needs more closely.
In the rare case I use VSTs hosted inside the VCV Rack, I use one VST Host module for each voice monophonically. So when I play polyphonic on my LinnStrument, I split the MIDI/CV signal to several VST Host modules. This is not convenient, but basically it works.
I developed a module to copy presets to a bunch of other modules by one click. This makes changing the preset/patch/sound of several VCV Host modules a little bit easier.
The MIDI2CV module has an option called “Smooth pitch/mod wheel” that is on by default. I found when playing on an MPE controller, this does some unwanted data distortion. So I recommend turning this option off.
The CV2MIDI module does not have this option, and I don’t know what kind of distortion or data reduction you will get from this module.
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Thank you for this very thoughtful thorough reply.
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