Question about communicating between 2 different computers.

VCV Rack
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Is there a way to run two computers and have the software work together? I can see running VCV as a stand alone on my laptop and running the audio out just like you would any synth, but how might I sync clocks?

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for non-“clock sync” signal transfers between computers.

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I tried this and it receives syncs fine over Ableton Link protocol from my MPC One. I’d like to find module that can act as Mater Ableton Link source in VCV
 currently Stellare module only receives clock


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OK, thanks, I assumed, after I read the docs, that it could be master.

“The link module is a very simple module which provides a ‘link’ connection with a link enabled application like Ableton Live. It will allow you also to connect two or more VCV rack instances on different computers together which are connected in the same WLAN or LAN.” source

But, I didn’t try it - only with Ableton Live as master. I see now, that there is no way to set the tempo on the module.

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Some other network utilities for the toolbox

NetVST, use VSTs across network. Also supports loading 32bit VSTs and calling from 64bit app http://netvst.org/wiki/doku.php

rptMidi, network MIDI for Windows

https://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/rtpmidi.html

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Interesting. Will give this a whirl when I get home. Thx.

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ReaStream
REAPER | ReaPlugs

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Mmmmm
 that may be above my pay grade but I’ll look into it as well. Thanks Ben.

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Not sure
 it is free?

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I’m pretty sure I have it on my home desktop with the rest of the ReaPlugs. I just wouldn’t have had much call to look at it.

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I’d like to bump this topic to see if anything has been figured out about this. I can, more or less, run 2 instances of Rack on two different computers running as a VST thru Ableton on each. But this is REALLY a PITA (and just plain clunky), and of course Ableton itself eats a lot of CPU I would rather be using just for Rack. That And I can only run two instances of Ableton without having to buy another instants of that. I don’t find the Ableton Link all that reliable as well. If I had a way for Rack to talk to itself I could easily have 3 or 4 computers in my studio running Rack as a stand alone and this would be a real step towards real life Euro-rack.

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that’s a pretty ambitious setup. Are you sure you can handle all that power?

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Have you tried this product? It has a demo version and it is on sale.

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Ambitious would be trying to deduce what the heck GC3 is trying to teach me. The above is simple - all the computers can be on the same network, all I need is a module that will share clocks between them (I believe or wish as it were). DACs are cheap to get decent sound from the computer to the audio interface and I have three off those as well.

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I will look into it! Thanks!

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I link multiple machines frequently, all running nothing but rack (2013MBPro i7, 2011MacMini i7, Vostro7590 i5-8th gen). Usually, s’a case of getting clock / run / reset distributed, which I tend to do over ADAT IO between them (each machine has an old MOTU MkII era FireWire interface on various bodges of thunderbolt converters, as they can be picked up for next-to-naff-all comparatively), and then return their audio back to the clock master over ADAT.

Master’s audio is then delayed to account for round trip latency of [each slave’s input latency (account for clock latency) + master’s input latency (return audio latency)] to get all the audio back in sync (Usually a 22ms delay for me) prior to mixing it in with the slave returns (master mixer > delay > “post” mixer bringing in slave returns > main monitor output)

Master sends 24x clock from impromptu clocked, slaves receive it in PPQ24 mode to BPM input. Everything else between them is done over remaining ADAT channels and MIDI. Can send any signal you like over ADAT between machines. Over MIDI you have to be mindful of bi/unipolar and offset / rescale accordingly.

All physical controllers are MIDI merged with a Raspberry Pi which then sends / receives across all machines.

Attempts to do this over network / rtpMIDI never seemed to be solidly reliable
 but that’s probs more my junk (Sky) router and busy network than the underlying method.

Doing it this way using Audio/ADAT I/O, you have to be mindful of block size / cpu on each machine as any extraneous pops / clicks due to too low block or CPU overrun get introduced into the ADAT streams and thus create additional clock pulses that cause drift / offset at the slaves. (If your house has dodgy electrics like mine does, someone turning a light on/off in another room, or compressor on a fridge/freezer kicking in can throw a slave out by 1x pulse. Experimentation with LPF on the clock stream at the slaves and ground-lifted power strips tend to be necessary), and make sure DC Blocking is disabled on the AudioI/O modules that are handling CV-over-ADAT.

TLDR; you’d do it as you’d expect to be able to do it in any modular environment, you just need appropriate I/O between the machines.

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Has anyone mentioned Jack?

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Hey thanks, I’ll look into it. Looks similar to the Blue Cat mentioned earlier.

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Lol! Love it brother but you’re leaps and bounds ahead of my technical abilities!

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