Ctrlr as a VST plugin in FL Studio

[Flanky]

Hi all! I’m really excited to try this software – I bought a Virus TI a while ago and the Virus Control software makes my PC BSOD. Spent way too much money + time trying to fix it and couldn’t.

I’m trying to get Ctrlr to work as a VST plugin in FL Studio. I found this panel for the TI in Ctrlr: [http://tinyurl.com/hgnuffp] I can get it functioning in the standalone application perfectly fine. However, as a VST, the plugin won’t receive anything from the synth. (Output works totally fine, only input isn’t functional.)

From looking around a bit it seems some Ctrlr users have success with FL, so I’m curious if I just have something setup improperly. Here’s what I’ve done:

-Set MIDI dump to “enabled” on the Virus TI synth, set the MIDI device ID to 1 in both Ctrlr and the synth.
-Tried connecting the Virus via USB, and in the “MIDI” menu in FL Studio, in “outputs”, enabled Virus TI Synth and set the port to 2. Also enabled the Virus TI Synth in inputs, and set the port to 1.
-I also tried connecting to my audio interface through MIDI, enabling the interface in “inputs” and “outputs” with the same ports as above.
-In the Ctrlr plugin instance, tried leaving the MIDI settings as they are, with both “Input from plugin host” and “output to plugin host” checked.
-I also tried changing the input and output in the plugin’s MIDI menu to my audio interface. When I do so, I get an warning message saying:

‘ CtrlrMidiDevice::openDevice failed to open device “(My audio interface)” ‘

This doesn’t happen in the standalone, where it works properly with these settings. I assume this is because the plugin would rather go through the DAW.
-I have two different audio interfaces (NI Komplete Audio 6, Steinberg UR22), and have tried the above with both of them.

I’d be very appreciative of any help 🙂

• This topic was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by Flanky.

[dasfaker]

This is because you are trying to use the MIDI drivers with both Ctrlr and FL Studio at the same time. It’s a Windows/drivers limitation. Close these ports in FL Studio and use them exclusively for Ctrlr.

[atom]

I recommend not to use MIDI devices at all in Ctrlr and use the FLStudio’s internal MIDI ports, route all traffic from/to Ctrlr, i know that FLStudio supports SysEx MIDI in VST plugins so you should have all the needed functionality.

[Flanky]

Thanks so much for the quick responses – Sorry my own is a bit delayed! Work got unexpectedly busy. I’m happy to report that I got the synthesizer functional, at least through USB, by disabling the ports in FL and setting the MIDI drivers in the Ctrlr instance, as mentioned by dasfaker. Thank you so much for the help! I still can’t access patch information this way, but it’s functional for now.

I’d like to try it the way suggested by atom, as well; I assume the sysex support in FL would potentially solve the ‘not being able to select patches’ issue. Unless I’m doing something wrong However I believe that’s what I tried before – Enabling the in/out ports of my audio interface in FL’s general MIDI settings, then setting the in/out ports of the ‘VST wrapper settings’ of the Ctrlr instance to match them. Is there something I’m missing?

I appreciate everyone’s patience, I get confused easily when it comes to the technical side of these things.

[dasfaker]

If you can’t access patches there must be something not correctly setup, it’s not a matter of FL.

From the info you posted in the first post, I miss the options about enabling midi dumps and program change messages. Are they set to on in the Virus?

[Flanky]

Sorry again about the delay, dasfaker.

Yes, “Receive MIDI Dump” and “Program Change” are both set to “Enabled”.
You are correct that it isn’t an FL problem, I checked and it occurs in the standalone too.

[dasfaker]

Can you copy here from the MIDI Monitor the messages sent and received by the panel when you press GET, for instance?

[Flanky]

Sure! I’m attaching a screenshot of the error I get when I try to change banks in the panel.

To clarify, the panel does receive the patch properly with no error when I press “GET”, as long as I set up the input/output through the VST instance of the panel itself and not through FL’s internal ports. (When I try to do the latter, it gives me no message or response of any sort.)

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[dasfaker]

This message means that there was no response from the Virus when the panel request a bank dump. There should be a message going out from the panel (paste this message here) and any possible message reply.

There could be the case (as on some Linux systems), where the incoming messages are divided into messages of 256 bytes max, and the panel is not ready for such dumps (as I can’t test it here).

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