Integra 7 as a VSTi

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TornadoTed
Posts: 14
Joined: 09:40, 18 August 2015

Integra 7 as a VSTi

Post by TornadoTed »

Up until now I have been using the Integra 7 with MIDI, the iPad editor and running the analogue outs to my mixer, a Mackie 1202VLZ4. I don't currently have any monitors setup so I am using headphones only until I finish converting and treating a room in my house into a studio.

Anyway yesterday as an experiment I tried using the headphone amp in my Metric Halo ULN-2 instead, it was night and day difference to the Mackie which was fairly unsurprising. I would imagine that the monitor output will be leagues ahead too when I finally get my studio built. I had always intended to use track the Integra 7 and ITB instruments to audio and mix with Pro Tools through the ULN-2 anyway.

It led me to start thinking about going totally ITB, it seems silly to keep the 1202 around just to sum the outputs of the ULN-2 and the Integra 7 when writing. I came to the conclusion that I would be better off ditching the mixer and using the Integra 7 as a VST instrument.

I am perfectly happy with working totally ITB, in fact I got the Integra 7 as a workhorse to take the strain off my CPU. I use a quad core Mac Mini and did consider a Mac Pro but I can't bear the fan noise so went with the Integra 7 instead.

The simplest method would be to just carry on working as I am with MIDI and the iPad editor but run the SPDIF out of the Integra 7 into the SPDIF input of the ULN-2 set up an Audio track to monitor the input. Of course the downside to this is that I would have the latency of my buffer setting on the Integra 7 feed which is a major drawback.

So there were 2 other options,

I'm sure I can combine the SPDIF in and the monitor out from Cubase with the Metric Halo MIO console to avoid the latency, I have never used the MIO console but I hear it is very flexible.

Use the Integra 7 via USB for MIDI and Audio and use the VST editor and but I am not totally sure how this works and have a couple of questions. It saves having a pretty large MIDI interface with one machine on it!

Wouldn't I still get latency as I would imagine the Integra 7 just acts as an audio interface?

How is the MIDI timing over USB? I use an Expert Sleepers MIDI interface for sample accurrate timing as I found my MOTU unacceptable and unworkable.

Do I need to set up an aggregate device with the ULN-2?

Is there a better way to do it than the 2 methods I have thought of?

I would appreciate any insight into how you guys are integrating your Integra 7's into your setup.
Mike Vee
Posts: 68
Joined: 16:02, 26 June 2014

Re: Integra 7 as a VSTi

Post by Mike Vee »

just run your daw at 24/96 128 buffer or below and you'll have no latency
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