oddball1989 wrote:Im very grateful for your efforts, however, after reading all that you have not answered my question at all..
Why is it that when i create an aux channel strip in logic there is no 'Notion' option for the channel input!?
I have half answered my question before by saying that there is no notionrewire.bundle file in MACHD/Library/Application Support/Propellerhead Software/ReWire
my question is why isnt it there? and how do I put it there!?
Neil
Let's try it a different way . . . QUESTION: Did you set the "Enable ReWire" option in NOTION 3 Preferences, followed by exiting NOTION 3 and then restarting NOTION 3?ANSWER: No! You did not do it, but you need to do it . . .
Doing this is the way to create the ReWire bundle file for NOTION 3 . . . NOTION 3 has everything it needs to do ReWire, but there are some things you need to do in NOTION 3 to get it configured correctly . . .
When I first started making sense of ReWire, this is one of the first things I did, and after doing it the NOTION 3 ReWire channels appeared in Digital Performer, which is the DAW application I use . . .
I never had to mess with "bundle" files or whatever . . .
If you are using a FireWire audio interface, then if you start the various applications in the wrong order, you might need to reboot your Mac and reset the FireWire audio interface, since the order applications are started is very important . . .
You start the application that will be the ReWire host controller first, and then you start the ReWire slave applications, but when you are finished you will close the ReWire slave applications first and then close the ReWire host controller last . . .
Once you set the "Enable ReWire" option in NOTION 3 Preferences and close NOTION 3, the next time you start Logic Pro 9, you should see the NOTION 3 ReWire channels in Logic Pro 9 without NOTION 3 running, which is the way it works with Digital Performer 7 . . .
For reference, this is the 32-bit ReWire installation software, and it is the version that I installed during the time when nothing involving ReWire appeared to be working . . .
[
NOTE: To avoid confusion, when I write that "nothing involving ReWire appeared to be working", this mostly was due to my never having done anything with ReWire and having absolutely no idea how it worked. So, this was before I discovered the "Enable ReWire" option in NOTION 3 Preferences, and it was during the time when I had no idea how to configure Digital Performer 6 for ReWire. It also was during the time when I had not discovered the vast importance of starting the ReWire host controller first before starting the ReWire slaves, and so forth and so on. Hence, for the most part I was doing a lot of "experiments" based entirely on guessing, and among other disturbing activities this mapped to needing to reboot the Mac Pro and the MOTU 828mkII frequently, since all my "experimental" guesses happened to hit every "bug" in everything, and this also was during the time when I had not quite understood the equally vast importance of limiting the number of "heavy" VSTi virtual instruments to 20 to 25 per NOTION 3 score (a.k.a., "project file"), which for reference is the safe total number of all instruments in a NOTION 3 score, where this is not a "bug" or problem with NOTION 3, per se, but instead is the direct consequence of NOTION 3 being a 32-bit application, hence the VST and VSTi stuff gets loaded into the same application workspace (at least in part, although I have no idea whether it is entirely loaded or just partial into the same 32-bit application workspace). There was a lot of stuff happening all at once, and having no prior experience with ReWire was not a bonus for making sense of everything. Nevertheless, I kept at it and worked through each problem as it appeared, and after about a month or so everything started working wonderfully, since by that time I had discovered the TOP SECRET undocumented rules. Explained another way, ReWire is a bit like OLE interapplication communication in Windows, where there is an underlying interapplication communication protocol and a lot of other stuff that happens behind the scenes and works very nicely when you follow the rules but otherwise can be pretty gnarly, since among other things it is highly time-dependent and like doing object-based composition and working with "safe arrays" can involve pointers with at least three levels of indirection, which is a bit beyond surreal, but so what . . . ]
ReWire 1.7 Install (Propellerhead Software, Download Page)The NOTION 3 installation program should install the ReWire support files, but if not then it does no harm to run the ReWire 1.7 install from Propellerhead Software . . .
Regarding using "Aux" channels in Logic Pro 9, this sounds similar to the general instructions for doing ReWire in Digital Performer, but after doing some experiments I discovered that a regular stereo track works just as well, but it is important in Digital Performer to set the "Input" and "Rec" buttons correctly, which also is the case with the Melodyne Editor (Celemony), which incidentally only works with Core Audio (not with the MOTU 828mkII) . . .
There are a lot of rules for doing this stuff, and part of the problem is that everyone tends to presume that the rules are so obvious that there is no need to list them specifically . . .
When I first decided to make sense of ReWIre with NOTION 3 and Digital Performer, it took me approximately three weeks to get something working, and then it took a lot longer to get the procedure to the point of being completely simple and totally accurate, but now I can configure a NOTION 3 score (a.k.a. "project file") for ReWire to Digital Performer in about five minutes, and it is amazingly easy to do . . .
However, as noted in my previous post, I need to insert four empty measures at the start of the NOTION 3 score, which as best as I can determine is needed so that NOTION 3 and Digital Performer 7 can do what in Computer Science is called "handshaking", and I always start the Digital Performer 7 transport no earlier than the first beat of the fifth measure, which I do with a "marker" (like a "bookmark" but for an audio timeline) . . .
And then there is the "avoiding using single digit ReWire channels" thing, which also is easy to do, since I start with the "Channels 11-12" pair and move upward when I need more ReWire channels . . .
If anything, it should be
easier to do ReWire with Logic Pro 9, since Apple is very good about following standards and stuff, and as a clue the MOTU folks actually told me to try GarageBand and the Ableton Live demo to verify that ReWire was working correctly, since if it works with GarageBand and Ableton Live, then it definitely will work with Digital Performer. They also suggested downloading and installing the Reason 5 demo, since it puts the required ReWire support files on the Mac . . .
[
NOTE: GarageBand only controls the ReWire transport, so there is no recording, but Logic Pro 9 does everything . . . ]
So, another quick test is to run GarageBand and to determine if it GarageBand sees the NOTION 3 ReWire channels . . .
SUMMARYSomething creates the NOTION 3 ReWire "bundle", and setting the "Enable ReWire" option on NOTION 3 Preferences is what causes the NOTION 3 ReWire "bundle" to be created . . .
Since you already appear to have a "Propellerhead Software" folder in the "Application Support" folder under "Library", everything should be there for creating the NOTION 3 ReWire "bundle" . . .
VASTLY IMPORTANT INFORMATIONI did a quick test, where I renamed the original "Notion Device.bundle" file (
see above screen capture) to "Notion Device.bundle.jde" and then started NOTION 3 while looking at the "Propellerhead Software" ReWire folder in Mac Finder, and as part of what NOTION 3 does when it starts, the "Notion Device.bundle" file was created automatically, as shown in the following screen capture . . .
And NOTION 3 does this on my Mac Pro, because I have the "Enable ReWire" option
set in NOTION 3 Preferences, where "set" maps to "checked" . . .
A BIT OF REALITYDoing ReWire with NOTION 3 and a DAW involves a lot of
very complex real-time computing which is highly time dependent, and this becomes all the more complex with one uses VSTi virtual instruments from IK Multimedia (
a personal favorite), and there currently are significant limitations on everything imposed by 32-bit application workspaces . . .
Everything has limitations, including NOTION 3, IK Multimedia virtual instruments, and DAW applications, so the key is to discover how to do what you need to do in a way that is within the bounds imposed by the various operating system and application workspace limitations . . .
Overall, it took me approximately 9 months and 1,000 hours of experimenting, testing, and troubleshooting to discover a fabulous set of rules for doing NOTION 3 "basic rhythm sections", ReWire, and so forth with Digital Performer, and this also includes devising a way to feed exported MIDI to Reason 5 and then to feed the Reason 5 generated audio to Digital Performer in such a way that NOTION 3 always is the
foundation or
reference point for everything . . .
It did
not take me 9 months and 1,000 hours to make sense of ReWire, since this time includes making sense of a lot of other stuff that needs to be done as part of a practical ReWire solution, which includes getting up to speed on music notation and VSTi instruments (which also was a completely new technology for me), as well as all the stuff that Digital Performer requires. During this time, I think it is accurate to say that the ReWire stuff took around three weeks to get working at a reasonably accurate and repeatable level, although getting everything to work as a "system" or "formula" took the entire time. The "system" or "formula" I devised works wonderfully, and it is completely and totally accurate and repeatable in every respect, but it is important to understand that there is a virtual festival of interdependencies among everything, which tends to make it a moving target until you discover all the rules, since not following an otherwise simple rule for one thing can cause other stuff to have problems, and when this happens it takes a while and a lot of experiments to determine the real problem, as contrasted to the spurious effects caused by the real problem. For example, everything can be working marvelously but then you add one too many "heavy" VST effects plug-ins or VSTi virtual instruments, which pushes the 32-bit application workspace into uncharted territory, and then all sorts of strange and bizarre things start happening. If you do not know the "only 20 to 25 'heavy' VSTi virtual instruments in a NOTION 3 score" rule, then it is very easy to start thinking that there is a "bug" in something else, when the only actual problem is that you have too many "heavy" VSTi virtual instruments in the NOTION 3 score . . .
As another example, I think it took approximately 5 days to make sense of the single digit NOTION 3 ReWire channels nonsense, which might be a bug in NOTION 3 but just as easily can be a bug in Digital Performer, and it took about 10 days to discover the "four empty measures at the start of a NOTION 3 score" technique, which is not something that a so-called "normal" person could do, since it requires understanding a lot of Computer Science stuff and realizing that for whatever reason NOTION 3, ReWire, and Digital Performer need a few milliseconds to get synchronized or something . . .
Basically, I am focused on devising ways to make stuff work, and it makes no difference to me which particular software application or technology has a "bug", eccentric behavior, or whatever . . .
One of the things that I like most about NOTION 3 is that there always is a workaround when I encounter an eccentric behavior or something that might be a "bug" . . .
And one of the most useful skills that I developed over the past 35 years of working on advanced computing systems is something I call "scouting around", which is an excellent way to determine precisely what a computer program is doing with the overall goal of devising a way to make it do what you need it to do, and like being an entrepreneur there is no way this can be taught in a formal class . . .
The important thing is that NOTION 3 does ReWire very accurately and reliably on the Mac once you understand and follow the rules, many of which are documented only in my posts to this FORUM, which is fabulous . . .
Fabulous!