Notion 3 ReWire

[DanteUruzu]

Woah! It worked! Somehow doing ReWire with Notion as the Host and Reason as the slave got Notion ReWire to show up in Cubase! Thank you so much Surfwhammy! You've helped me out a lot. You should be a tech representative at some company Maybe Notion Music haha Once again, thank you so much!

[Surfwhammy]

Woah! It worked! Somehow doing ReWire with Notion as the Host and Reason as the slave got Notion ReWire to show up in Cubase! Thank you so much Surfwhammy! You've helped me out a lot. You should be a tech representative at some company Maybe Notion Music haha Once again, thank you so much!

Fantastic!

The key really is getting it to work with Reason (Propellerhead Software), because every company that does applications which support ReWire always tests their applications with Reason . . .

Another thing which is useful to know is that the buffer sizes for NOTION and the DAW application are very important, where on the Mac Pro I leave the NOTION 3 buffer size at the default, which is "256 Samples", but for NOTION 4 in 64-bit mode there is more headroom or whatever, so I can use a smaller buffer size both in NOTION 4 and Digital Performer 8 . . .

[NOTE: If playback and recording are smooth, then leave the buffer sizes as they are (NOTION and DAW application), but if there are skips or jumps, then you can experiment with different buffer sizes . . . ]


NOTION 3 Preferences ~ Audio Tab ~ Audio Buffer Size ~ Mac OS X

When recording, I always begin by recording for perhaps a few seconds (no more than 5 seconds) and then stop and reposition the transport and do the final full-length recording, since recording for 5 or so seconds ensures that the buffers are preloaded, which in turn maps to the tempo being consistent, since in some scenarios if the buffers are not preloaded with relevant audio, then there is a bit of a delay getting everything synchronized . . .

[NOTE: On the Mac when Digital Performer (MOTU) is the DAW application, there is a bug that occurs when you rewind to the 1st measure, so the "workaround" solution I use is to insert four empty measures in the NOTION score and then to create a Marker in the Digital Performer project to position the "start" at the 1st beat of the 5th measure ("5|1|000"), where the "000" part is "ticks", and the entire thing is "measure|beat|ticks", and I never rewind the transport earlier than the start of the fifth measure, which is the first beat and zero ticks. It is OK to position the transport later in the score, but never earlier than the first beat of the fifth measure. This avoids the bug, and it is easy to do, but curiously this is not necessary when Logic Pro 9 (Apple) is the DAW application, but I do it anyway. And for reference, I consider this to be a bug in DIgital Performer rather than NOTION, since Digital Performer crashes, and on the Mac the application that crashes tends to be the culprit, since applications are not supposed to crash on the Mac . . . ]

However, you do not want to do the buffer preloading step for too long a time, where just a few seconds is ideal. And this is important, because the ReWire host controller and ReWire slave have pipelines that they use to stream audio and to exchange transport information, and the pipelines need to be "primed" and "activated" when you start recording to get smooth results . . .

It also is very important to set the audio resolution for the DAW application to standard CD quality, which is what NOTION uses to generate real-time streaming audio, and this is 44.1-kHz at 16-bits, where strange as it might appear, trying to use a higher audio resolution actually degrades the audio quality, so the best value is 44.1-kHz at 16-bits when you are working with NOTION . . .

And when there are a lot of instruments and so forth, as you get nearer to the upper limit of the 32-bit application workspace, some strange things begin happening, which is a clue that you have too many instruments or VST effects plug-ins in the score, where I usually avoid VST effects plug-ins or at least minimize the number of them if I cannot avoid using them, which on the Mac using the "system" I have devised, this maps to doing the VST effects plug-in work in the DAW application, which actually uses the Mac Audio Units (AU) version of effects plug-ins, but the same rule applies to VST effects plug-ins . . .

Hence, the strategy is to focus NOTION on its bundled instruments and a select number of VSTi virtual instruments, always giving attention to the complexity of the instrumentation with respect to staves and so forth, where on the Mac I limit individual scores to 20 to 25 VSTi virtual instruments, and when I need more instruments I just clone the first score and replace the VSTi virtual instrument for most of the staves but leave a few the same to serve as reference points for tempo, rhythm pattern, chords, bass, and simple melody, where if I need 150 VSTi instruments, then I do this with a set of 7 to perhaps 10 or so cloned NOTION scores, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

P. S. Thanks for the kind words! I am planning to write a book about all this stuff, sooner or later, and it helps me to understand everything in detail when I help people find solutions . . .

[DanteUruzu]

Gotcha Thank you for the tips. I was getting some skipping with ReWire on my laptop using Notion as the host but adjusting the buffer size helped So, thank you once again!

And no problem! You deserve kind words. You're great at helping others. I'm sure that book is going to be great and help a lot of people out