I upgraded to Gig Performer 5 and ran into unexpected issues using multiple instances of Gig Performer. The good news is all issues were solved with a complete shutdown and cold restart, not just a reboot.
I use multiple instances of Gig Performer. After installation I restarted the laptop as prompted and attempted to use my two instances with GP 5. Instance #1 had no MIDI activity on the Global MIDI monitor and no sound. Instance #2 had MIDI but distorted sound.
I think the issue may be related to using Gig Performer with multiple instances AFTER Cherry Audio plugins are used and exited in standalone mode (i.e. not with Gig Performer). Before doing the GP 5 upgrade I had used Cherry Audio Sync to download and test an update for the P-10. When I replicated the problem a second time the results were slightly different. MIDI and sound from Instance #1, MIDI on Instance #2 but no sound. No sound meters moving on Instance #2 either.
I don’t think this is a GP issue unless it happens from a cold boot and starting GP. Thus far the issue has not happened for that scenario. I’m looking for technical explanations as to what might be happening. Perhaps a failure to release resource(s) properly and that is affecting Gig Performer? It’s interesting that both MIDI communication and sound processing can be affected.
I’m using a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 3rd generation audio interface. I am still on Windows 10 64-bit Pro.
I’m not sure about audio, but if you are on Windows, most MIDI drivers are single client so you need to either:
Load a multi client MIDI driver provided by the Vendor (if they have one)
Set up virtual ports and have each instance of Gig Performer talk to its own virtual port.
Set up different MIDI devices for each instance
For Audio, I believer there is a flag to use for the WDM driver to enable exclusive access and this must be unchecked. I don’t think that this is a problem with most ASIO drivers (provided by the vendors).
By default the Cherry Audio plugin used the WDM driver and I had to switch it to ASIO. I don’t know if there was an “artifact” with it having been on WDM temporarily.
Perhaps the MIDI driver was still “locked”. For this particular setup I am using an M-Hammer 88 and a Novation 61 SLMkiii. The M-Hammer 88 had MIDI reception problems.
I use Rig Manager and have all the MIDI devices set to aliases for use in my gigs.
The plugin is not running “standalone”. What is actually happening is that there is a lightweight plugin host that is hard-coded to just load a single plugin. Typically such light weight hosts let you select audio and MIDI settings and that’s it.
So when you are running “standalone” you are really just running another audio application and if you’re in an environment where your audio/MIDI system doesn’t support multiple simultaneous clients, there will be conflicts with both audio and MIDI.