Hi there,
last night I fumbled out how to use Logic Pro's virtual instruments via IAC bus. Maybe some of you also own Logic and would be interested too; Logic has a lot of great software instruments and effects and a nice sample library, of course.
Creating an IAC bus and addressing it in Sibelius has been described elsewhere, but for convenience I give a summary here. To make Logic work as slave turned out to be a little bit more sophisticated, that's why I'm posting.
Open Audio-MIDI-Settings in OS X's System Preferences, select the MIDI Devices window, check the "active" button and click the + sign below left to create a new IAC bus. Call it, e.g., IAC Church Organ. (You can create as many busses as you like; each one has 16 MIDI Channels).
Then start Sibelius (Sib must recognise the newly created bus as available device during startup). Then go to Play > Playback Devices and activate IAC Church Organ; it should show up in the right column. Be sure that the sound set is General MIDI. Click Manual Sound Sets, select the IAC bus as device, check Use Manual Sound Sets, and set the number of channels to 16. When the setup in Logic is completed, return here to select program names which comes closest to the sound you want to playback from Logic - you can also do this now, but then you won't yet be able to test the sound. Don't forget to press the Apply button after each selection! Then save, and you're done.
Now open Logic (although Logic updates the IAC busses on the fly, so no problem if it is running already). In the Arrangement view (or wherever you want) of a blank file create (Alt Cmd N) 16 tracks with Software Instruments. In the I/O section of each channel strip (for fastest input use the Mixer window), provide each channel with a software instrument of your choice, add effects, sends, whatever. For my example maybe select for track 1 Garage Band > Church Organ, and in the Church Organ window which pops up select the first registration, namely Bass 1. For track 2, do the same but with Bass 2, then track 3 Flutes and so on. That's easy. But now comes the tricky part.
Open the Environment window (I've been using Logic for years, and I have alway avoided to edit something there...). Top left, choose All Objects from the dropdown list. In the View menu, uncheck Text so that you see the channel strips like in the Mixer window. Drag the window big enough to have space for two new objects to create and to wire.
From the New menu, choose Physical Input. You see an odd rectangle with tiny triangles at its right side and the names of all input devices available to Logic, among them your IAC Church Organ bus. Now, from the New menu, create a Channel Splitter and drag it to the right side of the Physical Inputs. Figure out which one of the the tiny triangles belongs to IAC Church Organ - if you can't see, just count. The top triangle is always Sum. Or drag Physical Input big enough to see the lines from the names to the triangles. Then left click that triangle and draw the wire to your Channel Splitter to connect them.
The top triangle of the Channel Splitter is again Sum; don't use it. The second triangle is assigned to channel 1 and so on. Now, again by clicking the respective triangle, wire channel 1 to the channel strip of channel 1, wire channel 2 of the Splitter to the strip of channel 2, and so on, until all 16 channels are wired.
Now you can return to Sibelius. In the Mixer, you should now have the IAC Church Organ available in the device dropdown list in addition to DLS and Kontakt Player; select it. Then, from the Sound ID dropdown list below, select something (which you have assigned in Play > Playback Devices > Manual Sound Sets before). That's it.
If you want to create more IAC busses, you don't have to repeat all the Environment wiring stuff every time. Just save the file with a new (suggestive) name, go to the Environment window, select the cable which connects Physical Input and Channel Splitter, delete it, and plug in the new IAC bus which shows up in Physical Input. The wiring of the Channel Splitter to the 16 channel strips is universal. Then you can exchange the sound in each channel strip. I personally find it convenient to make a new Logic file for each IAC bus instead of making 32 or more sounds and multiple Channel Splitters in one file.
Have fun,
Fritz
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Sib. 5.2.5 | MacBook Pro | OS X 10.5 | Apple Logic Pro 8 & Kontakt 3| Apogee Ensemble & Duet |
How to use Logic Pro's virtual instruments via ... - Fritz Feger, 06 Nov 09:58AM