Activating VST System Link

About This Task

Before you proceed, you need to make sure that VST System Link is set as the timecode source in the Project Synchronization Setup dialog and that the desired sync options are activated.

After setting up the inputs and outputs, you now need to define which input/output will carry the actual VST System Link information.

The VST System Link networking signal is carried on only one bit of one channel. This means that if you have an ADAT-based system which normally carries 8 channels of 24-bit audio, once you activate VST System Link you will have 7 channels of 24-bit audio and one channel of 23-bit audio (the least significant bit of this last channel will be used for networking). In practice this makes no discernible difference to the audio quality, since you will still have around 138 dB headroom on this channel.

To set things up, open the VST System Link panel:

Procedure

  1. Select Studio > Studio Setup.
  2. In the Devices list, select VST System Link.

    The VST System Link settings are shown to the right of the Devices list.

  3. Use the ASIO Input and ASIO Output pop-up menus to define which channel is the networking channel.
  4. Activate the Active checkbox at the top left of the panel.
  5. Repeat the steps above for every computer in the network.

Result

As the computers are made active, you should see the Sending and Receiving indicators flashing on each active computer, and the name of each computer should appear in the list at the bottom of the pane. Each computer is assigned a random number – do not worry about this, it is just so the network knows internally which one is which.

  • You can double-click on the name in bold (which is the name of the computer you are working on) and set it to whatever other name.

    This name will appear in the VST System Link window of every computer on the network.

Note

If you do not see the name of each computer appearing once you have made it active, you need to check your settings. Go through the procedure above again and make sure that all ASIO cards are listening to the digital clock signals correctly, and that each computer has the correct inputs and outputs assigned to the VST System Link network.