Integration with notation programs: Sibelius Rewire

On another thread  DRanck posted:

I was poking around the interwebs and found this on the Notion / Presonus forums:
https://forums.presonus.com/viewtopic.php?f=167&t=9898&sid=d36874a12eeacc16b98ab230e3d00e43
The video shows Notion transmitting MIDI to Studio One via external MIDI ports. It got me to thinking, if Notion can transmit to external MIDI ports, those ports could be used as inputs to Sonar or something like rptMidi or Transmidifier could be used as an intermediary. Not sure how time code would be transmitted unless by Rewire. I could not get Notion to output MIDI though. Not a Sonar problem - I wired Notion to Transmidifier but got no data.

This discussion was part of the broader discussion of improved notation in Sonar.  One angle is to develop more capability in Sonar's internal notation.  Another angle is to make the more powerful notation products easier to use and integrate with Sonar.  I don't see other threads dealing with this, and the topic seems to deserve a thread of its own.
 
I have been a Finale user for about 20 years.  The reality is that Finale has fallen way behind the pack in terms of features that could enable this integration.  Finale does not support Rewire at all, and only runs in 32-bit mode, so you have limited access to virtual instruments within Finale.
 
I have given up trying to find a better playback solution for Finale.  The other product that is at Finale's tier as a full-function notation program, is Sibelius.  Given the Presonus example cited above, I had high hopes for Sibelius being an easier integration.  As it turns out, I had purchased a Sibelius 1.2 license in 2000 (15 years ago.)  Believe it or not, Avid offers an upgrade to the current Sibelius 8 for about $90, so I took advantage of that before they changed their minds.  :)
 
So far, Sibelius isn't looking that promising. As a 64-bit application, it recognizes all the VST instruments I am interested in using.  However, I have not conquered the problem of using the same VSTi for more than one instrument (e.g. using Rapture Pro for bass and vocal).  This is the kind of thing that would be no problem if I could simply pipe the MIDI over to Sonar.  And although Sibelius is owned by Avid, one doesn't see very much sophistication within Sibelius for things like effects and sub-mixes.  There is a little support, but it is nothing like a real DAW environment.
 
So back to the integration idea.  There are two broad approaches.  One is to render in the notation program and pipe audio data across to the DAW.  The other approach is to send MIDI data to the DAW and render in the DAW.  The good news is that Sibelius supports Rewire, so there is a basis for doing something.  I think they introduced this Rewire support around 2006.  At that time, it was only a SINGLE stereo mix, not individual instruments.  And evidently, that has never been improved, so Sibelius is basically unusable for anything but the simplest projects, and I really can't see any reason to even mess with the DAW if we have to do the entire mixdown within Sibelius anyway.  Clearly Notion is far ahead in this area.
 
But that's OK.  What I really want to do is to pipe MIDI to SONAR and do the whole audio thing within SONAR, and that is exactly what the above video demonstrated with Notion and StudioOne.  Unfortunately, it appears there is no support within Sibelius to write to a virtual MIDI device.  I do see references to two products: LoopBE and LoopMIDI.  It appears that with either of them, one could send MIDI data from Sibelius to Sonar in real time and have Rewire control the tempos.  I haven't tried any of that yet.  If anybody else has, I'd certainly appreciate feedback.

I made a very quick attempt to connect Sibelius to LoopMidi, but failed. LoopMidi shows as an INPUT device in preferences, but I can't see it in the mixer as an output device. Nor can I find anywhere to configure output devices in Sibelius. This old article indicates it is (or was) possible: http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/sibelius-midi-playback-device-than-kontakt-silver-separate-standalone/
 
It would be a bummer if this was no longer available. Thoughts anyone?
 

I should wait before posting....
 
Success! Here is what I did:

1. Created a new port in LoopMidi
2. In Sibelius, on the Play tab click "configuration" and add the port to active devices (this is the main thing I missed before)
3. In Sonar, set the input of a track to the same LoopMidi port and channel.
4. Start playback in Sibelius and Sonar receives the midi data.

I do not know about tempo synching. That is something to look into.

May want to investigate Rapture's multi-timbral mode. It is set in second icon to the right of the program name. When enabled, each element is hard coded to respond to the corresponding MIDI channel. IOW, MIDI channel 1 plays Rapture element 1, MIDI channel 2 plays Rapture element 2, etc. In multi-timbral mode Rapture still has only one stereo output so levels for each instrument need to be set in the synth.

I did a successful test of Sibelius 8 and Sonar with MIDI-level integration.  For this test I used LoopBE1 (the free one that supports 1 virtual cable -- 16 channels). 
 
First I set up Rewire, which consists of:
 
1) Create a new project in Sonar.
2) Insert a Rewire device (Sibelius 8). Don't bother to include a MIDI track as it is not used.  The track inserted here is for the audio that is rendered in Sibelius.
 
This launched Sibelius.  The launch seems to be unreliable, and sometimes Sibelius fails to get into Rewire mode.  Sometimes Sibelius just hangs on start-up.  Other times you can't shut down Sonar because it thinks Sibelius is still running when it isn't.  I was testing a lot of combinations, so I hope this is all a lot smoother once I have a standard procedure in place.
 
If Sibelius comes up in Rewire mode, then you can start the transport from either app and the sound shows up on that stereo track in Sonar.  To verify it is in Rewire mode, open the separate transport window. The Rewire icon will appear at the lower right.
 
The next step was to add LoopBE1 and send one instrument (the piano) over to be rendered in Sonar. That consisted of:
 
1) Shut down all apps, then install LoopBE1.
2) Start Sonar with the project from above.  In Sonar preferences-Midi devices, enable LoopBE
3) Insert a Piano synth and have that add a MIDI track.
4) Set the input of the MIDI track to LoopBE1 channel 1
5) If Sibelius is not yet loaded, then double-click on the Rewire device in the synth rack.  Cross your fingers that Sibelius will come up in Rewire mode.
6) In Sibelius preferences, LoopBE1 is enabled as an input device by default, which causes looping problems.  Disable that because you will only send MIDI on LoopBE1, not receive it.
7) In the play tab, open up the configuration.  Create a new configuration for using LoopBE1.  Include all the instruments that you want render within Sibelius, and also add LoopBE1 as an instrument.  In the rules, add a rule to send keyboards to LoopBE1.
 
You now should be ready to run.  Make sure the Sibelius mixer is showing.  Start the playback.  At that point, the mixer will show the device and channel assignments.  Verify that the piano is on LoopBE1, and assigned to channel 1.  If so, then it should be rendering in Sonar and all the other instruments should be rendering in Sibelius and playing on the Sonar stereo track.  I see no reason why this wouldn't work for 16 instruments with LoopBE1 and as many instruments as you want with LoopBE30.
 
You can record the MIDI within SONAR, just as with the StudioOne demonstration.  And I verified that if you go to play it back after recording, you will get 2 sets of MIDI playing (the Sonar copy and the Sibelius copy) unless you mute the track in Sibelius.  That isn't ideal.  I wonder if there is a way to use take lanes so that the latest take overrides anything incoming on the MIDI port.  If that is not possible and I really want to modify that MIDI in Sonar, then I could record the problem measures into Sonar and then change those notes to not playback within Sibelius.
 
I did notice that the two copies were slightly time shifted -- that's how I knew they were both playing.  I don't think that is enough latency to really mess up the groove, but it is something to pay attention to.
 
Overall, this might not be a bad setup if it turns out to be very reliable once the templates are stabilized.

williamcopper
Thanks for the investigating.   I wonder if Finale would work this way too?   If all the VSTs are loaded into Sonar, it mightn't really matter that Finale was 32 bit ...

I think Finale can output to LoopBE, but cannot use Rewire.  What happens if you send MIDI into Sonar without Rewire happening?  Does it just render without advancing the time line?  Can you record any of that in Sonar?

As far as I know Rewire does the synchronising of transport and passes audio between applications.

Rewire will not work if the host and slave don't operate at the same bit depth. Having said that Loopbe1 is only presenting MIDI ports which should care less about the bit depth of either end of a virtual MIDI cable.

williamcopper
With an audio loopback, the audio could be directly recorded, or the midi as recorded in sonar could then be used in a bounce or freeze.     This is looking promising ... one reason I like finale (or sibelius) is that simple note entry is very fast.     Looking into midi sync now .. Sonar has an option to send sync messages, but no options regarding receiving them ...

So I can record the MIDI, but the measures won't necessarily line up?  Is that the gist of it?
 
And if I record the MIDI into SONAR, then I should be able to render it to a WAV from SONAR using all the normal features of Sonar, right?
 
This isn't a great solution for Finale, but I can see that working as a way to get access to more VSTis and VST effects while still composing in Finale.
 
BTW, as I recently upgraded to Sibelius 8 (from an ancient 1.2 release), I wrote up my observations about how Finale 2014 and Sibelius 8 compare today:
 
http://forum.makemusic.co....aspx?f=5&m=456655