Possibly the Ultimate Windows Audio "Aggregate" Method?

[NRain]

I have been toying with the idea of having a VST Instrument / Overbridge audio server PC to stream to my Primary desktop for recording and further audio processing, I guess to have the instrument PC feel more like… just an instrument, and to spread out cpu load of heavy plugins.

This has led me down a rabbit hole of exploring options for audio streaming, and for combining Overbridge audio devices into the mix, preferably without the added already high latency of audio from the Overbridge plugins.

After trying a lot of things that weren’t quite making it all click, either latency too high, or dropouts (etc), too many separate apps to run at once or other shortcomings, I stumbled across Wusik Audio Connect VST plugin which allows for directly capturing from multiple audio devices, including ASIO into your DAW, and up to 16 channels per instance… And it works! There’s a couple little quirks, and zero documentation but for 10 bucks what can you expect.

Now the interesting part. With Wusik Connect inserted directly on a DAW channel (Bitwig), the plugin buffer needed to be increased a bit and I was seeing an additional DN2 latency of about 17ms on top of the audio coming from my primary RME interface. But as I had been exploring Running the Wusik plugin along with Blue Cat Connector inside DDMF Metaplugin (in order to access the multiple outs of the Wusic plugin for streaming), I decided to check the latency again against my RME direct audio while the Wusk plugin was hosted inside Metaplugin, and holy cow piping the ASIO output of my DN2 (@128 samples)directly into my DAW via Metaplugin only added 1ms of additional latency over my RME (@256 samples)! Not sure what kind of wizardry this is but it works!

As far as the streaming audio part works into this, I have now successfully streamed 78 24bit 48k channels of audio, a combination of 32 internal channels routed to Blue Cat ASIO server, 40 channels from DN2 and 6 channels from A4 Mk2, via Wusik Audio Connect > Blue Cat connector. All of this from within Bitwig Hosted on my measly low horsepower laptop with USB Gigabit ethernet adapter. Total added latency from Overbridge ASIO input + network about 10ms!

(PS Blue Cat Connector and their virtual ASIO driver is a wicked tool. Now streaming 32 channels on ASIO, and 32 channels per instance since the last update. Rock solid, very low latency!)

Anyways, point of this post is the Wusik Audio Connector hosted in DDMF Metaplugin (Or possibly other similar plugin?) If you have been longing for low latency Aggregate audio devices in Windows, this just might do the trick for you. It has so far for me. Fingers crossed.

[kokosnuss]

Would be amazing if you have free time and will to do a proper video for noobs like me to see in action how is this achieved.
Thanks

[NRain]

That sounds more complicated than just trying.

Unfortunately there is no demo for the Wusik Audio Connect plugin, but for $9.95USD it is fairly low risk if it doesn’t work for you.

HOME | Wusik

Once downloaded, simply open the zip file and copy the VST and VST3 plugins to their respective locations.
Once you try the plugins in your DAW, if you want to explore the latency saving option of loading the plugins into Metaplugin, you can download the demo here, bottom of page Metaplugin - DDMF Supreme Audio Software

With Metaplugin loaded in your DAW, simply drag the VST/VST3 plugin file into the Metaplugin interface, select your audio driver and connect the VST output pins to the Metaplugin outputs, then route as you would from any multi-output plugin in your DAW.

Easy Breezy.

[kokosnuss]

Thank you, this was already helpful.

[NRain]

Another approach, in case the plugin inside a plugin inside your primary DAW approach doesn’t work for you, is to use another VST host application as an audio stream server, in conjunction with Blue Cat Connector. (maybe safer this way?)
When using the Blue Cat VST plugins to connect to each other between hosts, I find there is a bit more latency than is ideal, and the potential for drift increases, but the real magic is once the server host has the Blue Cat virtual ASIO loaded as it’s primary connection, any additional inter app plugin to plugin connections become 100% rock solid and low latency.
On my system, with all buffers set at 128, I am able to stream into my primary daw with only an additional 4-5ms of latency.

The steps for this are :
-In the server host (In my case sensomusic Usine, but in theory could be any applicable multichannel capable standard or modular host), load the Blue Cat ASIO driver (free download)
as your soundcard driver and ensure all outputs are enabled.

-Download and install Blue Cat Connector demo (audio dropouts are intended in the demo)

-Set the Blue Cat ASIO Buffer to 128, sample rate should be the same as your primary host. Open the ASIO control panel and choose local host as network, disable audio compression. Leave ports as 8080/8081
(note: I am seeing in some hosts that BC ASIO sample rate likes to default / reset to 44100)

-Load the Wusik Audio Connect plugin (as many instances as needed for channel count/devices) into the server host, select your asio driver and buffer/sample rate, assign your i/o. Also I recommend in options at top, that you set fixed plugin latency to 128.

-Make the necessary audio connections to the host outputs (and / or BC Connector “multi” VST inputs) If using the BC Connector VST, enable send and receive on local host and assign (eg:) ports 8082/8083

Now in your primary DAY you need one instance of BC Connecter (local host) sending to the receive port of the BC ASIO driver, and the receiving from the send port (8080/8081)

If you have also loaded a BC Connector VST in the server host, then you will need another instance of the plugin in your primary host set to send and receive from the appropriate ports (8082/8083)
(edit: oops, there is no real need to send audio back via BC plugin #2 to the server host. You can disable this send.)

At this point, you should have a rock solid, low latency multi channels audio streams available in your DAW, from the audio hardware of your choosing, whether that be Elektron devices, or any other audio interface.

And you can still load Overbridge plugins or standalone apps for editing/automation! With Bitwig, if I do not assign any inputs or outputs on the Overbridge plugin track, no additional latency is reported to the host. It works better than Overbridge! (sorry Elektron, we still love you )

[Elijah]

Actually, even ASIO4ALL can be used to set up an aggregated device.

[NRain]

Yes, but then you are locked into ASIO4ALL as your primary i/o driver, and the performance is not good.
VBMatrix is a more solid all in one driver solution , but still high latency, especially an issue when using external hardware FX etc, plus for me it did not play well with network audio streaming between machines.
At least with the above methods, you pipe audio in when you want it, and always keep your main audio interface (high performance) driver as your main goto.

[thermionic]

Can, but how well does it work for you?

It’s great that it exists for driverless interfaces but I don’t think I’ve ever truly used it for aggregation.