The use-case here is VM2 in Standalone mode. I have a new Arturia MiniBrute 2S hardware Semi-modular synth. After watching Omri Cohen’s demo of the MiniBrute 2S connected with VCV Rack and the huge potential of the combination, I followed his steps and within 5 minutes I had my MiniBrute and VCV locked in sync using the Sync out of the MiniBrute’s patch bay, into my audio interface and then routed from VCV’s audio ins to the Clocked module (from Impromptu).Perfect rock solid sync and transport controls (tempo/play/stop/reset from the Brute) - all with a single Eurorack patch cable. Next I try to repeat the same thing using VM2.
3 hours later, I was about to give up.
None of the IO outputs in VM would work - there is just no way to get clock into VM2 without MIDI or without running inside a DAW. I wanted neither - I wanted the simplicity of VCV. I wanted to use VM2 like a proper virtual Eurorack system.
I had one last attempt. I used the MIDI Input module running into the MIDI Clock Divider, and used Andrew McAuley’s MIDI Monitor to see what MIDI CCs were being sent for Start and Stop/Reset into VM2. Then used the MIDI CC Converter Module to send start/stop and the MIDI Clock Divider to provide the external clock for a sequencer. Finally, after over three hours, I’d got (mostly) a comparable solution. But I had to use MIDI.
Please CA team, can you consider a Eurorack-standard clock in for the IO section, or at least a dividable multi-out clock module that runs from an audio channel passing in 12/24ppqn sync from the non-midi non-daw outside world?
Right now, VCV is far easier to co-exist with Eurorack or semi-modular hardware. But I’ve invested in VM2 Core plus a whole heap of modules - so I’d rather use VM2. But there’s such a missed opportunity making VM easy to use as an extension of hardware. Unless I’m missing the obvious?
