Gig Performer has built-in support for multiple instances. Creating a second Gig Performer instance is easy. Just select File -> Create New Instance… (or open an existing one) and you’re all set:
This works great on macOS and on many Windows computers without further tweaking.
Unfortunately, some Windows ASIO drivers still allow only one application (Gig Performer with two instances counts as two applications) to use the audio interface at a time. These are known as single-client drivers. Multi-client audio drivers started coming out years ago, but sadly there are still many drivers out there that do not allow you to use the same audio device with more than one audio application at a time. This also prevents your second Gig Performer instance from using the audio interface.
If you find yourself in this situation, the first thing you should do is to see if there is an update for your audio device driver available that does in fact support multiple applications simultaneously. Consider also complaining to the company providing the driver, if they hear from enough people, perhaps they’ll fix it.
If there is no update, there’s still a way — just follow these instructions:
- Install the ASIO4ALL drivers on your computer http://www.asio4all.org
- Open (or create) a second Gig Performer instance and go to its Audio Options,
- Select the ASIO and ASIO4ALL driver matching the sample rate of your main instance.
- Click on the “Control Panel” button once you have switched to the ASIO4ALL driver and make sure that your real audio interface is selected within the ASIO4ALL driver.
That’s it. Your second instance will remember the specified audio settings and will now always open using the correct driver.
Important note: make sure to check out the most recent blog How to use a single client ASIO driver with multiple applications on Windows.
Should you need to route MIDI from one Gig Performer instance to another – you can use install a virtual MIDI port driver (NB, if you happen to be reading this but are using a Mac, virtual MIDI ports are built-in to OS X and are called IAC ports).
LoopBe1 is a free MIDI loopback driver for personal use. You can download it here: http://www.nerds.de/en/loopbe1.html
There is also loopMIDI from Tobias Erichsen http://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/loopmidi.html
Once installed and configured if necessary, virtual MIDI ports simply show up in Gig Performer as another input or output MIDI device. Just send any MIDI data you want from one Gig Performer instance into a MIDI Out block for LoopBe1 and receive it in your other instance using a MIDI In block.
One caveat: make sure you are not using any MIDI In OMNI blocks if you’re doing this. Otherwise you will set up an infinite feedback loop because MIDI In OMNI blocks will receive all incoming MIDI data, including data you just sent out.
Related topics:
– Use a separate Gig Performer instance as your effects box
– Using Loopback to send audio from one application to another
– Multi-instance support (User Guide)
– Multi-instance launch on startup (Community)
– How to offload audio plugin processing to remote computers on your network using AudioGridder