Hey, yeah this is a SERIOUS pain point for using EZDrummer3 VST3 in Ardour (on any platform). FYI, the plugin itself does work well on Linux when using yabridge, and that is what I will describe. Hopefully it works similarly under Windows if that’s what you’re using. Your are correct: EZDrummer2 had a VST2 plugin for which multi-out worked fine in Ardour, but EZD3 is VST3/AU/AAX only.
First to clarify Robin’s point about AU on Mac. I believe he means that the EZD3 AU plugin works as intended with multi-out in Ardour on Mac. Unfortunately AU is not an option for Linux or Windows and we are left with VST3, and due to Ardour’s internal implementation of variable/multi-out I/O, it can only ever see the first two outputs of any VST3 plugin. That about right, @x42 ?
I’m not familiar with Bidule, but here’s how I get things working with Carla in Linux.
1.) Add a MIDI track (you can leave the General MIDI Synth default instrument for now)
2.) Add as many tracks as you need to capture the output from EZD3 (eg, 16 stereo tracks)
3.) To your MIDI track, add an instance of Carla-Patchbay (32 chan)
4.) In your Ardour mixer you can get rid of the General MIDI Synth, make sure you’ve set your drum tracks to In
and at this point you should have something resembling this.
5.) Open up your Carla-patchbay instance and add the EZD3 VST3 (note in the right panel it indicates 32 Audio outs, yay!)
6.) Now wire up the audio outs from EZD to the Carla Playback outputs like so:
7.) In Ardour open up the output routing grid from your MIDI track and make the connections from the Carla outputs to the your Drum tracks* (see note below):
8.) Inside your Carla instance, open your EZD3 instance and set it to multi-channel out and start banging the drums.
Excellent!
*Now that you’re overjoyed that you have multi-outs working in Ardour, it’s time for a reality check. For some reason unknown to me, the outputs of EZD3 don’t seem to be going where I tell them. For example, if I solo the kick drum and tap it, the signal goes to my “Drums 9” track which would be 17/18 instead of “Drums 1” i.e. 1/2. I believe like EZD3 Outputs 1-16 go to Ardour 17-32, and 17-32 go to 1-16.
You may have to fiddle about with your track names, or rewire your routing grid. Once you get that working, I would definitely recommend saving a session template.
I hope this helps.
Rock on,
-Manuel