Turbo Play Router

Turbo Play! works quite differently from most sequencers you have seen so far, but yet it is very simple and very flexible to create any sort of sequence. Taking a few minutes to read this text will provide answers to any questions you might have and help you understand the flexibility that Turbo Play offers.

In TP, there are devices. A device is something that can accept data or send data. Each devices can have some midi ports or some audio ports. What you basically do is to add the devices you want and connect them in order to produce the desired result. All the devices are accessible through the Device Menu.

TP devices can be:

ASIO - Steinberg's driver to read or write audio.
MME - Windows drivers to read or write audio .
VST - Effect to process midi or audio. Note that TP does not distinguish between "VST Effects" and "VST Instruments". All are effects with some (or none) midi and audio ports.
MIDI IN - Read-only drivers to read midi data.
MIDI OUT - Write-only drivers to write midi data.
Tracks - Midi/Audio data
Net - Read/Write device to transfer data over TCP/IP.
DirectX - Effects to process midi or audio.
Mixer - Devices to hold, mix, receive and send data.

All of these devices have input and output ports. They also appear to the Visual Linker. Once there, you can draw "cables" between them to specify how the sound will be transferred between them.
To Link a device means to connect it with another device.

Now see a sample of the Visual Linker:

What do we have here?

An ASIO device with 6 input ports and 6 output ports (EDIROL FA-66)
A VST (Async) with one midi input and one audio output (Midi = green, Audio = red)
2 audio tracks and 1 midi track
A mixer with 2 midi i/o and 2 audio i/o. If you use all available ports, the mixer automatically adds more ports.
A MIDI out device with 16 channels (SB Audigy Synth A [E880]);

See the 6 links between the devices . They tell TP how the sound should go from one device to another:

(1) The audio track goes to mixer.
(2) The midi track goes to Asynth VST.
(3) The VST output goes to the mixer, and its mixed with the previous input from Link 1.
(4) The audio track 2 goes to the mixer and gets mixed with everything already there.
(5) The mixer output goes to your ASIO driver.
(6) The midi track goes to your MIDI driver.

See also the Automatic Linker and the Intelligent Linker.

That way, you can prevent TP to make assumptions on what will be sent and where. You create the sequence manually and bypass any limits (like having a VST locked for 1 track for example).

The way you will connect your VSTs can also take advantage of a multicore CPU (if your PC has one). For more on this, see Multicore.