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Wilsonic MTS-ESP manual

MTS-ESP and Your DAW

This chapter is where Wilsonic becomes useful beyond its reference synth: one instance of Wilsonic retunes every compatible synth in your session, in real time, while you design the scale.

What is MTS-ESP?

MTS-ESP is ODDSound's protocol for sharing tuning data between plugins in a DAW, automatically and invisibly, with no routing or setup. A few properties are worth understanding, because they explain most of the behavior you will see:

  • MTS-ESP does not use MIDI. Tuning data never passes through your DAW's MIDI connections; it is shared directly between plugins. Because the DAW is not involved at all, it works in any DAW.
  • There is one master (Wilsonic) that publishes a global tuning table, and any number of clients (your synths) that follow it.
  • Developers must explicitly add MTS-ESP support to a synth for this to work. ODDSound keeps a list of supported plugins and DAW setup notes.
  • Most MTS-ESP synths retune to Wilsonic the moment they load. Some have a preference you must enable first — Surge XT, for example, has an MTS-ESP setting in its tuning menu.
  • A synth's MPE support alone does not mean it supports MTS-ESP. They are different things, though MPE helps with the fallback described below.

Setup

  1. Load Wilsonic (AU or VST3) on a MIDI track. Keep it the only MTS-ESP master in the session, and check the status indicator is green.
  2. Load MTS-ESP-aware synths on other tracks. They follow Wilsonic's tuning automatically.
  3. Play the Wilsonic track's MIDI into the simple synth and A/B it against your other synths to confirm everything agrees.

Your software synths are the clients; Wilsonic publishes the global tuning table they all read.

Synths that do not support MTS-ESP

Synths without native MTS-ESP support can usually still be retuned using MIDI pitch-bend messages, and this even works polyphonically for synths that support MPE. The pitch-bend route needs a translator plugin that reads the MTS-ESP tuning table and emits pitch-bend in response:

  • Paid: ODDSound MTS-ESP MIDI Client, part of the MTS-ESP Suite.
  • Free: the Ableton Microtuner M4L device (in MTS-ESP client mode), and Xen MIDI Retuner.

Videos

I find these walkthroughs the fastest way to see a working setup: