Experimental Vst host
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Ok, i'm not the chattiest person in the world... So, for those interested, here comes the news :
I worked a lot on vst3... my mistake, don't do that... ever. There's some good things in it but I still can't figure a way around the lack of raw midi messages. And I can't see the point, why the hell did Steinberg removed that obviously useful midi filtering capability ?
Anyway, the thing is : beside wasting my time, there's some improvement I'd like to extract from that -useless- vst3 version of vstboard. And, yes, I made that mistake : I thought that vst3 was going to be the next standard anyway so I jumped into it blindly, adding other improvements in the process, and merging all that in a new version -and there's a vst2 wrapper anyway !- So I thought I was safe... what a mistake ^^ Of course, because I'm a not-so-good-hobbyist programmer, all that spaghetti code is inter-dependent, and extracting the good parts from the bad mess could be time consuming.
So...
I usually jump on a task and work on it full-time until exhaustion, boredom or death. Unfortunately, this time, nothing releasable came out of it soon enough. After the -sick of it all- threshold, I usually drop the project entirely and spend 100% of my time on /anything/ else (mostly nothing) It's an endless -too much-, -nothing at all-, -too much again- loop and I'm right in the -nothing at all- part of it ('m fine, thanks for asking !) and can't predict when the -too much- part will kick back in again. But I suppose it will, eventually? Maybe tomorrow, or the year after... I'm not planning anything.
So by the meantime I encourage you to explore the enormous amount of very good, and sometime free, vst hosts out there. I think the idea behind VstBoard "panels" is quite unique (yeah, I'm proud of it), but the execution is... so-so... and will never be stable or optimized enough (still proud of it though, in a "not bad for a noob" way !) And if you find an alternative, some sort of "Cantabile mixed with Hermann's host" monster : please comment, links are welcome !
I'm still amazed by the good reviews and all the suggestions. Thanks for that, and to all those who downloaded that thing and gave it a try, I appreciate !
'til next time...
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hope your doing fine :) . if you ever come to portugal\lisbon, give me a ring and i'll buy you some beers. sad that vstboard died. it is unique software that is already complete (feature wise), .... it just needed to be stable.
ReplyDeletehugz
*grabs a beer* Cheers mate !
DeleteHI,
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to say "bravo" for all of this, Vst board I think brings sevral very good ideas, it is a nice piece of work.
About VST3, I agree with you, the MDI is missing in a way, at the same time I use it and I'm pretty happy with it.
The raw MIDI has been removed in sevreral host already and There is a reason, but this problem can not be fix by the host but by the plugins,
Anyway well done!
Hey, just wanted to say merci !
DeleteCongratulations on you achievements so far. I hope to see your ideas solidify further somehow, somewhere, sometime.
ReplyDeletegreat program, exactly what i needed and well executed and free. many thanks and best wishes! :)
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteIs it possible to use this as an Effect Chainer with a DAW like Cubase, Magix Music Studio or LMMS?
Thanks!
VSTmuseum
Hi, yes it's supposed to work as a VST2.4 plugin. I tried an old cubase, reaper, live and some other but every host has its own understanding of the VST api. so, it should be supposed to probably work in almost most of the cases, or something...
ReplyDeleteI´m sorry to hear that vstboard is beeing put on the shelf... on the other hand I can relate to giving so much of ourselves to a project and in the end feeling that the excitment is gone. So i understand! But hope it is temporary... vstboard is a great tool and it really works (for me anyway). As a guitar player, i never found a software package that "has it all" and with vstboard i´m able to combine a lot of them ie. gr5 effects with lepou amps, with a pitch shifter from waves gtr in front of it and recall the presets really fast, and controll everything via midi. So it is a great live tool that deserves the attention and the credit for all the work that has been put to it. I´m amazed that it hasn´t become a standard yet, at least for guitar players. So, I´ll keep using vstboard and advertise all I can, with the hope that someday the "too much" part kicks in for you!
ReplyDeleteBravo!
HI BROTHER,
ReplyDeleteI WANT TO THANK YOU FOR THIS LOVELY PIECE OF SOFTWARE. ITS TOTALLY AWESOME. YOUR A GENIUS MAN. I PERFORM LIVE AND I USE IT FOR MY SYNTH AND GUITAR RIG. THE SOFTWARE WORKS FLAWLESSLY. THIS IS THE BEST VST HOST OUT THERE. IT ALMOST REMINDS ME OF THE DAYS WHEN I USE TO PATCH STUFF WITH MY OUTBOARD GEAR. I HOPE IT GETS SUPPORT AGAIN. LOTS OF LIVE MUSICIANS WOULD PAY TO USE THIS WORK. PLZ LET US KNOW IF THERE ARE ANY PLANS AHEAD. LIFETIME SUPPORT FROM OUR SIDE ALL THE WAY.
Thanks guys, glad to know that some of you are actually using it ! Of course I planned to use it myself but I accidently crashed my band before I had the chance to try it :D
ReplyDeleteThis vst is quite an asset. This vst works better than sonar x1's compatibility and isn't as prone to crashing. The only issues I have is the automation: zero point doesn't seem to know it's there all the time, I think the actual zero is a hair above the registering zero point or something because I try to use stuttering sound effects and it oftenly hangs on another number if I hit zero, but if I put the setting of the automation an increment above, it acts proper and resets the stutter sound effect point and doesn't hang on a seemingly random previous parameter directly before(the zero point is supposed to reset and refresh the audio effect looping to the active sounds playing, and the value after is supposed to capture the audio looping points for time based stutter for every increment).
ReplyDeleteNo idea, seems like the host doesn't receive the very last value, or zeros are ignored somewhere...
DeleteHI RAPHAEAL,
ReplyDeleteTHE CABLE FROM MIDI TO PARAMETER [AFTER LEARN] TO THE ACTUAL PLUGIN PARAMETER [ AFTER LEARN] BECOMES A LITTLE THICKER OR BOLD. AND THEN THE MIDI CONTROL FOR THAT PARAMETER DOES NOT WORK FOR SOME PLUGINS. IT WOULD BE GREAT IF YOU GIVE ME ANY SUGGESTION. THANKS.
Hi, thick cables are for delay compensation. When a plugin in the chain needs some time to process, the signal sent to the other is delayed to keep everything in sync. So the problem might not come from the plugin with the thick cable. But I don't know why it stops working in your case, might be a bug in the host or in one of your plugins...
DeleteDamm!! this is a good program and a good source for understanding how to use qt to develop powerfull audio programs. I'm a noob programmer and I was trying to compile this with qt5 but digia changed a lot of stuff, so I tryed to make a port but theres parts of the code I don't understand. Let me know if you are going to port this to Qt5 or if you are intrested in the small parts of the code I've ported.
ReplyDeleteI don't plan to update it, but you can still send me your code, just in case
Deletehi bro,
ReplyDeletedo you have any idea why the vst plugin gui's disappear in reaper x64 when using them in the vst version of vstboard. thanks
Sorry I didn't reply; but no idea. There's some specific code for reaper because it handles windows in its own special way; but it was only tested with a very old version back when reaper was free... Unfortunatelly every host is different and I can't test them all, that's the main issue I had with VST
DeleteHow can I make VstBoard to save its settings locally when used as a VST?
ReplyDeleteIn the tests I've done, when used as a VST it saves its settings globally and then it's impossible to use multiple instances of it, since the changes of one instance affects the others.
If this is not possible please tell me and I will modify the source code to include this feature.
Thanks in advance.
IIRC, the parameters are stored by the host like any other plugin. But I haven't used it in a while and I don't even a host installed to test it :/ Feel free to check the code, but it was my first "big" project so it might not be the nicest code around :)
DeleteYou're right! The problem is that I was saving the plugin state as a program rather than as a bank. Thank you for such an amazing plugin !
DeleteThis is the best software I use, I use it more than My daw.
ReplyDeleteI use ut while setting ut my recording chains and premixing the signal in using vst`s which I save as presets, and reliad in my daw on my raw recorded tracks, soon my Audient interface will have a firmware update to activate a DSP mixer service on the hardware, then I`ll hace 1-3 ms latency depending on the software threading from VSTboard and plugins, and will be able to record the mixed signal for reference mix tracks, or even to keep as is!
It`s a sad thing that you decided to stall the development of this minotaur of a usefull software. I just love it, wish I was able to send you a bootle of wine as a Standard sound engineer curstesy to show my appreciation.! :)
Dear Sir CtrlBrk,
ReplyDeleteVstBoard is absolutely amazing! It is incredibly useful. Thank You very much for this freebie!! Is there any chance that You will continue and resume its developments?? It would be really great if You would return to it after almost 10 years. =)))
All the best,
AM
Is there somewhere a manual which can help me out with this?
ReplyDelete