VST Plugz - RTAS Wrapper

[Charles Dye]

I'd love to hear about your experiences with VST plugz.


What are the coolest eqs + comps?

The baddest delays, verbs, choruses + flanges?

The best saturation + distortion plugz?

How bout instrument plugz?

And anything else VST.

And about using the VST wrapper in RTAS (Pro Tools).


What wrapper do you use?

How well does it work?

What are the pitfalls + drawbacks?

What's great about it?

I've not had a lot of experience with VST, but I've heard alotta great stuff.

Thanks!

[mrufino1]

Hi Charles,
As far as I know, the only wrapper is the one by fxpansion. I still am using version 1 and haven't had any problems, although some of my older vst synths don't seem to be workign as I found last night. But it is very transparent, you won't even know it is there. As far as vsts, check out www.digitalfishphones.com- compressor, gate, de-esser, transient designer/ saturator- really great stuff. You're on a mac, correct? Kjaerhus audio makes great stuff (their free series is amazing) but it is PC only. SSL makes the listen mic compressor plug, which is free. Also, the coolest vst synth ever- Delay Lama. just try it- I bet you'll use it on something!

[MacGregor]

Hmh, there are about one zillion VST plug-ins available, so I'll give
you a more general feedback:

- stability: at least on my DAW (Cubase/Nuendo based) null problemo,
VST effects and instruments run smoothly here, even the free ones.

- VST instruments: GREAT! If you've ever maintained a real Moog,
Arp, DX7, B3, ... you'll just love the VST emulations available.
They stay in tune all the time, are easier to program and cost just
a fraction of the original hardware, not to mention the portability
and storage space differences. And you'd have a hard time
differentiate them from the 'real' thing.
Not to mention the synthesizers which aren't available in hardware
(Absynth) or the endless possibilities with modular synthesizers
(Reaktor).
Oh, and I forgot the sample players, with 24 bit sample libraries
for less than 1 grand they smoke hardware players.

VST instruments were the main reason for me to jump on this boat.

Some links for the interested:
Native Instruments Synthesizers (http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=synthline_us)
Native Instruments sample players (http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=samplingline_us)
Arturia vintage synthesizers (http://www.arturia.com/en/default.php)
Spectrasonics (http://www.spectrasonics.net/index.html)
East West (Sample libraries) (http://www.eastwestsamples.com/)
...
...
...

I'm sure I forgot a lot of good ones (heck, I even have to think
hard to remember what I use. It's early in the morning!).

[otek]

Will you listen to an AU guy? :lol: :Roll eyes:

I'm gonna mention a couple of plugins that don't get talked about much, the first is a freeware plugin called the Camel Crusher (http://www.camelaudio.com/camelcrusher.php). It has a lot of nifty tweaking possibilities, including a blend control. I use it a lot on drums, and set a certain way it seems to do a bit of "transient designer"-style tricks. The filter and distortion are highly usable, too.

The second is the TrackPlug (http://www.wavearts.com/TrackPlug5.html) from Wave Arts. What I like about this one is the immense tweakability. You can add up to 10 bands of EQ (of a variety of types) and do double compression (it has two compressor cicuits, selectable characteristics). It has high- and lowpass brickwall filters, a gate, key filtering and sidechaining options and a selectable limiter on the output.

Short of making the coffee and giving you an Under-Icon Fellatio Special, this plugin does it all. :D

[MacGregor]

[...]
Short of making the coffee and giving you an Under-Icon Fellatio Special, this plugin does it all. :D

Damn, I read "Sort of making the coffee and giving you an Under-Icon Fellatio Special, this plugin does it all."
and ordered the VST version of it.

[Charles Dye]

Great replies! Thanks!!

And I'm not AU prejudice, post away. :Thumbsup:

[Comte de St Germain]

I'm on a roll with these guys lately, either way the plugs are so inexpensive ya gotta try em.

For 910/949 stuff and more:
http://www.audiodamage.com/images/product/screen/ad011_screenshot.gif


For Lexi 200ish plates:
http://www.audiodamage.com/images/product/screen/ad012_screenshot.gif

[Comte de St Germain]

For some analogish delay:
http://www.audiodamage.com/images/product/screen/dub_screenshot.gif

[Comte de St Germain]

And Otek is right, Camel crusher is cool as are their Camel Phat and Camel Space plugs.

[Fulcrum]

VSTIs: MacGregor nailed a lot of my go-to kit. I use a lot of the same instruments as he does-- NI**, Arturia, Spectrasonics. I'll add TickyClav (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/190.html) for modelled Clavinet, Tapeworm (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/900.html) for firing Mellotron samples, and Lounge Lizard (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/2360.html) for modelled Rhodes. My preferred piano these days comes from Garritan Jazz & Big Band (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1883.html) library-- a very nice and punchy jazz Steinway.

Other synths I have used and will likely use again: impOSCar (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/608.html), Sampletank (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/28.html), Korg Legacy Collection (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/462.html) (especially the Wavestation), Morphiza (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/687.html) for cheezy combo organ timbres, Crazy Diamonds (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/193.html) for ARP Solina/String Ensemble stuff, Augur (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1066.html) for Prophet 2000-style vector stuff, and String Theory (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1074.html) for organic-sounding string models (I used it on all three of the CAPE IV songs on which I appeared). EDIT: Completely forgot about Superwave (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/708.html), which is as intuitive as any Minimoog and very, very sweet-sounding.

VST fx: I tend to stick with the Waves SSL channel strip and the URS Fulltec for my EQ needs. If I need more stringent filtering, I get it from either Little Duck (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/309.html) or North Pole (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1793.html). Comp/limiter wise, it's either L3 (L1 if I can get away with it) or one of the URS plugs.

Two of the three reverbs I reach for more often than not are VST (the third is a DirectX and so not under discussion): Glaceverb (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1566.html) has a nice sheen that sits well in my mix, and I've started messing with an IR called Pristine Space (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/931.html) that came bundled with Sonar. Emulating guitar tones is a bit of a challenge for the time being (I'm taking lessons now), but I get a halfway decent sound tweaking Rock Amp Legends (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/989.html) in the chain.

Phaser of choice: Supaphaser (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/970.html).

I'm starting to get a little more into granular FSU effects, so I've been having some fun lately with Glitch (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1904.html) and vReorder (http://www.vellocet.com/software/VReorder.html).

** - I am about to start expounding on NI's Reaktor in my Modular Tutorial.

[MacGregor]

Ah, with links included! You da man, Fulcrum!

I'll have a closer look at TickyClav and Glaceverb (which I
already own, but never found the time to test it.

And been fully awake now I remember that I own Garritan Jazz &
Big Band as well. If you're in Latin stuff the brass section is very
handy. Sits in a mix perfectly.
And while we're at it, Garritan's Personal Orchestra (http://www.garritan.com/GPO-features.html) is a steal as well,
not as realistic as VSL but very easy to handle and like the
above works great in modern music.

(BTW, I generally prefer Garritan's libraries in modern music, VSL
is IMO more for 'real' classical music).

So much plugs and so little time to use them all.
We're living in a nice time.

[Edit:] ...and you mentioned Voxengo's (http://www.voxengo.com/) Pristine Space: I own five or six
Voxengo plug-ins and they are all really good. A bit CPU hungry, but good.

[Charles Dye]

Awesome pix, Comte!

And great links, Fulcrum + Mac. Thanks.

Killer info guyz!!

[otek]

And while we're at it, Garritan's Personal Orchestra (http://www.garritan.com/GPO-features.html) is a steal as well,
not as realistic as VSL but very easy to handle and like the
above works great in modern music.


McGregor,


What's your opinion on the Quantum Leap Platinum Orchestra?

Have you worked with it? I hear a lot of good things about it.... it appears almost the size of VSL, but is supposedly sampled with a more spacious sound.

[Shan]

I'd love to hear about your experiences with VST plugz.

The best saturation + distortion plugz?

Now that we have some serious smokin' native computer power with these Quads and 8-cores, we're definitely going to see more and more dynamic and time-variant convolution plug-ins appear out of the shops. Here is a possible golden gem(I havent tried this yet): Nebula 2 (http://www.acusticaudio.com/)

How bout instrument plugz?

I'm a HUGE fan of Additive synthesis. It's definitely king but very difficult to program for the average user since you are dealing with hundreds to even thousands of partials(sine waves) that make up the final sound. I've been programming synths way to long. :icon_eek: Here is another golden gem that I love(It's been RTAS for awhile though): Cameleon 5000. (http://www.camelaudio.com/cameleon5000.php)

And here is my final golden gem: Pentagon I. (http://www.rgcaudio.com/pentagon_I.htm)

And anything else VST.
And about using the VST wrapper in RTAS (Pro Tools).

One day I'll post the story of how we even got the wrapper in PT. You'll be surprised. :icon_eek:

Shane

[knightsy]

What other VST->RTAS wrappers are there besides the Fxpansion one?

I like the Digitalfishphones Blockfish for mild vocal distortion (using the Drive knob).

[MacGregor]

McGregor,


What's your opinion on the Quantum Leap Platinum Orchestra?

Have you worked with it? I hear a lot of good things about it.... it appears almost the size of VSL, but is supposedly sampled with a more spacious sound.

I've never worked with QLPO, but there were some nice
discussions about QLPO (http://www.soundsonline.com/product.php?productid=EW-155) vs VSL (http://www.vsl.co.at/) with some fellow film composers
over in the Northernsounds forum some years ago.

Consensus was:


both are VERY good, if given in the right hands it's hard to tell
them apart from the real thing (well , for non-AEs).

VSL needs a bit more learning and tweaking before it sounds
right because the sounds are very dry and raw.

VSL's performance legato is a class of it's own

QLPO sounds better right out of the box, but obviously the
included space information limits its flexibilty.

There are lots of happy campers on both sides, so I think
personal taste/money will be the deciding factor (some guys
even use both).
I went the VSL route because the basic part of it was included
in Native Instruments Kontakt (http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=kontakt_us) player.
Quantum Leap's Colossus (http://www.soundsonline.com/Quantum-Leap-Colossus-pr-EW-164.html) (which is another recommendation from
my side as a sound library for general use) has some of the
QLPO sounds included, so I could have gone this route as well.

Oh, and while we're at it (I knew I forgot some more nice libs)
Quantum Leaps RA (http://www.soundsonline.com/Quantum-Leap-RA-pr-EW-163.html) is pretty much a must for ethnic sounds,
and I can play for hours with their Stormdrum (http://www.soundsonline.com/Quantum-Leap-Stormdrum-pr-EW-162.html) library.
Both are amazing!

These days, the time to learn and use your tools is the limiting
factor, not the the quality anymore.

[Charles Dye]

Maybe there aren't any other wrappers, but I've got somethin scratchin @ the back-a-my-brain that says I've heard something about it.

Could be dead wrong on this.


And thanks once again everyone for sharing your experiences with all these great link rich posts.

[otek]

I can play for hours with their Stormdrum library.


Amen to that.

Stormdrum has to be one of the best libraries/VSTi's out there.

A classic.

[Shan]

Maybe there aren't any other wrappers, but I've got somethin scratchin @ the back-a-my-brain that says I've heard something about it.

Could be dead wrong on this.

Ya, Lebolt at Digi actually mentioned this quite awhile ago in one of his "Dave's Dirt" columns in Digizine. It's been so long I kinda of figured it wasnt going to happen.

Shane

[spkguitar]

The only other one I've heard of is Plogue Bidule (http://www.plogue.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=35), which seems to be a lot more that just a wrapper, but will do the job.

I prefer the FXPansion one. Simple and straightforward.

[rockdart]

Sorry... what's is this "wrapper" of which is being spoken of? This is a term I'm not familiar with.

[MacGregor]

Sorry... what's is this "wrapper" of which is being spoken of? This is a term I'm not familiar with.

A wrapper 'wraps' an additional shell around something.

In this case it's a software that has one 'side' which can handle
Steinberg's VST plugin protocol, and another 'side' which can
handle Digidesign's RTAS protocol.

Its VST side wraps around the VST plugin an let it look like
a RTAS plugin to Protools so you can use it with Protools

[rockdart]

A wrapper 'wraps' an additional shell around something.

In this case it's a software that has one 'side' which can handle
Steinberg's VST plugin protocol, and another 'side' which can
handle Digidesign's RTAS protocol.

Its VST side wraps around the VST plugin an let it look like
a RTAS plugin to Protools so you can use it with Protools

Thanks! My mind is already whirling with possibilities now.:Thumbsup: