Is there a VST you can load other VSTs into (NOOB - be gentle with me!)

Virtual instruments Virtual Effects and Add-ons
1

Dear Anyone.

I’m disabled, currently using 32-bit disability-friendly music software because I actually UNDERSTAND it and can’t find a teacher to show me the new stuff. Anyway, here’s the question.

Because it’s 32-bit, if you’re having to use - say - 6 different instances of the same VST - WHY aren’t they all multitimbral!?!, semi-rhetorical question! - to layer 6 of its sounds together, you run out of accessible memory pretty quickly.

I’m not a programmer really so I don’t even know if I’m in the right forum but ‘VST Connect’ SOUNDED right! My question IS - is there a VST that lets you SIMULATE multitimbrality? So I could load up this mythical VST, then load a non-multitimbral VST inside of it, so the mythical VSTs 16 channels could let me access up to 16 sounds in the non-multitimbral VST at once? That would mean I’d be down to only using 2 VSTs simultaneously - the non-multitimbral one and the mythical multitimbrality-simulator - instead of trying to load 6 instances of a non-multitimbral VST and crashing the software by running it out of memory!

I know the obvious answer is ‘learn 64 bit DAWs’ and I will as soon as I can find someone to teach me them but, in the meantime, does such a thing exist? 2 goals, if anyone knows a workaround. Goal 1 is to be able to access more than one sound in ONE INSTANCE of the sound-producing VST, even if it’s monotimbral. Goal 2 would be to be able to shove DIFFERENT monotimbral VSTs into one instance of the mythical multitimbrality-simulator, so I could take sounds from each of them and blend them together within the simulator. Then I could play one note in the DAW and it would play all the layered sounds simultaneously, not have to have a separate stave for each sound and be constantly remixing-them-on-the-go

Hope I’ve made the question understandable, taking into account I utterly don’t know what I’m talking about!!

Yours hopefully

Chris.

2

hi Chris, welcome. This is not the right forum, but that’s ok.
There are some concepts that aggregate plugins (Arturias Analog Lab for instance), or are multitimbral by design (like Halion), but I wouldn’t know of any 32 bit ‘host plugin’. Like pretty much everyone, you will need to make the transition to 64 bit at some point…good luck in any case!

3

What I didn’t exactly understand: Should the instruments combined in a VSTi be controlled simultaneously on the same MIDI channel?
Then you could take a look at the DDMF MetaPlugin:
Metaplugin - DDMF Supreme Audio Software

4

Dear Pat.
That’s EXACTLY what I meant and I’d never heard of your reply before - I’m going there right now (gonna have to re-read your answer to remember its name, am typing on top of it!)

Two great answers so far - I’m open to more and sorry I posted in the wrong forum, feel free to move me, it just LOOKED right by its name!

Yours respectfully

Chris.

5

You would still use the same amount of resource though as you would have to load into the vst host as many instruments as there are parts you want from it. You can’t change an instrument that is not multitimbral to one that is.

I personally wouldn’t want them to be multitimbral. This is a throw back from hardware synths. I want all my instruments on separate tracks as they are much easier to control.

6

If I understood you correctly, and depending on your needs, you may also consider the ultimate solution: Vienna Ensemble Pro.

7

Dear Mkok.
It’s just I’m trying to get my head around all of this - I’ve gone from thinking ‘there must be SOMETHING like this out there’ to being swamped by possiblities in one morning and I’m kinda trying to get the hang of all the different possibilities. I can get noise outta Plogue Bidule, which I’d never heard of and fell over by chance 2 hours ago, and I’ve got the demo version of Metaplugin which seems to be a FAR better (and FAR cheaper!!) version of Bidule, but I’m still wrapping my head around it… I love writing tunes but all this science makes my brain, such as it is, crawl out my ear!

Anywa, Mkok, got a ghastly question for you, sorry! Just pretend you had something like - for argument’s sake - Omnisphere (which I don’t KNOW if it’s multi or monotimbral, but pretend it’s mono.) If you wanted 8 Omnisphere sounds in your track, wouldn’t it use up hugely more memory to have 8 instances of the Omnisphere player than one instance with 8 sounds in it? And I know you say you like them on separate tracks cos it makes them easier to control but the bit that gets me as a MIDI composer is chords. If you’ve made A Unified Sound by layering the 8 Omnisphere sounds together, by having each instance on its own track you’d have to put in each note 8 times over, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t that be 8 times slower than being able to blend all 8 notes IN one instance of Omnisphere and just have ONE MIDI stave playing the whole conjoined bunch at once as One Sound?

That’s why I tend to flog the Korg M1 to death on my pieces, cos I can blend the sounds in the Korg Emulator and use one MIDI track to play the whole layered bunch! And you’re right, Mkok, I WAS kinda hoping to make a mono synth multitimbral through the back door. Dang!! But it’s still lovely to be able to blend sounds from different VSTs in one box and output the blended sound to one stave. Not great at doing it yet cos I’ve only had it a couple of hours but wow!! Question I’d love you to answer, Mkok, as you’re the expert here and I’m trying to learn, don’t you find it really slow inputting the same note over and over again on different sound-staves?

Maestro, Vienna Ensemble Pro’s even more jaw-dropping, it can link whole COMPUTERS together. I’d never even HEARD of any of these things before coming here - talk about hitting the right forum - but I’ll sure look at that. Think it MIGHT be a tad overkill for now, though! But it’s wonderful knowing about it. I’m going to practice linking .DLL VSTs together first before buying a bunch more PCs! (I know Vienna’s prob. the best of the lot but that would also prob. make it the most complicated so I think I’m gonna start off simple… I like simple… I’m a piano’n’synths New Age (AARGH!! the others cry!) kinda guy…!!

To all of you, thankyou for being so helpful. Not necessarily on this thread, but would it be OK to return to this forum to ask dumbass workflow questions from time to time? Keep hitting problems which I KNOW are easy-when-you-know-how problems but I can’t always formulate them well enough to GOOGLE the answers, this VST-joining thing was a great case in point, I’d not found any of these things in years of trying before you told me about them all. Thanks again!

Yours respectfully, hoping it’s OK to return sometime,

Chris.

8

I don’t think I have the same workflow as you do. I’m working mainly with drums from SD3 which can output to 32 channels in Cubase. I use a virtual bass and virtual guitars from ujam which again you don’t need to do what you do. I then have synth parts which if I want to layer I just copy the midi onto the other track I’m layering it with so I don’t have to put the midi in again. I do use spitfire orchestra and open a separate instance for every part of the orchestra. So far I haven’t ran into memory or power problems. I run with 32gig memory and a i9 9900k processor.

I actually started with Cubase on the Atari which was midi only and used multitimbral keyboards and modules. Over the years I have sold on my modules. I used to use halion in multitimbral mode which works reasonably well and you can enable multi outputs into Cubase but again I found it not easy to see exactly what was going on.

When I first started my head hurt so much I took two weeks of work to get my head found it all. That was back in about 1990!!

9

I doubt that this will take a turn for the better with any “all in one” plugin solution because the RAM or CPU consumption of each VST plugin instance will be still the same + the overhead of the “all in one” plugin itself.
best regards
Gerrit

10

Dear Gerrit.

I’m glad you thought of that cos I sure as heck hadn’t. So the whole thing boils down to lazy modern VST programmers making everything monotimbral because it’s easier that way, instead of multitimbral like the good ole Korg M1 Emulator?

Sheesh!!

Yours respectfully

Chris.

11

By no means, there are plenty of multitimbral VSTi’s (e.g. HALion can load/manage up 64 instruments/sounds at once) out there, but they require CPU and RAM to work flawlessly. And this can’t be ensured in a 32 bit environment.
best regards
Gerrit

12

Hi.

It is 64 bit only, but Unify (by PlugInGuru) is basically an instrument where you can build various layers combining severals instruments in one patch (supporting VST2/VST3/AU plugins). There is no multi-out support as of now, but it’s planned and coming at some point.

Cheers,
Mike