Sorry if this has been covered before, I did some searching but couldn’t find anything.
Is there any possibility of Cantabile ever functioning as a VST hosted by another application? I’m thinking of something like Guitar Rig or PodFarm that’s standalone for live use but can also be hosted by a DAW for recording.
I can use ReaRoute to send clean audio to Cantabile for processing through my racks. This works but it’s kludgey and time-based effects can’t sync to Reaper’s metronome.
I currently save a patch for each plugin in Cantabile and load them into Reaper. If I later tweak the sound in Cantabile, I have to repeat the process. I suppose another option would be the ability to save a Cantabile rack as a Reaper FX chain which would be fine for Reaper users but useless for other DAWs.
I’ve looked into both Rewire and a VST version of Cantabile in the past but in reality the demand for both is not great and there are more important things to focus on right now.
Current thoughts: VST version is unlikely, Rewire support more likely, VST bridge is another possibility.
I would find rewire support a GREAT value.
I would love to bring Cantabile’s architecture into my DAW and I’m betting that once the option was available it would enhance sales too.
Being able to integrate a performance setup into a DAW is an extremely exciting concept to me.
Cantabile promotes the union of plugins in a very different way from most conventional DAWs. A kind of left brain / right brain thing.
@brad I think Rewire support will change the way people talk about Cantabile; not only as a stage utility, but as a studio enhancer which allows entire setups to used with any DAW that supports Rewire.
I’ve pulled this conversation up again, as whilst I could not really see the point of it at the time, I am now seeing the point, for at least part of Cantabile now I am getting deeper into using VSTs live.
For me, even if making Cantabile fully available in another VST host is not feasible (or quite hard and not worth the effort), it would be really nice to have a VST “wrapper” for Instrument racks, even as a standalone VST.
My use case for this is best explained as an example. In my Live rig I have an instrument rack for GSI VB3 and IK Multimedia Leslie. It has all the inputs abstracted, for lower manual, upper manual, control.
When I am learning songs or building backing tracks for Welsh Floyd, I am working in Cubase, tracking against the original songs and I want access to my Hammond (in a Cantabile Rack). I am currently having to do this in Cubase by
Setting up an Instrument Track hosting VB3, which will cover upper manual
Adding the Leslie as an Insert
Setting up a MIDI track for lower manual, routing to the Instrument track
Setting up a MIDI track for the control channel to control the Leslie speed
All channels need “real time” monitoring set so they are always active (e.g. when not clicked on them)
And I have to do this in every song I am working on, so a bit of a faff and clunky. It would be so much easier to be able to load an existing “Cantabile Rack” VST, load the instrument rack and away you go.
Arguably, you could say I will still end up with the same config of tracks in Cubase, but it would be much cleaner and make use of the racks as I have them (so easier to setup), and I am sure there are more complex rack permutations out there that users would love to be able to pull into a different VST host, that a Rack Wrapper would support quite neatly
Thoughts?
@Brad is that feasible, and much simpler than trying to wrap all of Cantabile as a VST?
Love the idea of a VST “Rack Wrapper” - would make it a breeze to use my pre-configured instrument racks in production setups. And with only rack input and output ports to deal with, this could be far cleaner than a full-blown Cantabile setup within a DAW.
That’s what I was thinking. A full blown “Cantabile as a VST” may b quite a tall order, but hopefully a “Rack Wrapper” would be much simpler to consider, but probably extremely useful to those of us who want to use the same configs in Cantabile live and in in a DAW for recording/production. Worth a thought anyway
I don’t think so unless I am missing something. I am registered and logged in, but a comment on “About the board” says that users can comment and vote, but nothing else.
No, you’re right Derek, I had not looked at the suggestions part in a long time and I did make suggestions there early on but as you pointed out he recommends doing it here now. So … I am wiser for having looked at it again.
Well, I don’t expect to put the worms back in the can, but …
I’m finishing a small recording project, adding overdubs to what we did in the studio. I have my C3-Backup computer with Babyface Pro connected to my (aging) PreSonus 1818VSL via TosLink as ADAT into my studio computer. I get 4 stereo outs at a time from C3 to Studio One. I have a setup in my _FinalOut Rack that handles mapping all of my Cantabile instruments to ADAT out. I get all my Cantabile Racks with tweaks, effects, customization, etc. directly into Studio One (no A-D/D-A conversions). I’m playing keys and EWI as overdubs easy-peezy. This just doesn’t seem that hard. I just don’t see the benefit of Cantabile as a VST when there are simpler options. Wouldn’t we rather see Brad work on the Mac version? or VST3? C3 as a VST would be a yuuuge project. Maybe Rewire someday, but as a VST? TBH, just don’t see the benefit.
I don’t think those options are simpler. How can they be? Additional computer, interface, project settings not recalled…
The simplest thing is to have those perfected racks available, and recallable, from a DAW project.
As mentioned, ad nauseum, above - there are also powerful marketing avenues for this facility. Thanks for bringing the topic up again, @Derek.
I agree with Ade, I don’t really want try and link to my gig PC/rack, where the interface I use does not have any digital IO. Good that you can of course, and that it works for you. What I want is to have a configuration of VSTs I use live in Cantabile, replicated in my DAW, which I am currently doing manually. Think of the convenience of being able to just load a Cantabile rack to do that.
You could argue, this is really no different then to treating my gig PC like an external hardware synth, but it’s still not as neat as working in your DAW if you can, instead of deling with multiple bits of hardware and external routing.
Just to be clear, I am not looking for all of Cantabile to be hosted in a DAW (that could be very huge and of little point (to me)) it is creating a wrapper for instrument racks, which I think would be a much smaller ask, and would be really useful.
All opinions are valid of course; we all have different priorities on features and work flows
Sure, but some truths are self evident. I’ve been using another laptop plus interface to achieve Richard’s suggestion for some time. I guess it’s exactly that real world experience that confirms, IMO, that there’s nothing simpler than loading a DAW project and the whole thing just being there, as saved.
It’s come up several times as to whether this is a priority or not. Posts which take that tack simply shut down the conversation. Without doubt, that is a subjective question for us users - but not for @brad.
Only he knows what constitutes a priority.
If Metaplugin is valid solution, then Cantabile is many times that solution.
