I’m sure a few of us are familiar with and probably own Vienna Ensemble Pro server. It’s a a very utilitarian piece of software designed to host plugins and present them in its own mixer environment which is then plumbed, over ethernet - or even on the same computer - back into your DAW. On the DAW you simply insert the VEP plugin which connects the contents of the VEP server(s) back into the DAW.
Great for big orchestral templates. Set it and forget it.
Cantabile is software we love to PLAY, It is designed to allow performance - and to provide access to our plugins in a way that, at least for me, is a totally different experience from using them in a DAW - or VEP for that matter.
All of this preamble is to say that I love playing Cantabile and have a setup plumbed into Nuendo, basically operating like an external module. Technically it works well enough for what it is …but as I was setting up a VEP ‘frame’ today, I thought 'WOW - if Cantabile could be that server, what a creative monster it could be.
No way would I prioritize this against the current Cantabile development, but one can dream. And I think it could provide a major cashflow in Brad’s direction.
If you’ve never seen what VEP does, check out this routing video - then imagine bringing your Cantabile keyboard, guitar and FX setups into your DAW - even being saved as part of the DAW project as VEP optionally does.