I checked Unify, but routing and depth of chain are thin for my use case. I suppose for the “states” I could just fudge it with multiple instances of Meta, each having their own setups within, and let Cantabile handle the switching. Do you see in issues with that approach?
That describes most of my guitar signal paths, unfortunately. LOL, I play like cr@p but I’m really good at the sound design part so people think I’m actually good. If they only knew…
I’ve demoed both Unify and Meta for a while and neither is ideal. But at this point I’m thinking Meta is less “non-ideal” for my use case.
I think the major roadblock using metaplugin is that its automation is not via MIDI. That puts another layer between you and remote control.
Plus, direct MIDI control is compromised on many VST3 plugins - you’re more likely to succeed with VST2.
So, a VST2 setup using something like S-Gear and NI guitar rig, which both have MIDI control, are reasonable candidates for use in metaplugjn.
Blue Cat stuff.
Plugins which have no MIDI control require a system that can bind MIDI to automatable parameters which you slog through in metaplugjn. Not every parameter is reported by some plugins … it can get frustrating.
Another reason why some of us were keen on a Cantabile VST plug-in. Oh what joy that would be.
I was just thinking exactly that! I am in the process of reproducing in Unify a few layered patches that I had implemented as “states” in Cantabile racks. In this way, it will be easier for me to use the same layered sounds in my DAW…so I thought: it would be great to have a plugin capable of loading Cantabile rack files, implementing the same MIDI and audio routings as coded in the file itself. It would not need to be a “Cantabile VST”. Of course it would need an audio and MIDI engine to process input and produce output.
The next thought was: a similar plugin exists! it is Unify! If only we could convert a Cantabile rack file into an equivalent Unify preset file…which apparently is just an XML file.
Now, I know that Unify architecture is not as flexible as Cantabile (e.g. you are limited to four aux buses). In that respect, it would be easier to implement the opposite conversion (convert a Unify preset into a Cantabile rack file). A clever conversion program, however, could exploit the fact that you can nest Unify instances within Unify itself…now that’s a task for much more than an afternoon of coding, so I do not volunteer for it. Just food for thoughts…and sorry for the OT!
Hey, I love these tangents!! If they’re seeding another thread, I’m all ears. This subject has come up consistently in recent years and there’s one core takeaway … Cantabile promotes the creative application of plugins that standard DAW architecture does not. Seeing as ‘performance’ is what makes music valid (regardless of genre or taste) it’s no wonder we desire to take this Cantabile world into our production world.
Ditto. There is a product/project known as KV Element that attempts something along those lines, meaning it runs both as a (very primitive) live host, and as a plugin similar to Meta, but its pretty rough around the edges and has gone open source, so not much in support available. That said I’ve experimented with using it to rack up a guitar FX chain for portability and it did work pretty well for that. Its a Juce project so its similar to Meta in how plugins route and midi connectivity, but limited to only eight parms…
I’ll take a look when I get chance (hopefully this week some time). In the meantime…
I think the problem here is that cubase/reaper aren’t using the Windows 10+ per-monitor resolution support that Cantabile is using. Cantabile does this to allow Cantabile’s UI to be hidpi and plugins to be mixed/scaled up.
Does the plugin appear correctly when hidpi and/or upscaling is disabled?
So I read your post on this topic, discovering a fun fact. In 1979 or 1980 I went in Milan during the music fair named SIM. At the time I was a kid, say 18/19, working as demonstrator for Mr. Monzino (now Yamaha Italy) in my area.
I met David Bristow and spent a whole afternoon talking of the CS-80. Also I met Mr. Gigi Tonet (I’m not sure if the name’s correct) and played with the Roland System-700, System 100M and the MC-8 sequencer. He tried to sell me his personal 700, unfortunately it was out of my budget. And, needless to say, I played a lot with the Mini, Micro and Multi Moog and the Taurus 2 pedalboard.
I also should have been in charge of the Lowrey organs, but I totally forget them.
I still have the “operator” badge in a closet. What a days!
Wow! SIM - that was it! I think I may have done a couple of those fairs - Who knows? Maybe we met! I do remember there was a guy there into the MC8 and System 700, but thinking back, he definitely fell into the trap of programming using Roland’s clunky “tap each command in from a prepared data sheet”. Horrible - took hours. Of course, what they failed to focus on in their manual was that the MC8 could actually record in real time… a WAY faster approach, notwithstanding the fact that it had no quantizing. But…! You could quickly review the recorded values and manually correct them to the nearest ‘sensible’ number. The other drawback was that realtime record killed the output of any other channels. This was corrected in the MC4, a far superior CV/Gate sequencer, which I loved until MIDI came along and killed it. I hung on to the bitter end:-)
I can still remember the very elegant Antonio Monzino. Quite an enterprise there!
There was a certain ‘Maestro’ whose presence on the stand always caused a stir. Not sure about Gigi.
Now you mention it, Lowrey! Norlin used to bring in wonderful organist by the name of Harry Stoneham who was well known as the band leader on the famous ‘Parkinson’ talk show in the UK.
First time I installed GX-80 demo, it ran for three weeks without any issue. Then I just updated the PC BIOS, right now this issue only appears loading the GX-80, all my other VSTs, programs and DAWs (the whole PC) are running smoothly.
