I’m an absolute beginner in VST Host and I’d like using Cantabile.
I want to send the system audio output (PC Windows 11 pro) to Cantabile, then insert a VST3 into cantabile and send to output.
Hi Angelo58,
Welcome to Cantabile!
What you want to do Cantabile will do nicely. I recommend that you start with some of the excellent documentation. Go to the Cantabile website-Support-Cantabile Guides, or Videos. The first video is about getting started.
Cheers John
Hi @Angelo58,
welcome to the forum.
In order to capture the system audio into Cantabile, you will need some kind of ASIO-compatible virtual audio cable.
Cantabile usually exploits an ASIO (Audio Stream Input Output) driver to talk to the audio hardware “directly” (i.e. not going through the system audio). The audio hardware is usually a dedicated audio interface, connected via USB to the PC.
Therefore, you need a software which presents itself as an ASIO driver to Cantabile but it is also capable of accessing the system audio and send it to Cantabile.
An example of such a software is VoiceMeeter. In VoiceMeeter, you have channel strips like in an audio mixer. You can direct the built-in microphone of your PC to one of this strips. Then you can use the “Inserts” of the strip to make the audio go through Cantabile. The setup is illustrated in this video, made by @terrybritton
There are probably other ways to obtain the same result, but this one is the first which came to my mind. Others could probably suggest something better or more up-to-date.
All the best,
Gabriel
P.S. In the video, Terry assigned “A1 ASIO Input Left” to the first strip. In your case you probably need to use “MME Microphone” to capture the audio from your input mic. There are also ways to direct the audio from applications to Voicemeeter (e.g. a youtube video). This probably involves selecting VoiceMeeter as the default audio device in Windows (not sure about this) so that applications will direct their audio output to Voicemeeter.
Edit: see also Terry’s post here:
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If you have any trouble with the above, holler for me and I’ll see the notification in my email.
Terry
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Thank you, very kind.
What I really can’t understand is how to do something that would seem trivial and instead you have to follow complicated paths. For example, I open my browser and go to the YouTube page and start a video. I don’t like the audio of this video and I would like to modify it with a vst equalizer, compressor or something else. After passing through this VST, in real time, the audio returns to my output, the PC speakers or the audio system.
Hmm, someone gives you a detailed explanation on how to do what you want and all you do is complain that it’s complicated??
The “trivial” thing is that you need to find a way to send audio from all of your Windows applications to Cantabile instead of your audio interface. That is the purpose of a tool like Voicemeeter - it shows up to Windows as an audio OUTPUT device and provides what gets sent to it to other applications (e. g. Cantabile) as an INPUT device, so that they can process it and send it on to a physical output device.
There’s a bit of plumbing involved to do that - explained above…
Thank you, it’s clear to me. But I tried with Voicemeeter, but nothing moves. Even a single example would suffice. I open Edge, start a video in the browser, and Voicemeeter captures it and presents it as input to Cantabile.
I can’t.
Essentially, Voicemeeter creates a virtual audio device, to capture audio from applications. To make audio from Edge go to Voicemeeter, you’ll need to change your standard windows audio device to “Voicemeeter Input” instead of your audio device. Now all audio from Windows (including the Edge browser) will go to Voicemeeter instead of to your audio device.
Then you’ll need to configure Voicemeeter to provide the audio stream to Cantabile as a virtual ASIO device so Cantabile can process it. That’s what @terrybritton is describing in his video.
The whole process is a bit complicated, but that’s because you need to divert the standard Windows audio path to flow through a processing chain:
Windows sound → Voicemeeter → Cantabile → Audio device
So you need to fiddle with audio drivers and ASIO drivers - no way around it. Watch the video and read the Voicemeeter manual - you’ll need to learn your way around this stuff. No simple two-click-approach to it…
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Thank you. I managed to put Voicemeeter and Cantabile together and also insert some VSTs in real time.
I don’t know how I did it, but the suggestions and examples I received were useful to me.
Now I’m trying to send the Cantabile output to a Upnp DAC. I was hoping it would be simpler. In some players that I use, my Upnp dac already appears among the audio devices. But as a Cantabile I don’t know how it can be done.
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Having the box checked that said “Shared Sound” made all the difference for me getting Cantabile to output via WASAPI into Camtasia’s “System Audio” track.
Have not gotten it to work with ASIO inputs yet. But other software works fine with Voicemeeter as the go-between in virtual-ASIO mode.
Terry