Hi,
can someone please explain how to load Cantabile into my DAW (Cubase)?
I know its not a VST plugin but there must be a way to do that.
Do I need a second audio interface to run both at the same time?
It would be more helpful for me to answer that if I understood what exactly you were attempting to accomplish here.
You cannot “load” Cantabile into your DAW, but you can connect the audio and MIDI outs and ins between the two. You possibly can do this all using the same audio interface, but I’m not sure about that. You can connect MIDI between them using LoopMIDI and if working in WASAPI or WDM Windows audio you could use a virtual audio cable like VB-Cable or VAC.
(VB-Audio also makes a specialized HiFi Audio Cable for connecting ASIO interfaces with the Windows Audio system. found in the same VB-Cable link above.)
Terry
Well, Cantabile is more a performing tool, a DAW is an application for editing and producing.
With loopback I would only send audio data to the DAW but I need to work with midi data.
I would like to use Cantabiles performing features as well as its morphing tools within my DAW, how can I do that?
You cannot. Sorry. Cantabile is not a plugin. The best you can do is connect the outputs to the inputs of your DAW, though I do not know why you would want to.
Did you notice that Cantabile has its own recorder? It can record multi-track MIDI and Audio. Which version of Cantabile do you have?
https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/guides/recording (Cantabile Solo and Cantabile Performer Only.)
Terry
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Unfortunately, you can’t - both your DAW and Cantabile are VST hosts; neither will “fit” into the other; Cantabile is just not a plugin. The only thing you can do - as @terrybritton described - is connect both of them via virtual wiring (virtual MIDI cables and audio cables), so you can send MIDI data from your DAW into Cantabile to “play” Cantabile from your DAW like an external synthesizer and send audio back from Cantabile into your DAW to record the output. But you’ll still have to manage Cantabile’s configuration separate from your DAW.
Cheers,
Torsten
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This is not good at all. But thank you very much for your replies.
You still have not gone into detail how you wanted to use this combo. Elaborate a bit and we might be able to find a workaround.
Did you get to play with the Cantabile recorder any? It is as good as any DAW, and the MIDI and audio files it makes import into a DAW as multiple tracks very nicely.
Terry
Not sure why “this is not good” - we’ve tried to offer you options to use Cantabile in connection with your DAW; it seems that you are very much set on one solution - somehow using Cantabile WITHIN your DAW - and now you are disappointed that this doesn’t work. I don’t really get this disappointment - nobody ever claimed that this was possible.
But since you said that you want to use Cantabile’s performing features within your DAW, why not explore the options we offered you:
-
connect a virtual MIDI port (like Loopmidi) from your DAW to Cantabile; use the Background Rack in Cantabile to connect this virtual MIDI input port to “Loopback - Main Keyboard”. Now use the virtual MIDI output port in your DAW to send MIDI data to Cantabile. Now you can play Cantabile like an external synth in your DAW. And of course you can record, edit, slice and dice the MIDI data in your DAW like you would for a plugin or external synthesizer played from your DAW
-
to get audio data from Cantabile back to your DAW, you need to route Cantabile’s output through a virtual audio cable, as @terrybritton illustrated above - now you get audio data from Cantabile that you can record in your DAW and then process it with plugins, mix it, etc.
-
the only challenge in this setup is managing your audio connections - not sure if you need to use ASIO4ALL or Voicemeeter to combine your audio streams - otherwise Cantabile and Cubase will fight for the audio driver. @terrybritton is really the resident Voicemeeter expert - I’m sure he can construct a setup that lets you manage Cantabile AND Cubase with the same audio interface.
Cheers,
Torsten
3 Likes
Hmmmm - interesting challenge! I’ll bet Voicemeeter Pro “Banana” could solve all of the audio routing problems by making it the main Virtual ASIO device for Cubase and setting Cantabile to use Voicemeeter’s INSERTS engine to talk to Voicemeeter on its many available channels. (16 virtual ASIO MONO channels in Voicemeeter!)
I’ll have to play with that a bit to see if they can be run together that way. (If so, I feel another video coming soon!)
Terry
To add to what @Torsten said, if you really want Cantabile to run “in” Cubase, you could run an instance of Bidule inside Cubase, and have Bidule send audio and MIDI to/from Cantabile.
Cantabile was never designed to run in Cubase, in the same way Pro Tools, Logic, or Microsoft Word were never designed to run inside Cubase, and Cubase was never designed to host other applications like that either.
So unless you tell us firstly what you’re trying to achieve with Cantabile and Cubase, and secondly why it’s so important that Cantabile runs inside Cubase, there’s not much else we can help you with.
Neil
4 Likes
There has been talk in the past about Rewire support in Cantabile (which I assume would allow it to do what we’re talking about there)…
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My old post, which @FredProgGH linked to above, set out a fairly comprehensive reason for wishing to run Cantabile inside another host, either through ReWire or as a plugin.
It can’t be overemphasized how different the thinking is between running plugins in your recording DAW as opposed to Cantabile. The thinking, the outcome, the accessibility, the whole left/right brain thing… Cantabile was designed to PLAY. DAWs are designed to RECORD.
That’s why we have chosen not to use DAWs live, although most of us will have tried it at some point.
The only way it can really happen at this time is, as Terry and others have pointed out, by using software which allows Cantabile to plumb into the DAW via software hooks, or to use a dedicated second computer as if it were an external module. I’m doing that right now. It’s the lowest latency solution I can find. It allows me access to those setups which work so beautifully in Cantabile’s world and which I would like to record just as they are, without having to sweat it out using DAW architecture.
I would totally support the development of C3 as a VST plugin - and I believe it would vastly open the market up for Brad as well.
2 Likes
I totally agree with Ade.
I appreciate the replies I got so far but it looks like some people here are not really aware of what a DAW really is and what it is capable of doing.
In my second post I clearly described what I intend to do with Cantabile insinde my DAW.
Still people continue to ask what I´m trying to achieve with Cantabile in Cubase, this is really strange…
Thanks for the workaround with the external software but this isn´t working for me. I find it really complex and time consuming to get a connection this way.
I would as well support development of Cantabile as a VST plugin in the future.
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Just to set the record straight: I’ve been working with DAWs since the days of good old Steinberg Twenty-Four and then Cubit (which became Cubase) - so I’ve been around the block for a while. And @Neil_Durant and @terrybritton are two of the most knowledgeable people I know when it comes to computers and audio, so careful when suggesting people don’t know what they are talking about here - especially when these people are trying to help you.
And our questions around what it is you are trying to do stem from the very inconcrete way you state your requirements:
I would like to use Cantabiles performing features as well as its morphing tools within my DAW, how can I do that?
If you were a little more specific, we might actually be able to help - do you want to use Cantabile as an instrument (to play, record and process the sounds you create in Cantabile in your DAW) or do you want to use Cantabile as an effects rack within your DAW to process audio signals within your DAW? Or do you want to use recordings from Cantabile in your DAW?
Each of these scenarios has potential solutions - none of them plug&play, unfortunately, since Cantabile wasn’t built to “fit inside” a DAW - a little creativity and persistence is necessary. And there is a lot of competence in this forum among the people offering to help you - provided you don’t insult them …
I use Cantabile quite happily with (not within) Cubase: when I want to use the sounds I’ve created in Cantabile for my live setup within a recording, I follow exactly the approach outlined above - I connect Cubase to Cantabile via a virtual midi cable and record Cantabile’s output in Cubase (via the mixing desk function of my RME Fireface, which allows loopback connections, feeding output from one software into another - but you could also do this via the virtual audio cable approach @terrybritton illustrated). So it does work - and it’s not really painful once you understand the ins and outs of it.
Cheers,
Torsten
5 Likes
BTW: the simplest way to work with Cantabile and Cubase is one I use sometimes (when I’ve got my complete live kit set up in the studio): I run Cantabile on my live laptop and Cubase on my studio PC. I connect both the “traditional” way with MIDI cables (well, not quite: I use a USB connection via iConnect MIDI) from my Studio PC to the laptop, feeding the audio output from the laptop’s audio interface into my digital mixing desk, which in turn feeds Cubase. Again, just like in the good old days of hooking your DX7 up to your studio environment, just better 
This way, I have my trusted “right-brain” live environment as I know and trust it on one side and the systematic “left-brain” studio environment on the other side, with each of them playing to their respective strengths.
Cheers,
Torsten
1 Like
I’ll admit, that remark did make me laugh out loud, so thanks for that! 
No hard feelings - you’re new here. This particular forum has wall-to-wall pros frequenting the place, so you can set your worst fears to rest! 
Terry
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Hi Torsten,
I don’t think any offense was intended by the original poster.
If you take a look at Metaplugin, you see that it is a mutli-input /output plugin that could basically do, in the ugliest imaginable way, 99% of what we do in Cantabile.
And this is the point; that all of this software can achieve pretty much what any other package can do, but in the worst cases, you’d have to jump through crazy hoops to get there. Cantabile is our elegant solution.
Cantabile is a beautiful live host. It is not a DAW. And no DAW I’ve worked with would provide the comfort factor that Cantabile does.
But I very often want to bring into my DAW world the setups that are so inspiring in Cantabile.
So, Cantabile is not designed to be a plugin? Sure. But consider this:
A Metaplugin would be full of cables with PIZMidi all over the place to simulate the filters and splitters etc - and it would be possible, in theory, to get a transportable plugin which could be inserted into any VST /AU DAW and allow the precise setup of plugins to be recalled across any platform, from ProTools to Cubase to Sonar. And it would be ugly.
What would a Cantabile plugin look like?
I think it’s reasonably easy to visualize.
- It has a clutch of midi and audio i/o - just as Metaplugin does. That would be config’d from a drop down in the same way as any significant plugin, such as Kontakt, would do.
- It would grant access to all the plugins in the computer, precisely as any host would do - and as Metaplugin currently does. (I mention this only to remind us that this is technically doable.)
- It would be Cantabile inside a DAW.
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Hey Adrian,
not sure if any offense was intended, but at the very least I consider it rude to suggest that people trying to help don’t know what they are talking about, just because the solution they are suggesting is not the one that one wants. But that’s a matter of style - and de gustibus non est disputandum
I am not disputing that a Cantabile plugin could be useful - in fact, a plugin version (fully compatible to the stand-alone-program) of Cantabile would be ideal for some usage scenarios - I’d love to simply plug my favorite Cantabile setups into some of my Cubase (or Studio One or Mixbus) projects.
What I was doing (together withi @Neil_Durant and @terrybritton) was trying to help the original poster (@enCiphered) around the fact that Cantabile in its current form just is NOT a plugin and will not work WITHIN Cubase - suggesting a way to make the two programs work together, provided the OP could state a more specific usage scenario and would be willing to deal with some “wire and sellotape” complications to get them to work together.
The fact that Cantabile in its current form is not a plugin is a conscious design decision made by @brad, based on a certain product idea: a host program to use VST plugins live - and to me, it is the best available product for this purpose!
Based on this underlying product concept, having Cantabile available as a plugin for DAWs doesn’t look like a priority to me - there are a number of “meta-plugins” available on the market already - Plogue Bidule, or simpler approaches like Waves MultiRack or NomadFactoryMAGMA come to mind. In this, I don’t agree with you, @Ade - I don’t believe offering Cantabile as a plugin would significantly expand its market. The plugin market is already flooded; another “meta-plugin” wouldn’t make a significant difference. We love Cantabile because it is just a great live VST host - and we want to use it within our DAWs as an extension of this.
But I very much agree - to make Cantabile the ultimate live VST host, it could be easier to integrate Cantabile and a DAW - and Rewire would be a huge step towards this from a usability point of view. Just offer rewire ports as MIDI and audio input and output ports in Cantabile, then threading the two programs together would be a piece of cake!
Cheers,
Torsten
2 Likes
It was never my intention to offend or insult anyone, my apoIogies. And I´ve never sad that you or anyone else here doesn´t know what he is talking about, you should really read my posts very carefully.
I don’t agree with you, @Ade - I don’t believe offering Cantabile as a plugin would significantly expand its market. The plugin market is already flooded; another “meta-plugin” wouldn’t make a significant difference. We love Cantabile because it is just a great live VST host - and we want to use it within our DAWs as an extension of this.
This is because you have a very rerstrictive view of what could be achieved with a tool like Cantabile as a plugin within a host. Maybe you would understand what I mean if you were a producer, someone who is working every day in a studio and is not only dealing with live performance.
However, I accept that Cantabile was designed to be a standalone software for musicians and a real-time performing tool. But you are absolutely wrong when you say that it wouldn´t make a significant difference if there was a plugin version as well.
Maybe this is a cultural thing - but this again reads pretty rude and insulting. At the very least, you are assuming things about me (that I am not dealing with DAWs on a daily basis, etc. etc.).
Plus, have you considered that someone might simply have a different opinion (and a good reason to have it) and RESPECT that opinion (that’s what a constructive debate is about) instead of saying “you just don’t understand what I mean because you don’t have my experience”.
OK, I’m out of this discussion…
Cheers,
Torsten
5 Likes