Hi, complete novice to DAWs, VSTs etc and have just downloaded Cantabile after reading lots of good reviews. How do I go about downloading and adding VSTs. Where is a good lace to start? Many thanks
Hi Jim, welcome to the forum.
First of all, A DAW is designed specifically for studio work, e.g. multitrack recording.
Cantabile is not a DAW, itās a host program designed for those who use plugins (VSTs) and hardware gear in live.
This doesāt mean that you can use it at home for fun.
The choice of the plugins is a personal matter, depending on what kind of music you play, what instruments you are interested in. Lots of things.
Another point to consider is whether you are interested in free or paid plugins. They can be inexpensive or extremely expensive, although never as expensive as the original instruments they recreate.
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Thank you. Yes it would be for live performing, totally new to this so excuse the incorrect terminology. Either paid or unpaid, depending on the sounds. I mostly play a variety of 80s music.
Hi @Jimbob33 and welcome.
When I started using Cantabile, it took a while before getting used to the concepts and terms of the vst world.
I would start with some free vst plugin. Good places to look for them are the bedroom producers blog
and Kvraudio (search for ākvr free vst pluginā).
Make sure you understand the difference between 32bits and 64 bits plugins (and vst versus vst3 formats).
You have to create or choose the folders where vst plugin will be installed on your pc and you have to configure cantabile to look for plugins in those foldersā¦you can find all the info in the video tutorials on youtube, in the user guide and searching this forum.
All the best,
Gabriel
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If you are looking for a great first VST, I would suggest either Surge or Dexed. Both are free. Surge does pretty much any synthesis you can imagine and comes with lots of presets. Dexed is a very accurate recreation of a Yamaha DX7 so it is good for 80s music.
https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/
- Paul
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Thank you. I will give it a go.
Hi Jimbo33,
Welcome to the forum. The free Martinic ComboF and ComboV are emulations of Farfisa and Vox Continental - preceded the 80ās but worth checking out.
MiniMogueVA is an excellent Mini Moog emulation.
I have managed to buy several Cherry Audio products at a big discount. You should get on their mailing list. Check out GX-80, Polymode, Chroma and CA2600
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And donāt forget Vital! One of the first synths I installed and still my go-to!
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Great, thanks.
Thank you, will give it a look.
This here may help you on your first steps - still very much work in progress, but you may find some useful information for getting your feet wet.
Cheers,
Torsten
Definitely +1 on the MartiniC organs. The Farfisa is actually better than any other VST Iāve tried, and much better than the ones in most workstations. It really nails the āice-pickā tone of the MTB circuit!
discoDSP has a free version of their OB-X/Xa clone. I eventually sprung for the paid version.
Cherry Audio has a free version of the Oberheim SEM, which will do a lot of polysynth things, if you use several instances and a split point or two. CA also participates in some online bundles from time to time: I picked up their CA2600 (ARP 2600), Memorymode (Memorymoog), PS-20, and Galactic Reverb, plus a lite version of their Voltage Modular series ā all for $20US! And none of the CA products is more than about $69US.
Lastly, the Kilohearts and PizMidi libraries are very nice to have, and free. Neither one is an instrument per se, but they provide a lot of useful processors and utilities that can stretch the abilities of what you already have.
Thanks for all of the advice and suggestions. Has been really helpful. Slowly starting to get to grips with the basics!
To add to the suggestions for plugins, I like plugin boutique: https://www.pluginboutique.com
They have a selection of free plugins and occasionally expensive ones for free!
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