I picked up a deal on SampleTank 3 a while back and just got around to installing it on my PC (Win 7). The standalone version works fine, and have linked it as a plugin to Sonar Platinum, but I notice that Sampletank 3 uses the VST3 format. Tried to get Cantabile 3 to include that file as a plugin but get the message that VST3 files are not supported in Cantabile. Did a search on the forum here and saw Brad’s note that he had issues with the VST3 format with OPX and stopped development, but I didn’t see whether that also applied to PC/Win users.
So to be clear… Are VST3’s currently not supported in Cantabile 3 for PC/Windows?
I saw a couple past posts where there was discussion on VST’s and several mentions of folks discussing use of Sampletank3, so is there a way to access Sampletank3 as a plugin within Cantabile 3??
After some research on the web, appears there is an option on Sampletank 3 during installation to set it up as a VST2. I must have missed it during the install, so I will try to reinstall it and see if that option is available.
Did the reinstall of Sampletank3 and saw the setup screen that enables selection of VST2, VST and audio options. I checked the VST box and after the reinstall, found the sampletank3.dll file in the VSTPlugins folder I specified. So I will be setting that dll file up in Cantabile 3 and trying it all out!
It definitely works in Cantabile 3. I did the setup for ST3 very easily in Cant3, but have so far only tried a couple of instruments (mainly horns) from ST3. Sampletank appears to have a lot of tweaking capability for their sounds, so making a time investment in developing a couple of most-often used instruments, will be required to get the best quality from ST3.
Based on my experience so far, I would suggest working with the standalone option of ST3 and developing the instrument sounds the way you want them and store them into user presets. Then use Cant3 to host ST3 and use Cant3’s features to route the sound through any additional effects you like, etc. Yes, you can link ST3 to Cant3 first and use the edit option to tweak the instruments in ST3, but I personally found it simpler to first deal only with ST3 standalone and build a sound library which is what I have currently been doing.
IKMultimedia seems to offer some very good deals every few months. You may want to keep an eye on their website and look for one of their promotional offers.
