Plugins, VST, DX???? what??

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WERNER 1

WERNER 1

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Ok, thanks to everyone here I've finally got my humble "Home Studio" set up about 6 months ago and I'm groaping my way through laying down some basic tracks using AA 1.5

There are some reverbs and what not in there, but none of them sound all that great to me (they may just need to be tweeked???), but I keep reading about all of these "Plugins", and I have no idea how they work....

Could some one break this whole Plugin's thing down for me r e a l l y s l o w l y so that I can get a grasp on how these work, and how to impliment them in my set up / studio.

Any help and info on this would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks,
Rick
 
Are you familiar with how old school studios worked? For every new effect you wanted in your studio you pretty much had to go out and buy a new piece of gear. Want another reverb sound... you had to go buy a reverb processor and run the thing through an aux send/return on your mixer and the list goes on with compressors, EQ, and any other effect or processing you can think of. Now with computers.... we can do all of this through software.... no cables required.

So you can get plug ins that do reverb or chorus or whatever else you can imagine and load the plugin in your software to supply the effect you want.


On to VST and DX. Those are just standards... like VHS and Beta, both will show you the movie. The difference being is that most DAWs can load both VST and DX effects. Neither is really better than the other. VST is the plug in standard that Steinberg came up with and DX is the plug in standard Microsoft came up with. It all comes down to what the programmer decided to use and as with all of this stuff... if it sounds good, it is good.

Then to make it even more confusing, there are other plug in formats out there. RTAS and TDM are propritary plugin standards only used in ProTools and AU is a plug in standard used on Macs. However, on PCs, 99% of what you find is either VST or DX.
 
An example of VST Plugin use with Sonar Cakewalk HomeStudio 4XL:

I have a project with 5 guitar tracks, 2 bass tracks, and 4 drum tracks. Using VST plugins I could put reverb and compression on guitar track 1, delay and chorus on guitar track 2, EQ, Limiter and reverb on guitar 3, rotating speaker emulator, EQ and flange on guitar 4, EQ guitar 5, EQ and compression on Bass 1 and compression and delay on Bass 2, compressor, limiter and a bit of reverb on the 4 drum tracks somewhere, you get the idea.

Assuming that your PC has enough resources to run them, you can add countless plugins to individual tracks or mix to sub-groups and add the same effect across the whole mix without having to add the effect to each individual track seperatly. It leaves alot of room to tinker and play and tweak to your heart's content. There are tons of free plugins, though there are definatly some cheesy free plugins out there too, and not all of them are worth having. On the opposite side, there are plugins that rival rack gear in respect to price, whether they are worth the cost is beyond me, I haven't taken that plunge yet, but I'm having a swell time with the free ones! :D
 
i just got the wavelab vst plugins. havent used them yet i will later tonight im also considering the samplitude 8. when i use aa 2.1 and go to load plugins i have stuff from all my recording programs. i was just wondering how compatible they are? is there big diffence between samplitude and wavelab?
 
Thanks for the replies guys!!!

OK, I am very familiar with the old school way or running effects through the aux's :cool: :D

So say I download one of these free plugins, what ever it may be, : How do I get it from the downloaded state into my AA1.5 and then go about using it???

Sorry for the remedial questions :o

Rick
 
It should be a case of download, decompress the file (winzip, zip winrar etc)into where ever you're host prog is based boot up the host program (cakewalk, steinberg etc) & the host should have located the plugin. Go to a track select whatever it is that will list FX & presto hopeso.
For Cakewalk I downloaded these - not tried all yet
bjflangr
freeverb2
blueline2
these goodies were gratis.
Good luck
Cheers
rayC
 
Last edited:
WERNER 1 said:
Thanks for the replies guys!!!

OK, I am very familiar with the old school way or running effects through the aux's :cool: :D

So say I download one of these free plugins, what ever it may be, : How do I get it from the downloaded state into my AA1.5 and then go about using it???

Sorry for the remedial questions :o

Rick
Click to expand...


Yup, what he said.. There si areally nothing to it. If you can install software, you can add aplug in. DX plugs usually come with an installer (just like installing WinZip) and VSTs, well, see above. Copy the DLL into your VST folder and you are off to the races.
 
I TRIED THE WAVELABES PULGINS, and it loaded right up with sonar 5, but icant find it for aa2.1 is it compatible with both of them?
 
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