VST Host Program

exhnozoaa

exhnozoaa

New member
G'day
I've tried searching, but I've failed to find anything, so I thought the newbie forum would be a good place to ask:
Does anyone know of a free and lightweight program that can apply VST effects to live audio? Kind of like using your computer as a guitar effects pedal, where the signal comes in, gets processed, and is returned to the speakers/headphones without recording.
I know both Audacity and Wavosaur can use VST plugins with recorded audio, but I can't seem use them without recording... So if there is a way to do this with either program, please share how.
Thank you
 
Thank you; that looks likw what I'm looking for. However, the download links are broken (or I'm having random DNS errors, which is pretty likely...). I'll check it out later.
Thanks again

Edit: I found a mirror (Softpedia). I'm not exactly in love with the program (yet), but thanks; I think it is what I was looking for.
 
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moresound said:
Is this a hungry program?
Click to expand...

Resource hungry?
It has a CPU monitor built in, and the usage depends mostly on the plug-ins. Most of the VST effects I tried used under 2% of my processor (Phenom II X4 925) and most of the VSTi instruments used between 5% and 20% of it.

On a pretty unrelated note...
So far, it seems to only support one plug-in at a time, and it doesn't seem to allow VST effects to be used on the VSTi instruments... Maybe I'll discover that I'm wrong in the future.

Some more somewhat related, but kind of unrelated info:
It's a 422 kb download in a zip file. Once you extract it, you have an exe and a dll (I'm on a different computer right now, so I don't have the size). It doesn't need installed, so you could just put it on a flash drive, or anywhere on your hard drive, or I suppose you could even use a floppy at that size... :P
 
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exhnozoaa said:
Resource hungry?
It has a CPU monitor built in, and the usage depends mostly on the plug ins. Most of the VST effects I tried used under 2% of my processor (Phenom II X4 925) and most of the VSTi instruments used between 5% and 20% of it.
Click to expand...

That's not bad. Is it pretty cool for what your using it for in live work?




:cool:
 
moresound said:
That's not bad. Is it pretty cool for what your using it for in live work?
Click to expand...

I'm not really using it for anything live publicly; I just wanted a light weight program to play with VSTs and my guitar without loading my DAW (FL Studio... I was kind of surprised to find that no one really uses it here...) or for when I'm on another less-powerful computer.
[I edit my posts WAY too much...]
Honestly, I feel like this little program is more of a hassle than loading FL Studio, but I might still use it on other computers when I can't spare the resources.

ez_willis said:
people use reaper live.
Click to expand...

I just downloaded Reaper yesterday... I don't quite like/understand it's interface for effects yet, but I'm sure it will seem like a better option after I have a chance to work with it more.
 
exhnozoaa said:
I'm not really using it for anything live publicly; I just wanted a light weight program to play with VSTs and my guitar without loading my DAW (FL Studio... I was kind of surprised to find that no one really uses it here...)
Click to expand...

You mean FL Studio ? Oh you mean fruity loops?




:cool:
 
moresound said:
You mean FL Studio ?
Click to expand...

Yeah... I was surprised to find that no one really seems to use FL studio.
I probably just like it because it was the first thing I started using.

Edit: Yup; fruity loops. It doubles as a DAW and a tasty cereal!

Edit again: I have a newb question... I have been using DAW to refer to the music production software... Is that incorrect? I see now that it can be the whole environment for recording, or dedicated hardware...
 
I can't believe I didn't see this before, but I stumbled upon another VST host program called VSTHost: http://www.hermannseib.com/english/vsthost.htm

It's a 932 kb zip which extracts to 2,169 kb. Like minihost, it does not need to be installed.

So far, I like VSTHost better than minihost.
However, every time I start VSTHost, it's confused about my audio devices, but that's fixed easily enough under Devices->Wave... (that's a menu path... which may or may not be obvious... I guess it's obvious now though...). Plugins are loaded from a section at the bottom of the File menu, which was a little hard to find at first. It supports both VST's and VSTi's, and VSTi's can run through chains of VST's. That may or may not be possible in minihost; I don't know how if it is possible. VSTHost has a nice visual representation of the effects chain, but it could get a bit messy/confusing.

Using DSK Virtuoso (VSTi with (up to) 6 instruments) and GDelay, my CPU usage peaks at about 5% according to the task manager. It's also using 373,648 kb of memory... Which seems really high... It might just be because of the DSK Virtuoso plugin; it has samples of quite a few instruments.

So... I prefer VSTHost. If you're looking for a VST host program, you should try it.

ez_willis said:
here's a link to the thread. the first response sounds like what the OP is looking for:
Click to expand...

I know this is really late, but thank you for finding that post about using Reaper like that. I had been doing the same thing with fruity loops, but I was looking for a lighter program... But Reaper is lighter.
I just haven't put enough effort into learning how to use Reaper yet... Maybe some day I will though. I like how easy it is to record with Reaper, but I just don't like it's effects interface... yet.
 
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