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 | | | | Mar31Written by:Bruce Richardson
Wednesday, March 31, 1999 6:00 PM  Hey, if you've been coveting those groovy VST plugins floating around the web for free, but have a DirectX-only digital audio workstation, it's time for you to get happy. Amulet Audio Software, a UK-based software company, has released VST Adapter, a DirectX shell for VST plugins.
VST Adapter is great news for the musician on a budget. There are dozens of totally free VST plugins on the web that can be yours for the price of clicking a few links.
There's one minor catch: those plugins are free, but the VST Adapter is not. Price of admission is fifty bucks. Still, it's a pretty sweet deal. For the price of one cheap DirectX plugin, you get the dozens of freeware VST plugins that are out there already. New ones appear all the time. Some even come from Steinberg, including a very cool autopanner. Free.
. VST Adapter running in SoundForge 4.5 "adapting" the Waldorf D-Pole Filter
Since ProRec is a virtual magazine, I decided to conduct a virtual interview with the author of the VST Adapter, Angus Hewlett. I'm cutting and pasting, OK? Just thought I'd disclose that...
Angus, the VST Adapter is a cool idea. What made you decide to develop it?
Several reasons. My motivation for writing it there and then was because I needed to understand how VST plug-in hosting worked for another project. Because there's not much documentation on exactly how this should be done, I wanted to see how it worked in practice.
Secondly - the DirectX plug-in interface is, frankly, a bit of a nightmare. This explains why (a) a lot of people experience many crashes with certain plug-ins, and (b) why there's a large number of free VST plug-ins but hardly any DirectX ones. Basically, if this adapter means developers can get on with writing good-sounding FX instead of worrying about the intricacies of the DirectX interface, then it's done everyone a favor.
Finally, because of all the cool Freeware that's out there that I wanted to be able to use in Sound Forge (although the majority of our customers so far have been users of Emagic's Logic Audio).
So what was your biggest challenge in developing this plugin?
The biggest challenge was getting the adapter to work well with all VST plug-ins. Now, there's something like a hundred freeware VST plug-ins, and another fifty or so commercial ones. The problem is that how exactly one should go about hosting them is not all that well documented - there was a lot of trial and error to get everything right. Plus, as a new company, there was no way we could afford to buy all fifty commercial plug-ins. We used demos where possible, but there were a couple of four-hour round trips to see beta-testers with better collections than us and figure out exactly why x or y was causing problems.
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OK, fifty bucks still sounds pretty cheap, so what's the catch?
First, you'll find a considerable amount of duplication among the available freebies.
Second, what's there is largely techno-oriented processing. You'll find more than a few tempo delays, wave scramblers, and other tools of the technomeisters in the collection, and precious few basics like reverbs, compressors, EQ's, and the like.
That's perfectly all right. There's a big upside as well. These guys are developing little gizmos and gadgets that the mainstream developers don't make, for whatever reason. So even if it's just a little two-knob envelope follower, you're still getting a useful tool.
I spent about two weeks with the original VST Adapter. In practice, VST Adapter feels almost exactly like DSP-FX. Its "shell" has two functions. You load plugins into it with one button, and use the other button to pop up the chosen effect in its own window. On installation, you're allowed to choose your default plugin directory, and it pops up in a standard Windows open dialog every time you hit the load button.
My biggest complaint about the first version? The name of the chosen effect did not appear anywhere in the VST Adapter. When several VST Adapters were used in a given mix, it was difficult to remember which effect was loaded where. Luckily, others had the same comment. Before I even spoke with Angus about this, he sent the 1.01 update, which has a more polished look and clearly displays the name of the plugin.
Neither VST Adapter, or any client plugin has crashed on my system in the 30-odd hours I've had it running. That was my other initial fear--that the quality of the freeware plugins might suffer due to the low budgets involved in their production. However, that concern seems to be a nonissue at this point. For whatever reason, it all works just fine.
I have tested on Windows 98 only...that's what I have, and that's what gets tested.
While I was writing this an email just popped up on my screen. It was Angus... with good news and bad news. Bad news: they have discovered an NT display bug. Basically, on some machines it doesn't work. Good news: it's fixed and in beta. An update is due very shortly. If you're an NT user, then download the demo to see if your machine is one of the damned, otherwise wait for 1.02.
I am shying away from discussing the freeware plugins themselves, because frankly, there are just too damn many, and I don't have time. The best way to find out about them? Go to Amulet's website, at http://surf.to/amulet and start surfing the sites listed in their "about" page. Also, this is a motherlode of links:http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=cubase;list, there's plenty of free stuff there.
There's stuff available that none of the mainstream companies are offering, and a few of the plugins are outstanding, comparing with the best of commercial releases. Better yet, some of the tiniest and simplest freebies are the coolest. They tend to do one thing well, and consume a fraction of the resources of more robust plugins.
Bottom line? I think fifty bucks spent on the VST Adapter is fifty bucks well spent, especially if you're someone that leans towards techno or electronica. Since I started using the VST Adapter, I've used several instances of it in almost every mix. It's not like I don't have other choices. It's just that the VST Adapter doubled those choices, all for a few bucks and a couple of hours cruising the net for the freebies. I guess that really says it all.
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