Having stopped using VST instruments in Live I'm getting amazing stability. But...

I would still like to get some value for money out of the VSTs I have paid for. So I need a program that can host VST plugins and also act as a rewire slave, to allow me to run the plugins in another process.

This is basically the only functionality that I need. So what is the simplest and cheapest way to achieve this on a PC?

Any ideas or experiences of doing anything similar with Live much appreciated.

Plogue Bidule

http://www.plogue.com/?page_id=56



"Slave cum"..... hehehehehe

^^^

Thanks for the link.

I might well end up buying Bidule ore Energy XT or something like that. But they have far more functionality than I really need or am ever likely to use.

Ideally I'd like a simple VST shell program with rewire capability.
VST shells exist but I've not found anything with rewire so far, just ASIO and MIDI.

Xlutop Chainer

http://www.xlutop.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHRfFy1sLOw&fmt=18

(edit) Maybe no Rewire - I have never used Rewire, so I am not even sure what it implies. Chainer is still very cool though, and I might be crazy but it seems like it makes stuff within it run more smoothly than from without! Super solid piece of software, hasn't need an update in forever, despite it's popularity - it just works!

^^^

Thanks, I'll check that out.

Rewire lets you route MIDI and audio between a Master and a Slave application. I'm hoping that I can run my plugins in a separate app and conect via rewire to prevent Live crashing or locking up. I've found that SampleTank, WusikStation and Ivory Pianos all work badly in Live.

I downloaded the trial of Bidule and it is working great so far with SampleTank, but £60 seems expensive for what I want to do.

Not expensive considering what it can do though.

Did you really just drop the c-word outta nowhere like that?

Haha, WOW bro.

cum
1  /kʌm, kʊm/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [kuhm, koom]

–preposition
with; combined with; along with (usually used in combination): My garage-cum-workshop is well equipped.

I was going to change the thread title, but it seems to be providing some amusement.

I Had a look at Xlutop Chainer, it has no rewire, but I'm going to see if it helps by just wrapping the vst inside another vst. I did try something similar using Energy XT to wrap Sample Tank in Live 6 but it didn't really help.

So far Rewiring via Bidule seems solid, but it's overkill for me.

Maybe I should try and sell my Sample Tank, Ivory and WusicStation Licences and force myself to use exclusively Live devices.

Or else wait for Live 9 and hope that it resolves some of these VST compatibility problems.

Yeah - there is a lot to be said for sticking with Live (especially if you have the Suite). I think Live makes most sense when you don't use any plugins - its all about workflow, and the more native Live stuff you use, the more it flows. That said, it sounds like you might want a good piano instrument... Live one isn't great...

I really hate using rewire or syncing separate programs - it totally screws with my productivity...

have you reported the problems? Things like that are more likely to be bugfix updates than Live 9

Ivory Piano and Sample Tank are already on their list of problem VSTs. Some Time ago, on a previous version of Live, I sent them a detailed analysis of my problems with Sample Tank, with a live set that reproduced the problem every time. Their best advice was to disable multicore support, which is not really something I want to do. Creating a reproducible bug report is quite a challenge because the nature of the bug is to crash or lock up live at random

Wusic Station has problems on Vista. I need to get the latest update and try again.

I agree, using Live with only native devices just feels right. Never Crashes, no toggling between windows or digging around in the task bar. But I'm reluctant to give up on my investment + Sampletank seems a bit more RAM friendly and does have some excellent sounds.

I actually quite like the EIC grand piano though, once you get used to the velocity mapping.

I know it's does WAY more that you need but have you tried the VSTs that don't work well with Live in Reaper? http://www.reaper.fm
It's free and supports Rewire so you could use it with Live.

I checked the Reaper web site and as far as I could tell it only worked as a Rewire Master. But seeing as it is free to try I will probably download and check if it can work in slave mode.

Thanks for helping.

edit: downloading now....

edit: installed - and there it is in the start menu "REAPER (rewire slave mode)"

edit: using Reaper as Rewire Slave hosting SampleTank with Live as a Rewire Master = very unstable.