Buildout : VST Host

In order to use VST plugins, you'll need a VST host. There's a lot of options here. I've actually used Sonar in the past to host a few plugins that I controlled from MIDI keyboards, but there's Ableton, Cubase, "VSTHost", Cantabile etc...

Having tried out many of these, Cantabile is the one that easily won out. For a live setup, where you don't want to have to 1) touch any software or 2) be limited to 16 sounds because that's all the MIDI channels you have or 3) have to wait for your VST to load, you should definitely take a look at it. It loads all of the VSTs on startup, allows you to create programs (songs) that automatically map your MIDI input to whichever VST (and VST MIDI channel) and sets all of this up so that all you have to send from the keyboard are program changes.

You can download a 30 day full-featured trial at www.cantabilesoftware.com

Cantabile Setup
Here are some configuration settings I had to make in order to use Cantabile in a live setup :

Options->General
Saving and Loading-> Save Modified Sessions = NO. This is a MUST because if you don't set this, the program will prompt you to save each time you switch programs (songs). You'll be stuck on the same sound if you have no way of interacting with the software.


Options->Startup/Shutdown

Uncheck "Scan VST folders on startup" - this is just an effort to reduce loading time
Check "Prevent Power Suspend"


Options->Resources

Check "Don't prompt to reload configuration after crash". This is important if you use the Power Button on your PC to shut it down. For some reason, Cantabile doesn't exit gracefully, so if this isn't checked, when Cantabile starts next time, it'll prompt to reload the last session and you'll have to log on to the PC in order to click "YES".

Much more to come on using Cantible....

You'll want Cantible to load at boot.  You can either set this up in the Cantabile settings OR you can create a startup script like I did.  Here it is :

You can name it whatever you like, but you need to put it under the Startup folder so that it's loaded on boot. 

-----------START start_cantible.bat------------------

TIMEOUT /T 10

START "" /HIGH "C:\Program Files (x86)\Topten Software\Cantabile Performer 2.0\CantabilePerformer20.exe"

TIMEOUT /T 15

START "" /HIGH "C:\Program Files (x86)\Topten Software\Cantabile Performer 2.0\CantabilePerformer20.exe" "/config:Alt Config"

------------END SCRIPT---------------

NOTE:  this script loads two instances of Cantible.  I won't get into it now, but for a 2 keyboard setup, where you want each keyboard to be independent, you'd set each keyboard to transmit on different MIDI channels.  Then you can set up each instance of Cantible to load either the same or different session files and set up a global MIDI filter to only receive from the expected keyboard.  More on this later....