The VST or the DAW

[PabloHassan]

So, my thinking goes at first, that a VST that doesn't load in a DAW is the fault of the VST. Back in the day I also heard that VST's act wonky on pirated DAWs. Who's right and who's wrong? Bitwig, ACID, Reason can't have me have ultimate creative freedom in the Cypher 2 FX section. Does the DAW have to take the blame? The VST? The programming format? Who? I Want to enjoy myself, and not dread that I wasted my money on a soft synth, that doesn't work at all finding itself in my creative workflow.

Reflection - in this case, it is the synth. Proof? It crashes even in standalone.

[Michael L]

KVR feels your pain

[BertKoor]

"VST" is a rather fuzzy contract between DAW and plugin. It is not very clearly documented what the mutual expectations exactly are. It is a small miracle developers are able to get things working in general.

But we have the whole spectrum:
* plugins that barely run in the only daw it was tested with by the dev
* plugins that run fine in all popular daws
* daws that are very picky with what plugins you load
* daws which will take any plugin you can throw at with no sweat

Some devs (of both plugin or daw) are better at testing out exceptional situations and finding ways to deal with that gracefully. Some daws for instance let plugins run in their own process, so when the plugin crashes it cannot take the daw with it.

You can avoid the rotten apples. Do your due dilligence by reading honest reviews.

[BONES]

The obvious answer is to see if it crashes in every host application or just one, although sometimes it can be a plugin issue that only manifests in a particular host because of some obscure process that one host does slightly differently. But you can always download and try out a trial version of a plugin, so you shouldn't have to waste your money.

On the subject of money, there are plenty of affordable host options, you should not be using a pirated DAW.

[harryupbabble]

to initially "check" vst plugins, i have only two freeware to do it:
1. minihost by tobybear
2. vsthost by hermann seib

but i find that 99 percent of the freeware vst plgins that i have...
does work in reaper
it's really not a problem
but i am living in the past
the past had a lot of free goodies that i can use for my...
incredibly shitty "songs"

[RunBeerRun]

Thanks for the Tobybear Minihost reminder, I want to try that one again.

[harryupbabble]

yup, yer welcome, man

too bad toby quit being a developer (or did he?)
he had interesting, useful stuff
i guess freeware doesn't pay the bills
shucks though
there goes lots of interesting developers out the door

hey, i just realized that led zeppelin's last album had a dirty title:
"in through the out door"