KVR Audio

AVBunyan · Post by **AVBunyan** » Sat May 14, 2005 1:26 pm

Greetings - new to forum - site looks great - I'm getting back into home recording - haven't touched in over a year.

Currently I am using Cakewalk HS 2002 - looking for decent DX plugins (expense a concern)- (I'm assuming my CWHS will not work with VST?) - Just want compression, chorus, delay, reverb - any suggestions?

Thanks and God bless!

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Sat May 14, 2005 2:01 pm

AVBunyan wrote:I'm assuming my CWHS will not work with VST

It will if you get the DX-VST Adapter which will open you up to loads of VST plugs,a ton of them free and inexpensive,otherwise your choices will be limited.That should be your first purchase.

AVBunyan · Post by **AVBunyan** » Sat May 14, 2005 2:50 pm

Alan wrote:It will if you get the DX-VST Adapter which will open you up to loads of VST plugs,a ton of them free and inexpensive,otherwise your choices will be limited.That should be your first purchase.

Thanks Alan for you tip!
I'm not a complete "cheapscape" but are you saying:
1. Free VST Plugins will do an adequate job for what I'm doing (which is just trying to get simple clean audio tracks)
2. Are VST plugins superior to DX - if so then I would be willing to purchase some though my budget is sparce!?!?

My music is primarily piano, flute, acoustic, JV1080 - I have a poor voice so I don't sing much!

Thanks again

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat May 14, 2005 4:13 pm

AVBunyan quoth
I'm not a complete "cheapscape" but are you saying:
1. Free VST Plugins will do an adequate job for what I'm doing (which is just trying to get simple clean audio tracks)

There are free, and cheap, plugins available which will are far better than merely 'adequate', yes.

2. Are VST plugins superior to DX - if so then I would be willing to purchase some though my budget is sparce!?!?

They're not intrinsically superior because they are VSTs. But there are far more plugins out there which are VSTs, and enough which are superior to many of those which are DX only.

AVBunyan · Post by **AVBunyan** » Sat May 14, 2005 5:26 pm

whyterabbyt wrote:
There are free, and cheap, plugins available which will are far better than merely 'adequate', yes.

They're not intrinsically superior because they are VSTs. But there are far more plugins out there which are VSTs, and enough which are superior to many of those which are DX only.

Thanks whyterabbyt - I have the VST adapter now and I'm experimenting with some stuff from thes site - any good ones you like?

Thanks again

MacQ · Post by **MacQ** » Sat May 14, 2005 5:49 pm

Hi,

Check out the Kjaerhus Classic series plugins. I use the Classic Delay in every track, it's brilliant.

http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/

Also, check out the Luxonix LFX-1310 -- it's a multi-effect unit and you can get some great sounds out of it:

http://www.luxonix.com/home/en/

Both of these are also great developers, and write excellent software for reasonable prices.

Good luck,

~MacQ

AVBunyan · Post by **AVBunyan** » Sat May 14, 2005 6:14 pm

MacQ wrote:Hi,

Check out the Kjaerhus Classic series plugins. I use the Classic Delay in every track, it's brilliant.

http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/

Also, check out the Luxonix LFX-1310 -- it's a multi-effect unit and you can get some great sounds out of it:

http://www.luxonix.com/home/en/

Both of these are also great developers, and write excellent software for reasonable prices.

Good luck,

~MacQ

Thanks MacQ - will try them!

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat May 14, 2005 6:18 pm

For dynamics and verything, Kjaerhus seconded. For more dynamics, the TBT stuff mentoned in the News section at KVR has been recived well. And the Digitalfishphones stuff.

For reverb, try Ambience and maybe Glaceverb. Plus get hold of SIR and some good impulse files.

Delays, and the like, there are a lot of. Kjaerhus again. Plus Smartelectronix have Supaphaser which is one of the best phasers. mda's flanger is good, as is all of their stuff, really, including their delays. Simple no-fuss stuff. And Alexey at Voxengo has some nice freebies like EQs and delays.

AVBunyan · Post by **AVBunyan** » Sat May 14, 2005 7:04 pm

whyterabbyt wrote:For dynamics and verything, Kjaerhus seconded. For more dynamics, the TBT stuff mentoned in the News section at KVR has been recived well. And the Digitalfishphones stuff.

For reverb, try Ambience and maybe Glaceverb. Plus get hold of SIR and some good impulse files.

Delays, and the like, there are a lot of. Kjaerhus again. Plus Smartelectronix have Supaphaser which is one of the best phasers. mda's flanger is good, as is all of their stuff, really, including their delays. Simple no-fuss stuff. And Alexey at Voxengo has some nice freebies like EQs and delays.

Thanks "whyter" - I copied your post into a doc and will save, research, and experiment!

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Sun May 15, 2005 5:01 am

Yes,the free Fisphones bundle is an absolute must as the included Blockfish compressor is one of the best native comps out there,free or otherwise.Go here to get them http://www.digitalfishphones.com/main.p ... &subItem=5

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Mon May 16, 2005 8:28 am

The only difference between VSTs and DX plugins when using them in Cakewalk products is automation support. It seems that automation really works better on DX plugins than VST ones. This may be due to the fact that Cakewalk products are natively DX implemented.

BTW you can get free and reasonably priced DX and VSTs on http://software.bluecatonline.org . Chorus, Flanger, EQ and more.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Mon May 16, 2005 9:12 am

In Cakewalks own hosts, for VST plugins wrapped with the adaptor, and inserted as effects, automation works exactly the same as DX8 plugins; all parameters that are exposed are available to automate. Given that the automation mechanism is the same, could you clarify what you actually mean works better?

I also thought it was the case that 'classic' DX effects (rather than the newer DX8 type effects that Cakewalk supply) couldnt actually be automated at all.

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Mon May 16, 2005 9:46 am

whyterabbyt wrote:In Cakewalks own hosts, for VST plugins wrapped with the adaptor, and inserted as effects, automation works exactly the same as DX8 plugins; all parameters that are exposed are available to automate. Given that the automation mechanism is the same, could you clarify what you actually mean works better?

It's due to VST and DX automation mechanisms which are different: VST automation just allows you to set the parameter value here and then whereas DX8 automation has more capabilities: you can adjust parameters variations up to second order derivative. If your plug-in software has been written to support automation, it will add a small delay to the automation control in VST due to interpolation, whereas if it's DX it won't. And very often VST plug-in developpers don't even bother to interpolate since VST buffer size is often smaller than in DX apps, thanks to ASIO. That's why most VST plug-ins(especially free ones) might produce 'zip' noise when using automation on some of their parameters. That's less often the case for DX ones since the SDK was made to avoid that. (it's even fully explained in Cakewalk's code samples that are freely available to developpers)

Further more we observed that with the DX adapter (at least in sonar 3, didn't chek for 4), the automation that is written by the plug-in (for example our Peak Meter which enables you to record the peak enveloppe as an automation curve) is less precise in time than with the native DX plug-ins. It might be due to hte conversions done in the Adapter.

That's the reason why we keep writing both VST and DX versions of our plugins. It still seems that VSTs are better in VST-native apps (such as Steinberg apps) and DX are better in DX-native apps (such as Cakewalk).

Of course I am not comparing the quality of VST and DX effects, they are quite similar anyway and it's not the purpose here.

whyterabbyt wrote: I also thought it was the case that 'classic' DX effects (rather than the newer DX8 type effects that Cakewalk supply) couldnt actually be automated at all.

You are right. Old plug-ins do not support DX8 automation. You cannot record automation with them.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Mon May 16, 2005 9:54 am

Interesting... Many thanks. Mind if I ask what sort of figures you're talking about for the automation timing errors seen with the interpolation?

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Mon May 16, 2005 10:22 am

It might be often negligible for input parameters. As far as I know it should depend on the size of buffers used by cakewalk. Until Sonar 2 I can tell it was exactely the size of the output buffer. That means that in worst case you get an automation latency equal to half the global latency you can find in "Audio Options". (half because you have usually two buffers. Does anyone use more?). But this is only if the VST plug-in does linear interpolation of parameters (that's usually the case), it can be more if the interpolation technique is different.

Anyway you won't hear any difference in practice below 8 ms, except if your parameters depend on the audio signal and vary very fast (such as when you want to follow the signal enveloppe and change your parameters accordingly). This is what we do with our signal analysis tools (only Digital Peak Meter has been published today), and this is the reason why we had to investigate the topic. I would'nt call this latency 'error' since in 90% of cases you do not even care about it. But I still think that DX automation is (a bit) more performant thanks to the fact that it can be smoothed without latency. When you draw a second order curve (fast or slow variation, I can't remember the exact name in cakewalk), the plug-is able to really render the exact shape of the curve, it does not just use a suite of segments that can be audible on some parameters.

It really depends on your VST plug-ins, many ones I tried do not implement any interpolation of any kind, which make them unusable with automation with too much latency. (I just hate that "zipping" noise you get!).

So don't bother, if you have the choice for a given plug-in, use the DX version in DX apps and the VST one in VST apps

DirectX Plugins for Cakewalk HS 2002 ?