KVR Audio

Christian Budde · Post by **Christian Budde** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 3:35 am

Hello,

tonight I (accidentially) created a tool that allows merging two (or more) plugins to one. Also the individual GUIs are skipped and a new GUI is created. The merged plugin can be saved as a separate VST, that does not rely on the original VST Plugin or the previous GUI. Thus it is possible to use this tool only to "reskin" existing GUIless plugins. I only warn you to keep legal issues in mind here.

Again everything is available as open source. So if anyone like to enhance this to create yet another SynthEdit/SynthMaker, just do it.

Find the executable plugin merger here

I do not have in mind to develop this further, but I'd like it at least to be bugfree. So anyone who finds a bug (there are probably several still in there), please report here.

Kind regards,

Christian

runagate · Post by **runagate** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 3:37 am

Holy crap you are a mad scientist, Christian.
Who has very, very serendipitous "accidents"!

Funkybot's Evil Twin · Mon Sep 22, 2008 3:47 am

Wow! That's wierd! I now have Dubinant a combo of Dubstation and Kombinant. Not sure what the advantage is in running them one right after the other just yet...

(any ideas on why I'd want this as opposed to two separate plugins?)

Funkybot's Evil Twin · Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:20 am

Also, this defaults all of the plugins parameters to zero. It would be nice if the plugins default positions could be retained somehow, and if not, at least set all knobs to 50%.

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:32 am

Could I use this to change a single VST's ID? (to deal with some clashes)

jonnyG · Post by **jonnyG** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:53 am

aMUSEd wrote:Could I use this to change a single VST's ID? (to deal with some clashes)

Sorry to butt in, but this Bidule thread explains how to go about hacking a VST unique i.d. with a hex editor. It's not hard, but depending on the host it may break project files that already contain the offending plugin.

Interesting plugin btw Christian.

BFunKu · Post by **BFunKu** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:17 am

It would be really cool if you could turn this into a VST so it can host other VSTs inside your DAW. Very Cool Idea though. Wait a minute you can Save the Merged Plugs as one .dll file???

Amazing Shit Man!

Also does not work with SE/SM plugs so don't bother trying them will just Crash the Host on Load up. GUILess VST Plugins seem to work the Best with the Plugin Merger. This really is a Revolution in VST Technology.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:04 am

thoshu · Post by **thoshu** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:12 am

Boy, i have to go to work now - and then that!

Thanks a lot, crazy genius!

Ronny Pries · Post by **Ronny Pries** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:43 am

So one could actually turn two commercial plugins into one with a different UI? If i was a commercial developer, i'd hate it...

Don't you kinda cut into your own leg with that one, Christian?

If it works it's technically brilliant nevertheless!

zeep · Post by **zeep** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:51 am

This is great! No idea which vst's i want to combine just yet though

ZombyWoof · Post by **ZombyWoof** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:59 am

zeep wrote:This is great! No idea which vst's i want to combine just yet though

How about

1. Camel Audio's Alchemy
2. delaMancha's Gator

Together you have a new plug-in 'Alchator' which could get you sent to Guantanamo.

Any others?

shogger · Post by **shogger** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:00 am

Funky idea,

got a few ideas for this. Will check it out. Thanx Christian.

Shogger

Liero · Post by **Liero** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:02 am

It would be great if you could choose which parameters get a knob in the final DLL so you could ignore stuff like bypass etc! And it would be great to have somekind of infobox that would reveal how many parameters the merged plugins have in total. Great GUI-less GUI! And good to have option for own knobs!

Christian Budde · Post by **Christian Budde** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:10 am

aMUSEd wrote:Could I use this to change a single VST's ID? (to deal with some clashes)

Theoretically yes, but the Hex-Editor trick or other tricks should work better then this. Basically I host the plugins with my own VST Host. I translate most of the VST calls and direct them to the hosted plugins. Others (like questioning the VST ID) will be skipped and replaced. Unfortunately not all calls have been translated, so there are still some flaws.

BFunKu wrote:Also does not work with SE/SM plugs so don't bother trying them will just Crash the Host on Load up.

Thanks for the hint, I will try this out and fix it (if possible). I guess saving as VST somthing which has been saved as VST is the problem here. Like the bad signal quality due to tons of stacked adapters.

BFunKu wrote:GUILess VST Plugins seem to work the Best with the Plugin Merger.

Yes, the original purpose for this was to build an example for the mGUI developer how to store a reskined plugin as VST. From that point it was easy just to add some other plugins to be merged as one.

Ronny Pries wrote:So one could actually turn two commercial plugins into one with a different UI? If i was a commercial developer, i'd hate it...

Well, this is true, but right now it is to much only a proof of concept that it would work without any flaws. One would need to modify the sources to a) make it more stable, b) create a better GUI c)be better then the original. Also there is this legal issue. I guess if you own a commercial plugin you are probably allowed to do it, but redistributing this will violate the license in any way, since the original plugin is preserved entirely inside the new VST-Plugin. However, it would be theoretically possible to modify the containing plugin (e.g. strip all the unused GUI elements, since another GUI is used), but that would be even more illegal.
I can't stop anyone from doing this, but I think using the original plugin (GUI) always has advantages. It's individual and most often faster.

Also if a developer is that clever to create a new plugin, that enhance the original plugin, he would rather develop the original from scratch (and with this get rid of the bugs, which probably still can be found in the original).

Ronny Pries wrote:Don't you kinda cut into your own leg with that one, Christian?

No, why should I? Most of my plugins are free anyway and have a far better GUI anyway

And for the one commercial plugin we offer, I think a new radical skin change to a knob based product will be rather an advantage then a disadvantage...

Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:I now have Dubinant a combo of Dubstation and Kombinant.

ZombyWoof wrote: How about

1. Camel Audio's Alchemy
2. delaMancha's Gator

Together you have a new plug-in 'Alchator' which could get you sent to Guantanamo.

This is the kind of fun I probably intended by this tool...

Christian

Edit:

Liero wrote:It would be great if you could choose which parameters get a knob in the final DLL so you could ignore stuff like bypass etc! And it would be great to have somekind of infobox that would reveal how many parameters the merged plugins have in total. Great GUI-less GUI! And good to have option for own knobs!

Since this tool is open source, it's free for anyone to modify/enhance it to their needs...

The Plugin Merger!