KVR Audio

Tronam · Post by **Tronam** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:07 am

I have to hand it to Xlutop. Even after 7 years it is still one of the most stable, reliable and quickest VST hosts I have used. Even now I continue to use it for synth jamming, effects chains and quick soundfont creation. There hasn't been an instrument I've run across yet that crashes it, though I don't expect that to last forever as the VST standard evolves beyond it. Anyone know what happened to Xlutop? I certainly hope that Mr. Potulski's VST host programming skills are being utilized somewhere. Perhaps he was hired by one of the larger companies to work his magic behind the scenes and we don't even realize it.

EnergyXT 1.x is another old charmer I keep coming back to.

chilln · Post by **chilln** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:38 am

Hi Tronam - I'm in Seattle, too.

I still use Chainer quite a bit, it's great. I use it as a guitar rack on my laptop, so to speak.

Using Chainer is very straight forward. Easy to move around plugins in the slots, save/switch setups, etc. The only thing I wish it had was the ability to use more than one midi/audio input (in standalone mode).

You know, I don't remember it ever crashing on me, either. It's worked with everything I've used with it.

Even now, many years later, I'd still buy it if I didn't have it already.

zvon · Post by **zvon** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:17 am

I still use it regularly. Just went to Xlutop's website and saw that there were 2 new skins posted in September 2008.

Tronam · Post by **Tronam** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:37 am

chilln wrote:Hi Tronam - I'm in Seattle, too.

Yar! Here comes the rain...

zvon wrote:I still use regularly. Just went to Xlutop's website and saw that there were 2 new skins posted in September 2008.

Yeah, I noticed that too. The first glimmer of activity on the site in 6 some odd years. That grymmjack skin is pretty slick.

pandashake · Post by **pandashake** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 4:06 am

I only have used the demo version, but it's an extremely handy host for testing out synths and effects. Super easy to use and the % CPU display is VERY helpful. Now what would be really cool is if it had multi-core support (or does it already and I just don't know about it?)

Francisco Cepero · Post by **Francisco Cepero** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:35 pm

I bought a license for it 2 months ago. It's pretty cool, but I'm becoming turned off because sometimes it crashes while I use it with Podium or REAPER, and I'm setting something up.

The ability to stack up many VSTi's and create multisamples and chords out of it is quite powerful! That's why the standalone edition of Chainer is valuable too.

Almost forgot: I'm using it with grymmjack's skin...

eduardo_b · Post by **eduardo_b** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:42 pm

Use it all the time. Often I load it inside a host for chaining. It's also the least fussy when it comes to scanning plug-ins, accepting those that lock up other hosts. That grymmjack skin is the final touch for a great piece of software.

Orbit-50 · Post by **Orbit-50** » Fri Oct 09, 2009 12:12 am

Thanks guys for the info. I've been thinking about buying Xlutop Chainer but the inactivity on the website turned me off. It seems as if the company is dead. It's good to hear that Chainer actually still works in todays world.

.-.

eduardo_b · Post by **eduardo_b** » Fri Oct 09, 2009 12:18 am

Orbit-50 wrote:Thanks guys for the info. I've been thinking about buying Xlutop Chainer but the inactivity on the website turned me off. It seems as if the company is dead. It's good to hear that Chainer actually still works in todays world.

.-.

The only caveat, but one I've very rarely found to be an issue, is that Chainer is not compliant with VST 2.4 or higher, and the dev is not going to update it. I remember one Virsyn synth update that would no longer run inside Chainer, and this turned out to be the issue. Harry at Virsyn said that they couldn't modify the plug for every host, so the incompatibiity would have to be resolved by the host's dev. This wouldn't stop me from getting Chainer if I were not already an owner.

Orbit-50 · Post by **Orbit-50** » Fri Oct 09, 2009 12:31 am

eduardo_b wrote:The only caveat...

Thank you very much eduardo.

.-.

eduardo_b · Post by **eduardo_b** » Fri Oct 09, 2009 12:36 am

Orbit-50 wrote:
eduardo_b wrote:The only caveat...
Thank you very much eduardo.

.-.

By the way, if you want, you can chain Chainer multiple times and load so many VSTs that the only limit is the cpu. So I've been told.

Orbit-50 · Post by **Orbit-50** » Fri Oct 09, 2009 12:44 am

eduardo_b wrote:By the way, if you want, you can chain Chainer multiple times and load so many VSTs that the only limit is the cpu. So I've been told.

Thanks again eduardo_b. Chainer is awesome.

.-.

Tronam · Post by **Tronam** » Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:30 am

Orbit-50 wrote:
eduardo_b wrote:By the way, if you want, you can chain Chainer multiple times and load so many VSTs that the only limit is the cpu. So I've been told.
Thanks again eduardo_b. Chainer is awesome.
.-.

Indeed it is. Also, it's great for creating soundfonts of VST instruments for samplers.

eduardo_b · Post by **eduardo_b** » Fri Oct 09, 2009 3:20 am

Tronam wrote:
Orbit-50 wrote:
eduardo_b wrote:By the way, if you want, you can chain Chainer multiple times and load so many VSTs that the only limit is the cpu. So I've been told.
Thanks again eduardo_b. Chainer is awesome.
.-.
Indeed it is. Also, it's great for creating soundfonts of VST instruments for samplers.

Really? I didn't know that.

Not that I need SFs.

Lunatique · Post by **Lunatique** » Fri Oct 09, 2009 3:55 am

I use it almost daily. In fact, I use it more than any other music-related software. I use it to practice my Zendrumming, jam on synths, do sound design, as guitar/bass fx rack...etc. It's been a great workhorse and I highly recommend it. I sometimes even use it to run plugins that would crash Sonar if Sonar tried to run the plugin.

Am I the only one who still uses Chainer?