Pull apart, put together... Cantabile VST - Work in Progress

[TiUser]

...do I have seen a "DLL" version of Cantabile in the latest Blog entries? ...I see Brad, you promise nothing, but this looks thrilling...

[lallis]

...this looks thrilling...

It does! Exactly what I have hoped for.

I daresay this would justify an upgrade fee, for a great many people. But so far, we actuallly know nothing about costs.

[TiUser]

Not sure if I would plunge down more bucks on a Cantabile VST unless there are some features in the host that make this a true boost beyond encapsulation of complex sound elements. But that's just me personally on actual state of information - which is "Brad does not do any commitments yet"...

It's best we wait, let him try and come up with it when he thinks it's ready and time to do so.

[TiUser]

The latest Cantabile Blog entries speak for themselves:

Cantabile VST - Work in Progress

Brad, this is a big chunk of work... all the best that you get that working.

[aMUSEd]

Finally

[TiUser]

I think that's a challenge.

I personally am not so much after a VST version and would have liked to see other tweaks - but for now I will delay such things...

I am sure it is a challenge...

"Enough with the tech talk, what works so far?
Nothing - yet."

[krraqk]

I just started to try the Cantabile demo in a new notebook (second try) and starting to love it more than the first time.

Although I first would love to have a better and intuitive midi and audio routing, to have a vst version would be very cool as it would integrate what I would play live with what I play in my studio.

So I would vote for it.

[TiUser]

...indeed a VST version of Cantabile would give us more options. We could encapsulate "Cantabile sounds" or "Cantabile soundsets" this way.

However, I still think there could be some enhancements in the host itself and hope these will not be forgotten - regardless how thrilling and useful a Cantabile VST could be...

...oh and BTW I guess there is no votes necessary, the trial building a Cantabile VST is already in progress... Brad is struggling with that but as far as I assume he will finally manage this.

[bburtin]

I really need to work on my out-of-the-box thinking abilities. Can someone explain some of the benefits of Cantabile as a VST? Is it because you want to embed your live rack into your DAW? Something else?

[TiUser]

Using nested sessions/subsession in VST's gives us some modular options just to be limited by our imagination. So to say you can create cubes to put into your box...

The reuse of sounds and other Cantabile specific abilities will be much easier with a Cantabile VST. It's not only for the ones who need to use the same stuff on stage and in the studio - it's useful anyway encapsulating this for multiple reuse!

I could create sets of "hyper instruments" made from contained organ, piano, synth and more VST's inside, addressed via subsession switching as a single Cantabile VST, then using Cantabile host to create a frame structure for a multi controller keyboard setup in a kind of predefined mixer environment.

You can think of other scenarios where you put a list of mediafiles into such a Cantabile VST and simply recall these from outside. You could route midi files output to the sound generators you like best and reuse this package without thinking about these details later.

I've suggested alternatives to Brad to accomplish similar setup control but a Cantabile VST is by far the most elegant, better to understand and to use solution.

The idea is as many ideas not really new and there is an old plugin around called "Chainer" that basically does something like this already. Just changing "sounds" creates sound interruptions - it's like loading sessions in Cantabile - and was the reason why I didn't buy Chainer... inappropriate for live use... but I hope for subsessions in Cantabile VST which will change the game.

Probably there could be other solutions if the ASIO system would be more flexible... but ASIO is one driver controls one app, right? ...ok, that's another story.

Finally breaking up complexity into pieces is always a good idea as it makes things easier to use and more flexible at the same time.

I just hope that this nesting strategy will perform well and not overload our current machines... which leads to the idea running such a nested Cantabile VST package on a second machine...

[TiUser]

After a month from the first post I would be curious for any news... ..are there any?

[krraqk]

That vst version seems like a big change, probably a 3.0 version?

Im thinking to purchase it very soon (if I can solve the audio interruptions while changing sub sessions), but i would not want to pay for it now and then after a small period of time have to paid for an update for the vst version (which was one of my big requests). Was there a grace period in previous big updates?

[TiUser]

There isn't anything official yet except the blog report about anything being in progress...

Also I really don't know I guess the purchase policy will be graceful. Maybe it will be free for registered users... or probably it will be a new product in parallel with the stand alone host. I think it is too early to discuss stuff we even do not know how it will look like...

...don't panic, count to 10...

[Clint Swank]

I'm a guitar player who has found Cantabile lite pretty sufficient for my needs. Four effects at a time is usually plenty in a live situation. Having the ability to load already constructed sounds into Sonar would really be a game changer. I'd definitely buy.

[sunhome]

Vst would be an instant buy from me; as I really needed a piano roll to match to Cantabile [I had sound problems with more than one ASIO program if I used MIDI OX in/out] and frankly Orion's piano roll is far superior to using a step sequencer program like Thesys.

Regards, James