Stablest/sturdiest of VST hosts (Windows)?

[ccDuckett]

Greetings humans,

The point of this post is garner feedback as to which dedicated VST host is the most stable-
and by "VST host", I'm referring to programs like Cantabile, Brainspawn Forte, LiveProfessor, Minihost Modular, etc. Programs that avoid having to fire up a DAW just to explore instrument/effect chains/routing, in the context of ambient/experimental "play a few notes and listen to it evolve, tweak parameters as it goes" material.

My problem is this- I have yet to try one that doesn't have a habit of crashing (and in most cases, just straight up sudden death, not freezing); while I haven't done the live-gig-with-laptop thing yet, I can only imagine the pain and frustration of crashing in that situation. I do realize that find-the-buggy-plugin is part of the process, but yet again, what some programs choke on, others have no problem with.

So, which program do you find weathers insult and abuse the most cheerfully?



My system is Win 7 x64

[aMUSEd]

Plogue Bidule has always been the most stable plugin host I've used on Windows and Mac

For a DAW Reaper is the most solid due to its optimisation plus the options for firewalling and management of misbehaving plugins - in principle Bitwig should be too but I find it too flaky overall despite the firewalling.

[fmr]

Outside of DAWs, I always used VstHost from Hermann Seib. I find it very tolerant, and very stable, even with old plug-ins. Besides, it has bridges, so, you can load a 64-bit plug-in in VstHost 32-bit and vice-versa. Its Windows only.

[chk071]

I use VSTHost here too, or rather Savihost, when i want to run plugins standalone. Its ok for free i guess, though a bit buggy here and there (sometimes crashed on me).

[ccDuckett]

Funny you should mention about Herr Seib's freebies; I'd been contemplating another forum post about help with diagnosing why neither one seems to be receiving MIDI. I can bring up the virtual keyboard and get sound (so for once it's not audio driver bugginess), and it "sees" my Axiom MIDI (as well as LoopBe MIDI), but even after doing the ol' off-and-on-again trick with the power switch and unplugging/replugging the USB (which often works with other MIDI glitches elsewhere), nada, no joy.

Ah, well. Thanks for the replies thus far- I guess I'd really enjoy an article written somewheres that got into depth about these types of programs, what each one's good at, best-used-for, yada yada. MUX and Audiomulch have some abilities to get ridonkulously complicated too..

[Astralp]

Plogue Bidule has always been the most stable plugin host I've used on Windows and Mac

+1 for Bidule on Windows, it's never crashed on me and I've used it quite a lot usually in a complex way. Bidule is a great plugin for routing stuff, it's very sophisticated yet logical I mainly use it for building a custom rompler to play from my hardware setup and record all of the individual soundcard inputs from the hardware as well as the vsti's. These can then all be imported like stems into a DAW.

Day to day I do use cantabile Lite for sound design but it does crash with certain plugins, it definitely doesn't like Serum or Oxium.. I've used it for so long I find it hard to give up.

Also now that Tracktion 5 is free/lightweight it's worth considering.