How to connect VSTHost to Ardour

[badgrplayer]

Sorry if it's the wrong forum.

I love VSTHost and I love Ardour. I think VSThost is ideal for using plugins, but it's a little limited for recording. On the other hand Ardour is a perfect DAW, but the question is how to connect the output of VSTHost to Ardour's tracks? Especially is there's more than 2 outputs?
Here's the solution, (that I copy/paste from the ardour forum).

What you need is
* Vsthost
* Jack2
* Ardour

I'm using the 64 bits version on windows, but I guess it could work with other versions.


`Step 1) Preparation`

For the moment, we don’t care about Jack2.
Open VSThost as you usually do.

I use 1 synth and 1 drums vsti. And 1 sequencer but it’s not relevant for this tuto.

01 vsthost and plugins.png

The drums has 1 bass drum; 1 snare; 1 open hi-hat; 1 closed hi-hat, 1 cymbal and 1 hand clap. And it allows to send each instrument in different outputs.

02 drums.png

So I choose, output 1 for my bass drums, output 2 for my snare, output 3 for the hi-hat closed and opened; output 4 for the cymbal and 5 for the hand clap.

In ardour I create 1 stereo track for the synth.
And for the drums we want 1 mono track for the bass drum; 1 mono track for the snare; 1 stereo track for the closed and open hi-hat, another stereo track for the cymbal and 1 mono track for the hand clap.

03 ardour tracks.png

Of course, don’t forget to select “In” and not “disk” on each strip.
We can close Ardour for now.

Now the problem. When I use Vsthost casually for instance to test some new plugins, I want to hear everything in my computer headphones.
So, logically, every instruments are mixed down to 2 channel output connected to my system sound devices, my headphones.

But what I want to is to connect each instrument from VSTHost to its own tracks in Ardour and then connect Ardour to my headphones. For this, I need 9 output from VSThost.

How can I do that ?

Very simple, open the menu : Engine → Configure → Assign Output Channels and you replace any number of “Engine Channels” by “9”

04 engine output.png

Now, we need to connect the instrument to their own outputs.
I guess you already know the button “chain after”, to connect your vst to the engine output.

04b engine output plugins.png

What you may not know is the “headphone button”, to assign channels to outputs. Click on it.

04c engine output.png

For my Synth I want two outputs for my stereo track.
So, I’ll assign “Synth 1” and “Synth 2” for the channels 1 and 2; then “no channel selection” for the other.

05 engine output synth.png

For the drums I select “no channel selection” for the two first channels; then I assign the remaining channels as I want to.

06 engine output drums.png

(Note, it makes no difference if you select output L or output R for mono tracks)
Save this config and close everything.

`Step 2) link everything together.`

Go to C:\Program Files\JACK2\jack-router\win64 and open the JackRouter.ini file. This is what you find:

> [IO]
> input=2
> output=2
> float-sample=0
>
>
>
> [AUTO_CONNECT]
> input=1
> output=1
> alias=0

The two first lines are the only important one. Replace the number “2” by “9”. Like this

> [IO]
> input=9
> output=9

We’re almost there.
The topic is too long already and besides I can't post any new attachments, so I post an answer to this one.

[whyterabbyt]

I'm using the 64 bits version on windows

Surely Ardour already supports VST plugins? Why all this bother to not host them in it?

[badgrplayer]

Open QJackCtl, first (the order is important), click on the Start button.

Launch Vshost, open the Devices->Wave menu and select “ASIO: Jackrouter”

07 vshostjack router.png

Then run VSTHost and check if it appears in the "graph" button of QJackCtl. If not, stop/start it another time or two (it's a little random).

Fine? Ok.

Launch Ardour and select "Jack" in the audio setup. It should appear in the "graph" menu as well.

Now you have 3 possibilities to connect everything altogether.

* Using the “Graph” menu of Jack. It seems more intuitive but it doesn’t remember the connections when you close Jack. And it’s a little bloated. I use it only for one thing, select all; disconnect all.
* Using the “Patchbay” menu of jack. It’s good for saving your connections when everything’s said and done, but it’s not intuitive in my opinion.
* Using the “Audio Connections” menu of Ardour which is in my opinion the most simple.

We’re going to dot that but first we want to get rid of useless connections.
Open Graph, you see there’s already some connections. Click on Edit → Select All and Disconnect.
No connection anymore, close Graph.

Open the Audio Connection manager of Ardour.

08 ardouraudiconnection.png

In Sources, select “Ardour busses” in Destinations, select “Hardware”. Link the Bus Master Out to the system

09 audio connect 1.png

Then select “Ardour tracks” in Sources and “Bus Master” in Destinations.

10 audio connect 2.png

Finally, select “Other” In Sources, select “Ardour tracks” in Destinations. Connect the different outputs to the right tracks. You may solo each tracks to make sure the connections are right.

That’s it, you may know start to record everything that output of VSTHost.

final.png

More or less. Because we need to make a few adjustments about latency, sync and clock and others. But it will be for another day. (Still searching for the right settings. BTW if you have some advises, I'll take it)

See you.

ps: the order to close is important too.
If you want to avoid crashes (at least on windows) you may first stop the VSThost engine, then QJackCtl and finally Ardour.

[whyterabbyt]

Or you can just use VST plugins as VST plugins.

https://manual.ardour.org/mixing/plugin ... e-inserts/

[badgrplayer]

I'm using the 64 bits version on windows

Surely Ardour already supports VST plugins? Why all this bother to not host them in it?

It's a matter of personal taste. Ardour is good for recording but when you simply want to play or test a new plugins, will you bother to launch Ardour, create a new sessions, a new tracks, make all the connections and so on?

VSThost is perfect for just playing and improvise, I could never find any other tool that make it better. You can play a dozen plugins together so easily.

The thing is, sometimes when I play around with it, I get some good ideas worth recording.
Vsthost can't record on separate tracks (even if VSThost allows more than two channels on its wave recorder, all the instruments are mixed down together).
For some reason, there's not much VST recorder plugins that can achieve what I want. The only I could find was Voxengo Recorders, in 32bits, and not so easy to use.

It got me frustrated and I tried to find a tuto for connecting VSThost to ardour.
Couldn't find it, so I made it.

Maybe I'm the only one interested about it but you never know.

[whyterabbyt]

It's a matter of personal taste. Ardour is good for recording but when you simply want to play or test a new plugins, will you bother to launch Ardour, create a new sessions, a new tracks, make all the connections and so on?

Many DAWs will let you create Template or projects, but if Ardour doesnt, why not just create a test project and save it? Ive done that for testing in Bidule.

The thing is, sometimes when I play around with it, I get some good ideas worth recording.
Vsthost can't record on separate tracks (even if VSThost allows more than two channels on its wave recorder, all the instruments are mixed down together).
For some reason, there's not much VST recorder plugins that can achieve what I want. The only I could find was Voxengo Recorders, in 32bits, and not so easy to use.

For a 64-bit recorder, you could try MRecorder from the Melda Free bundle.