What is Best Way to Audition Program Banks in VSTI's

[thimsyrag]

Hi All

I'm looking for ways to quickly audition different programs/banks on a VSTi loaded into a rack (rather than advance through their banks using the left right arrows of Cantabile)

Some things I'd like to do are:

(1) Use a controller or some other Midi Event to change the program as it is performing
(2) Even better I'd like to have Cantabile ramdomize and select a program/bank
randomly

(Essentially I want to try different banks on the fly as the music is performing to look for novel sound combinations)

I'm still a little green with Cantabile and trying to figure these things out - could anyone help or suggest some ways to to do this?

Thanks gs

[TiUser]

You can route a media player to a rack to playback the midi file you want to use.

You can assign midi controls to the patch selector and the up/down arrows.

I don't know about a randomized selection. There is just patch randomization or blending in Cantabiles VST editor.

However depending on the plugins you use for such a task you may experience glitches when switching sounds - a usual evil with many plugins.

[thimsyrag]

Hi TI

Thanks for the reply...

Yes, I can easily switch programs by assigning midi controls.

And I have been reading about the idea of setting up subsessions - preloading all the different samples one intends to use - and using controls to switch etc..

However what in fact I want to do is call up programs randomly - I don't want programs or patches preloaded.

Why?

Well I am writing songs and jamming to them and pumping out the midi to cantabile.

I want to play producer in real time and quickly load up and try random programs for all the VST's I have loaded - in effect creating new sounds and seeing what kind of arrangement would work for the song I created.

There is the additional problem with Sample Players like Dimension Pro, SampleTank, Kontakt etc... in that you can't even control sample selection within Cantable at all...

There must be someway to automatically get these sample players to load things
on the fly?

Anyone out there trying such things?

I'd be interested to here...

gs

[TiUser]

I am with you...

I claim this for long but it looks like random access of sounds on pc software based samplers is a dream.

If you go a step further for glitch free transitions you will even be disappointed by some hardware that cut the previous sound when switching.

I don't think there is any chance without preloading or predefining multitimbral resources and change routings instead of switching.

I am with you, I want instant random seamless sound transitions too - but it's hard to get.

Probably Korg Kronos shows the direction. It does all you want. No sample loading times...! Glitch free transitions even with random sound access...!

Sorry that I can't tell anything better - but there is too much studio stuff where loading times do not matter too much.