VSTunnel v1.2 released (Online Collaboration plug-in)

VSTunnel is a new VST plug-in for Windows and Mac OS X that allows you to connect your VST supporting sequencers over the Internet, allowing musicians from all over the world to easily play sessions together.

The VSTunnel plug-in is used like an insert effect in the sequencer's master out channel. When launched, a wizard starts, which allows the user to start a session or to join another session. When users create their own session, they decide whether to make it public or private. When private, the creator can use their own method of distributing their "session key", for example, email distribution. Whatever suits a user best. And of course, public sessions are for anybody and everybody. A list of all public sessions is offered to the user. It can be sorted by genre, speeding up the search for music of taste. By clicking on a session, it can be pre-listened. By a further click, a session can be joined.

During a session the music played is analyzed by the VSTunnel plug-in. Local changes are recognized, compressed and transmitted to the other session participants. In this instance the audio is mixed and sampled accurately into the audio out.

So everybody hears a mix of their own work and the work of others. This mix can be adjusted by each participant. The volume of each "remote line"can be set (i.e. muted, etc). Communication amongst users is done by the VSTunnel chat. However if you feel you are being disturbed by another user, you also have the option to disable their chat, blocking their sound and text messages.

Additionally, the audio quality can be set per participant. Download of remote audio and upload of their audio can be paused. Thus you can, for example, repeat a recording until you are satisfied with the result before transmitting it to the other participants.

You can download the VSTunnel plug-in for free! In the free version, all saving functions are disabled, the maximum song length is limited to 1 minute and the download quality cannot be adjusted. You can purchase a registration code for EU€69 / US$85 to unlock all features.