Element

This dev wasted my time. "Free as in free to create, not free as in free beer", you discover right as you're ready to download. I don't appreciate being insulted, and I don't appreciate lowlives' attempts to deceive me. KVR need to move this to the paid plugins section; this doesn't belong in the "free" section. "Free but not free as in free beer, just 'free to create'", I smell man-buns and confusion about which public restroom to use re the designers of this.

Element is exactly what I've been looking for. A host that I can use to combine and play plug-ins (VST, VST3 or AU) and optionally live sound, for playing live and experimenting without the overhead of a full-blown DAW.

I've used Audiobus on iOS and was using Minihost Modular from Image Line on macOS. Minihost Modular is 64-bit, but is getting long in the tooth; a number of plug-ins no longer load or work properly for me, and it seems to have been abandoned (last updated 2014).

Element looks like a great replacement for me. It has a number of nice features, including over 25 plug-ins that come within the package. Like Audiobus and Minihost Modular, it lets me wire together plug-ins and save sessions that preserve plug-in settings, preset choices, etc. for the next time I open them; almost like building custom instruments for live play.

I'm still learning to use the application, and there are some workflow and interface challenges, but so far I have been able to use it for live playing and have mapped a MIDI controller to the Element-supplied Wet/Dry control for dynamic control of effects.

I'm quite happy with it so far and will be investing more time in using it and providing feedback to the developers. I'm giving this a 4 star for now, as I haven't explored all features (or using it as a plug-in in a DAW), I've run into a few minor glitches and the workflow and user interface are a bit awkward at times. Also, the current 0.46.3 release (including the latest tag on GitHub) dates back to July 2021. There is some recent activity in GitHub, so I hope there will be a new release soon.

great potential, yet it miss important features when it comes to workflow.

it is super stable and support VST 2 and VST 3 and great preformance.

I bought it twice already but I don't use it a lot because it miss lots of important features that kill my workflow..

It doesn't have Parameters learning mode, (not even last touched parameter), so it is kinda hard to find the right parameters that you want to automate in your DAW. - Not to mention that it allows only 8 parameters to be controlled.

the GUI isn't so good when it comes to organization.

when using the search to find plugins it doesn't hide all the unrelated folders, so you need to scroll down a lot...

the preset system also need a better GUI per plugin and per group of plugins, to make more fast chains..

it is still far from being good for my workflow, but I still recommend this if you need a stable chainer.

the updates are not as fast as I expected. so I'm afraid it will take a lot of time till all those features will be fixed.

Great slim piece of software. I use it on a macOS 10.13 with soundflower to have a global equalizer/effect chainer. It saves presets and all in all it's very handy software.

When I started musing around VST plugins I looked for host which would suit my needs. I needed something free that would be usable for live playing or improvisations (as I can't read notes). Fortunately it was time when the Element was just open sourced and it definitely became my home DAW. It's very fast (even on slow machines), has intuitive interface and it's developer is very responsive on Github.

However - it's not built for conventional scenarios. It lacks timeline and all the recording (and sound editing) functions. I actually ended implementing my own four-track recorder VST, but this actually fits my workflow.

So if you are looking for conventional DAW for recording, this is not for you. But if you are looking for something fast for synth improvisations, sounds effect rack or for some modular environment this is your tool.