What Is A VST Plugin Or VSTi Instrument
VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology and is an interface for integrating audio synths and effects plugins with your digital audio workstation (DAW). In plain English you could simply say its a way to get all those cool hardware effects racks, keyboards and drum machines into your choice of music software such as Cubase, FL Studio or Logic Pro etc.
A very brief history of VST & VSTi
Anyone making digital music prior to 1996 used their DAW to control keyboards and samplers via midi and then routed all their external hardware through a traditional mixing desk. With the release of Cubase 3.02 Steinberg announced the VST interface specification which allowed a new breed of software developers to recreate all those bulky effects units as VST plugins.
A few years later in 1999 they updated things allowing VST plugins to receive midi data. This changed the game even further as it was now possible to recreate keyboards, synths and drum machines too. This upgrade saw the birth of the Virtual Studio Technology Instrument or VSTi for shot.
In more recent years things have moved improved further with VSTs now being able to process audio in 64 bit, allow audio inputs, multiple midi ins & outs and note expression.
How Do you Install A VST plug in Or VSTi
Most VST plugins or instruments are packaged in one of two ways. Smaller plugins come as a single .dll file and are the simplest to install. Most DAWs such as Cubase, FL Studio require you to simply copy and paste the .dll file into a plugins directory within the main folder where you installed your software. Once you have done that you should restart your DAW and then your new plugin will be available to use.
Bigger, more complicated and often more expensive VST plugins and Virtual Instruments are often sold as .exe files that require you to manually install them the same way you would install any other software package. This is more often then not a point and click job though.
Are VST plugins and Instruments as good as the originals ?
There are 1000,s of VST plugins available these days and the quality varies greatly. Some have been made in an afternoon by one guy in his bedroom and given away for free and some developed by large companies and cost an arm and a leg. There are always those people who prefer the original instrument or prefer the hands on approach but in the majority of cases there is no way that many of us could ever get access to such kit. That old Hammond organ with Leslie speakers might be just the sound your after but its never going to fit in your room.
What the VST plugin and instrument developers have tried to do in many cases is to recreate the sound or effects of originals as closely as possible but you'll never get exactly the same experience due to one being real and one being virtual. With that said though VST technology has totally revolutionised the world of music production and it can only get better.
There are also plugins and instruments that could never exist in the physical world and the possibilities are endless.
What do I need in order to use VST plugins or instruments
Pretty much all you need to make use of VST plugins or Virtual Instruments is your choice of DAW. Just about every music production package available these days supports VST technology and many come with their own built in. In order to control things easier a good keyboard or controller is a must. A keyboard with weighted keys will give you more expression and a having controller with plenty of knobs and faders will allow you more control over all your plugins settings. There are plenty of excellent keyboards and controllers around these days to suit every budget so choose something the works for you.
Do I need a powerful computer to use a VST or VSTi
The one thing to take into consideration is that VST plugins and Virtual Instruments are software where their ancestors were all hardware. Your computer and more importantly your sound card is now playing the part of the hardware. Its all down to common sense to make sure you make the most of your current setup. If you try and get a cheap computer with a built in sound card to run too many VSTs it will drag to a halt. Ill write another article about how to improve performance but for now Ill just say uninstall anything you dont need and close any programs you dont need running.
The most important thing you need to get the most our or your VST plugins and Instruments is a decent sound card. Your sound card is going to be doing the bulk of the work so get the best one you can afford. A cheap sound card will result in a delay (latency) between you playing a note on the keyboard and the sound coming our of your VSTi. Make sure you ask for a card with zero latency or adjust the latency settings on your current card for best performance.
Finally Ill just mention again the need for you to balance your use of VST plugins, effects and Virtual Instruments with the power of your system. Too many things running at one time and you'll see your system slow down and your audio glitching.
Download FREE Vst plugins & Instruments right here !!
We have an ever growing library of FREE VST plugins, VSTi instruments for mac, PC , Linux, IOS or android. Why not head over there now and start downloading.
Any questions or thoughts ?
If you have any questions regarding the use of VST plugins, effects or VST instruments leave a comment bellow. Ill create some more articles when I get a chance on tips and tricks for using VST plugins effectively or to answer any popular questions that crop up.
For everyone new to vsts, here are some sites
http://www.tweakbench.com/
http://www.kvraudio.com/
http://woolyss.com/chipmusic-plugins.php
http://www.geocities.jp/daichi1969/softsynth/#down
http://www.vst4free.com/
http://freemusicsoftware.org/category/vsti
It's as simple as entering "Free Vsti" in your search engine....
Where can i download Vst free?
lol no, not mixing on the plugin instrument channel. last time (which was also the first time) i tried doing that with seismic from itchy synths. live literally messed itself and crashed. hard. so yes i bounce to audio, or i use the on instrument effects and leave it at that. and yes this blog is good. really is a great addition to the site. back to research, and bourbon!
VST is a 'virtual Studio Technology' is software from your CD or pen drive or internet downloads product from a hardware equipment such as 'CUBASE' and many more computer audio technology products .
It can be opporated from midi control keyboard , once you get the config: from your computer system correctly.
@ST - That's a lot of processing power mate! There must be something wrong on the software config, one of my own setups is half of yours and I can run a lot of plugs on it and start hickuping around 100 tracks of heavy processing and automation.
I don't know about Ableton Live and multi core support but I know that some DAW's have some errors and must leave one of the cores free. So you only use 7 cores out of 8 for processing as the rest would be needed for other DAW tasks.
You might be right about the plugins acting differently based on the DAW you are using. So far I didn't experience such problems. I've heard that plugins made with synthedit are quite jerky sometimes, I don't run any to be honest. I can't remmember the last time I had a system crash and the last one was because of an EQ made with Synthedit.
I hope you are not running your sessions with all the virtual instruments in there and trying to mix the track like that? Lol.
Bounce to wav and start a new session for the mix. Lot's of power that way.
Anyways this blog is heading into a nice direction. Some good info in here.
@mahloo-senpai
no, the phenom is a quad core processor runnin stock at 3.7ghz. i tried some gentle oc but kept gettin bsod errors due to the small psu i have, so i had to revert back to factory settings. runnin stable ever since. i have 8 gigs of 1066mhz ddr2 memory, windows 7 ultimate. hard disk is a sata2 750gig at 7200rpm split into two partitions, one with windows and all programs is at 350gigs the other is for storage. bus speed on my mobo is 2600mhz.
i use ableton live and maschine. live apparently limits the amount of usable threads when running on a muslticore system, but i have also seen that there is a button somewhere in live to make it run better with a multicore cpu.i also did some research on virtual sound technologies and found that plugins dont always run seeing that there is a multi core processor, often times independent of the host they are loaded into. therefore they dont utilize the full capability of the installed cpu chip. also, some plugins made with synthedit are janky on multicore systems. dont know if that applies to some of the plugins i use, another thing to look into. me and google are becomin good freinds again lately...
I am very relieved that this topic is here. I am an Ableton user, have been for a long time...before that I was a FL user. I have absolutely no experience with VST and my friend just hooked me up with one called DRF2 from Limeflavour. The site he sent me to is myVST dot com. There is little explaining on how to use it and I am really hoping I can get some tips. My keyboard for midi is the microKORG XL synth/vocoder. Thank you all for your time.
The Phenom is a dual core if I'm right?...that should be pretty good if it's the 3.2GHz one. As far as RAM go at least 4GB is recommended but of course it matters what OS you are running as well.
How much RAM do you run anyways?
Are your HDD's IDE or S-ATA II?
What DAW do you use? Does it take full advantage of both your CPU' cores?
Ill try and get something written up about getting the most out of your system next week. most of it is common sense once you see it
limited to what i can do in the ways of upgrades. it was a barebones build from tiger direct and the case it came with has a top mounted 450 watt psu. but its built around a amd phenom black edition, with more memory then a herd of old elephants. its been 2 years, guess its time to put together a new one. i see 8 cores in my future...
@Stereomathematics - actually Reverbs and Ozone are very CPU intensive! There is little you can do about it. Upgrade your PC eventually!
would love to see that article about how to improve performance. vst effects (reverbs, delays, ozone, stereo wideners and the like) shouldnt be pushing the cpu meter to 100 in live and maschine on my system like they do. i fiddled with the daw latency options with little success, but in the meantime, ill try and see if i can adjust the latency of my sound card, maybe that might do the trick.
It really is amazing at how far this technology has gone and the quality it has reached. It truly was a game changer back then and now it's just amazing what can be achieved with such technology.
Hello ....
Thank you, this article is already a very good approach.
I use for my creations, many of them, but as explained here, It should not to make anything, and have a "machine" powerful enough that the desired outcomes, are acceptable, and of good quality. This technology requires some trainings, and common sense for to use it, very correctly.
In summary, it is a way not too expensive, for have a large orchestra in your PC .... also.
Dan
Hi Allen,
I always thought this topic was too basic to write about but then noticed people searching for it so thought why not.
If you have any questions just post them in here
This was great,I'm moving from a stand alone Tascam 8tr to Ableton live very soon so this was informative.