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Super Cool Soft Synth Set-Up for FREE


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I've been sitting here for a couple of hours playing with this setup and it works really well. What I've got is some programs from the [url=http://www.kvr-vst.com/inst.php]K-v-R[/url] website, VST host, Synth 1, and Crystal. VST host is a very simple program whose sole purpose is to load VST instruments or effects and use them. So what I do is load 2 instances of Crystal and two of Synth 1 and I've got a monster synth rig. It's seems to be very stable, you can play with low latency, all the presets on the synths are readily available, and it sounds amazing. Of course there's many drawbacks to a setup like this but the bottom line is IT WORKS. If you need a simple way to play soft synths check it out. Synth 1 and Crystal are two of the best free soft synths, when you combine them it's incredible. This might be a good way to play soft synths live without having to pull up a program like Sonar.
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The only way I know of to play soft synths in Ableton is by playing the soft synths in a program like Reason that is inserted into Ableton by Rewire. I was playing the synths in Arturia Storm 2.0 demo into the Ableton 2.0 demo through Rewire and looping it on the fly but after I got about 4 or 5 tracks with effects the CPU usage would spike and audio would stop. This might be overcome with a faster processor. It would be great if you could just play soft synths inside of Ableton, I tried a little utility called Digital Audio Cable to do this but the sound quality and stability wasn't very good, maybe somebody knows of another program that will do this, or hopefully Ableton will one day incorporate soft synths into Live. OK, drawbacks of VST host. I haven't figured out how to use effects and VST instruments at the same time, but screw it, both the synths I'm using have some effects in them and the sounds from these synths are so varied I don't feel the need to mangle the sound anymore. You can't save your set-up, so you have to pull each synth up each time you use it, but I'm only using those two synths so that's no big deal either. That's all I can think of right now. If you look on the K-v-R website under host, there are a lot of other programs that do what I'm doing but all the other ones I've tried weren't as stable, or couldn't achieve low latency, or had some other flaw to it. If you see anything else that works good let me know. My main objective is to be able to use soft synths live and this seems to fit the bill.
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i see. hey whats the spec of your machine? and have you optimized it for music much? i'm just starting to get into the vstis, i'm thinking of picking up lounge lizard and absynth, but I def want to use them with Live. if you use them with sonar or cubsx would you be able to save template setups?
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Hey Nawledge. I've got a Dell with a 866 Megahertz processor with Window XP, it's optimized well enough for audio I think. More processing power would help in Ableton and with soft synths. You can play soft synths into Live using the audio input, you know. If you had two soundcards or a soundcard with multiple ins and outs you could take the audio out of the first card and run in to the audio in on the second card and use soft synths or guitars or whatever into Live like that. That's probably what I'll wind up doing using the soft synth set-up I have with Crystal and Synth1. You should try these programs before you spend a lot of money on Absynth and stuff like that. A lot of the free synths/effects are just as good or better than the stuff you pay for.
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Ableton's LIVE still has not support for VST instruments. The only way to do that -as Wewus said- is via ReWire or using a physical connection to its "live" input.

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The cool thing about VSTHost is it plays with low latency on a cheap soundcard like a SoundBlaster Live, absolutely works. I'm not even sure what drivers it's using, must be the WDM , but the latency is very low. When I play an audio sound and trigger a sound by MIDI from the same MIDI device, both sounds are right in sync. I simplified the set-up even more now I'm just running one copy each of Synth1 and Crystal and layering the sounds. It's freaking incredible! Some of the most intricate and interesting sounds I've ever made. I've got a text file and when I find a combination of two sounds I like, I just write down the preset in each synth for future reference. So here's what I'm a gonna do. I'll put my good soundcard back in this computer, run the output of the SoundBlaster into that card, and into Ableton Live and then I'll have soft synths in Live, and I can add effects, loop the sound, etc.
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I forgot to tell you, the problems I was having with CPU usage in Ableton were caused by using Arturia Storm in rewire mode. I think using Rewire with anything uses up a lot of CPU, never tried it with Reason though. Using Ableton alone and playing the soft synths at the same time the CPU usage goes way, way, down. If anyone tries VSTHost, you have to go to Devices-Wave-Buffer to adjust the latency.
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Actually Knowledge (sic) I think I can do everything I want to do with these two soft synths and Ableton Live. The newest version of Live incorporates multi-track recording. For live work it would be really cool to control some of the parameters in Ableton by footswitch, mainly-start record and play. This would emulate what I do with the Boomerang Phrase Sampler. I'd also like to find someone to write some code so that VSTHost would open with Synth1 and Crystal ready to play. This really is a [b]magic[/b] synthesizer, it's the most stable, lowest latency, best sounding thing I've found. I feel like I'm playing an instrument again instead of dicking around with software.
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I checked out Crystal last night with Sonar in a wrapper ... Very impressive. I'm amazed this thing is free. It seem so versitile with a good mix of vintage and modern sounds. Geez, I can't wait to get a keyboard!(Yes, I'm mousing it right now.) Thanks for the great tip, Wewus.
I really don't know what to put here.
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Hey. Wewus and all, I want in on the fun too. Downloaded the vst wrapper lite, and Crystal. Installed them. Started SONAR. I see the vst wrapper as an audio effect, and when started it asks for a vst thingie. So far so good. Now I see crystal getting midi activity and its little meters are working, but I'm not able to route the output to anything. I've used vst effects, but never a soft synth. My dxi's work great. How do you guys set this up? -mark lacost Ashland, Oregon
Rubber Lizard Studio
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not familiar with that wrapper lizard. I've used Fxpansion DX to VST wrapper and the synths just show up in a seperate section and you pull them up like you normally do. Did you try any other synths through that wrapper to see if you could get them to work? I do know some synths don't work with some wrappers.
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<> Storm uses a lot of CPU. ReWire itself doesn't use a lot of power, it's using two audio intensive instruments at the same time that jacks up the CPU meter. Storm is Rewire 1, not 2. I like using it alot as a VST instrument rather than rewiring, it's great for that and a lot of fun. Cheap, too. Just remember to disable multiprocessor support in Cubase if you're using Storm or the Pulsar XTC VST/VSTi devices.
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Thanks Craig, I see that now, Storm seems to be very CPU intensive, a LOT more than Ableton Live. One thing I like about Storm, you can put a synth in record mode, loop it, then switch to Live and record that loop, which is easier than trying to make a synth loop on the fly in Live.
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Wewus, The wrapper may indeed be my problem, as I see that some are written to support only vst plug-ins, not instruments. This is not specified at the Spin Audio site where I downloaded the thing. I am using Spin Audio's VST-DX Wrapper lite. Maybe I need a pay-for-it wrapper in order to experience Wewus style cheap softsynth bliss.
Rubber Lizard Studio
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I just checked the [url=http://www.fxpansion.com/skunkworks/]Fxpansion[/url] website and they have a lite version VST wrapper but it doesn't say that it supports VST instruments. I know the full version does. Anybody know of a demo wrapper that supports VST instruments? The other alternative is not to use a wrapper at all, just play Crystal through VSThost, like I am, or the Massiva demo, or some version of Cubase, which has native VST support. [i]just looked again[/i] I would just try that demo. It says expires in 28 days, so maybe it is the full version, with that time limit. go to the download section at [url=http://www.fxpansion.com/skunkworks/]FXpansion[/url] .
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If any newbies want to try this setup, here's exactly how to do it, step by step. Go to the [url=http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=1]K-v-R[/url] website and look to the top right of the page. Under Host, download VST Host, not VSTi Host, or Simple VST Host. Then go to Instruments and download Synth1 and Crystal. Install Synth 1 and then put the VST dll in the same folder with Crystal. Open VST Host-then..... Go to- file NEW and browse to the folder where the two synths are. Open Crystal then go to EFFECT-Edit to bring up the GUI, repeat for Synth1, then minimize the two settings screens so you only have the two synth interface screens showing. Now go to Devices-Midi and select whatever input device you are using, BUT, select NO midi output, then go to Devices-Wave and select the correct Output but select for input, NO Wave, if you don't use these settings you may not get low latency performance. The final step is to hit ENGINE-start. What you have now is a [b]five oscillator[/b] stand alone software synthesizer that rivals anything out there. To me the combination of these two synths is the best thing I've ever played or heard! It's FREE, try it. Don't forget to get the extra banks for Crystal and Synth1. Synth1 banks are on the K-v-R site, go [url=http://www.greenoak.com/crystal/patches.html]HERE[/url] for an extra two Crystal banks.
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Don't forget Synth1. It's a monster synth in it's own right. Synth1 is also one of the easiest synths to use. The screen with all the banks available pops right up, something you don't see on many others, and that function works in almost any host. It's also very easy to make your own pre-sets, just adjust settings, hit write, and the screen pops up and you can number and name your preset for future use.
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Another approach, if you're on Windows XP, is to download the demo of Cubase SX. AFAIK, there is no time limit on the demo. It's crippled in the audio/save area, but it's perfect for running VSTi and VSTs as a standalone hosting program. In addition to the small soft synths that come with it, the VERY nice A1 synth is included with all presets. You can even save program changes with the demo. Plus you get a bunch of VST FXs that you can easily incorporate. Here's what's involved after the intial setup of Cubase SX. 1) File -> New Project, select 16 track MIDI seqiencer. 2) Press F11 to bring up the VST Instrument window and select Synths/A1 3) The little [i]e[/i] button allows you to bring up the synth screen for editing. 4) In the track editor window select a MIDI track and go down to MIDI output and select A1. Assuming your audio outputs and MIDI are setup correctly, you should be able to play away. The nice thing about Cubase is that's it's highly compatible with all the VSTi/VSTs, i.e. if it doesn't run in Cubase you can't really call it a VST. Eventhough this is a demo and you can't save setups, the above steps are all that it takes to get things going each time, so it's not bad at all. This is great for the Mac users who have dedicated PCs for Giga. Busch.
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I've spent some quality time with both Crystal and Synth1. Synth1 is a sweet and limited analog emulator with an essentially good sound, good CPU efficiency, and the inestimable advantage of programming ease. Where I bump heads with it is in the lack of any kid of modulation matrix and assignable CCs. That, and some of its features are kind of coarse--velocity response for instance, which is something I like to tweak extesively to personal taste. It's in there, but not graded finely enough for my taste. But there's no doubt that it sounds good. very sweet. Good filters. Crystal. My goodness. Can we all just bow down to GlennO for a minute here? Just downloaded the newest version last night. New useful features everytime. and Free? I just don't get it. I find Crystal to be a generally abrasive sounding synth. I haven't been successful in my attempts to get it to sound silky, round, fluid, or whatever adjectives have you. Soundfont import can help in this regard, but mostly I just let Crystal be crystal. It's a synth that's all about motion and unpredictable interaction. The porgramming possibilities of Crystal are staggering. The 9 point, sync-able envelopes (with 6 of them freely assignable in the mod matrix)was my first real thrill with it. I'm only beginning to approach the splitter feature. With it, things can so easily get out of control, which can be a wonderful thing. Again, just blown away by the generosity of the developer. His karmic payback is coming soon.
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