Vst Plugins How To Use

Posted By admin On 18.12.20

Info from Trebor, triaged by Gale, that can be incorporated into this page (add those plugins not already listed).

What are VST plug-ins? The VST (Virtual Studio Technology) plug-in format was created in 1996 with the release of Cubase 3. Since then, it has become an industry standard and is compatible with most DAW’s. VST’s were initially only compatible with the Windows OS, but they are now compatible with Mac as well. The latest version is VST 3.0.
There are a few different way to use VST and AU plugins in Pro Tools 12. It's even possible to use VST/AU plugins in Pro Tools First, the free version of Pro Tools 12. One of the things that separates Pro Tools from other DAWs is the proprietary AAX format that it uses for plugins.
Go to the 'Options' menu and select 'Preferences'. Under 'Preferences', select the 'File Folder' menu. Click the 'Browse' button next to 'VST Plug-In Custom Folder'. Select the folder you would like Ableton to use for VST Plug-Ins.

The JS series & MDA series of VST plugins, (which are old) , wouldn't work properly with Audacity 2.1.0 , see https://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1083 for status, it is DEVEL-FIX MADE now.

The “Antress modern” series of plugins, http://antress.blogspot.co.uk/ do work , but since implementation of real-time-adjustment , you have to stop then start playback for any adjustments to the controls to take effect. This is not on Bugzilla, so needs testing but it could have already been fixed by the fix for https://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1084 .

Free VST effects I have on my machine right now, which I use regularly, so I know are working OK on Audacity 2.1.0:
- Marvel GEQ.dll http://www.voxengo.com/product/marvelgeq/https://forum.audacityteam.org/download/file.php?id=13343]A graphic equalizer
- ANWIDA Soft DX Reverb Light.dll http://www.anwida.com/product.asp?pid=7, http://www.anwida.com/dc.asp?file=http://www.anwida.com/progs/asdxrl20.zip&pid=7
- BC Chorus 4 VST(Stereo).dll http://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Product_Chorus/
- Gmulti.dll , Ggate.dll , Gsnap.dll http://www.gvst.co.uk/downloads.htm [ compressor, gate, autotune ].
- SPITFISH.dll http://www.digitalfishphones.com/main.php?item=2&subItem=5 [ a basic de-esser ].
- TB_Sibalance_v3.dll http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-sibalance/ [ a sophisticated de-esser ].
- DtBlkFx.dll http://rekkerd.org/dtblkfx/ A spectral-processor [ capable of weirdness like nothing else ].
- 'Acon Multiply' https://acondigital.com/products/multiply/ It does chorus & stereo effects . It has presets, so is simple to operate : ideal for newbies who wants to add effects to vocal / guitar recordings.

Feel free to use current Audacity to retest any plug-ins that did not work with legacy VST Enabler or legacy 1.x versions of Audacity. If plug-ins now work, please move them up into the 'working' list. Audacity 2.0.6 onwards supports buffer delay compensation. With the use of these VST plug-ins, you will be able to explore a wide world of different sounds and effects and you would not need to buy more of the other instruments and devices that otherwise would cost a good amount of money and consume a lot of space.

This page describes support for VST (Virtual Studio Technology) effect plug-ins in Audacity; VST instrument plug-ins that generate audio are not supported. A list of VST effects known to process correctly in Audacity on Windows is given here.

VST effects are supported by Audacity on OS X and GNU/Linux, but relatively few are available on Mac (due to Apple's competing Audio Units technology) and even fewer on Linux. If a specific VST effect is required on Linux, it may be necessary to employ workarounds such as running Audacity for Windows in a virtual machine.

Related article(s):

Other pages in our Plug-ins category

3List of functional VST Plug-ins

VST support in Audacity

On Windows and Mac OS X, Audacity is a 32-bit application so won't see 64-bit versions of VST plug-ins, even on 64-bit operating systems.
On GNU/Linux, 32-bit systems will have 32-bit versions of Audacity which won't see 64-bit VST plug-ins. 64-bit systems will have 64-bit versions of Audacity which will see 64-bit VST plug-ins but won't see 32-bit plug-ins.
VST instruments (VSTi) (such as synths) and real-time VST effects (that change the audio data while playing or recording) are not yet supported.
VST 3 plug-ins are not supported.

VST effects are displayed with full GUI interface (where provided by the plug-in), and without need of the VST Enabler. This has been made possible by use of an open source VST header.

For instructions on how to load new VST effects into Audacity please see this page in the Manual.

The overwhelming majority of VST effect plug-ins should display and process correctly. If an incompatible VST plug-in does cause a problem, click the Manage button in the effect's dialog then choose 'Options...'. In the dialog that appears, try reducing Buffer Size, disabling Latency Compensation or disabling graphical display. See VST Effect Options in the Manual for more information on these choices.

To report a plug-in that is problematic in current Audacity, please report it on the Audacity Forum.

Installing VST plug-ins in Audacity

The process and file location is different for each operating system. See the following pages in the Audacity Manual:

List of functional VST Plug-ins

Instructions for adding plug-ins to the list:

Please insert new plug-ins that work in Audacity in the correct place so as to keep the list sorted in alphabetical order.
Please give a download link to the plug-in if possible, enclosing the link inside single square brackets - for example:
[http://www.linktoplugin.com]
If plug-ins are not free, please note this.

The majority of plug-ins will be for Windows only unless OS 9 or OS X is stated.
Classic Mac OS plug-ins will only work under OS 9 and previous. Mac OS X plug-ins with a .component file marked as 'PowerPC' will only work on PPC Macs (they might work on Intel Macs with slow performance under Rosetta but Rosetta cannot be used on OS X 10.7 or later).

List of Plug-ins with download links

Antares AutoTune Evo - Mostly works with current Audacity. Automatic pitch correction works, but to be able to draw pitch curves clock must be set to 'internal' and not 'host'. (commercial)
Antress Modern Plug-ins including a number of compressors, a limiter, an expander, an exciter and a 'spacer' which could be used for creating 'fake stereo'
ANWIDA Soft DX Reverb Light.dll for Windows and Mac (PowerPC only)
Bo Johansen Plug-ins
Bluecat Plug-ins
bs2b.dll stereo to binaural
Buzzroom CL 201 (Vintage Maximiser) - now shareware

Peter 16Nov15: I'm not sure I want us to continue linking to the Brothersoft site (or its plug-ins) the very first ad I got served on that page was for a porn site - sure the adds cycled round with normal sensible ads but they were on a cycle and the porn ad kept returning. And It carries a misleading big green 'Download' button !

Gale 18Nov15: The Classic plugins below are discontinued. The links were pointing to Brothersoft which is a dubious site and now point to VST4free which is much less bad. Also you can get the complete bundle from http://acoustica1.cachefly.net/other/Classic-Effects-Installer.exe. The installer puts the plugins in %PROGRAMFILES%VST where (according to the Manual and VSTEffect.cpp) Audacity should not see them unless a registry key or VST_PATH environment variable points there. But Audacity does see them (on Win 10).

Classic plug-ins

Classic Chorus.dll
Classic Compressor.dll
Classic Delay.dll
Classic EQ.dll
Classic Flanger.dll
Classic Master Limiter.dll
Classic Phaser.dll
Classic Reverb.dll

Peter 16Nov15: Rather than linking direct to the downloads for these digitalfishphones plug-ins, might it not be better to link to the site's download page for them as it tells the user, in some detail, just what each one is for: THD, dominion and normalizer?

Gale 17Nov15: Any other plugins are not listed because presumably no-one tested them. Yes, show a landing page with detail for the plugin if there is one. But if we have a table like I suggest we can link to the publisher and the plugin in a less confusing way.

digitalfishphones plug-ins

- dominion v1.2.dll - a tool to shape the envelope of a signal, giving you total control of the signal's attack & sustain phase
- endorphin - dual-band stereo compressor
- BLOCKFISH - compressor for Windows and OS X (PPC only)
- FLOORFISH.dll - expander/noise gate for Windows and OS X (PPC only)
- SPITFISH.dll - de-esser for Windows and OS X (PPC only)
- normalizer.dll - a denormalization tool
- THD.dll - analog-style saturator

DtBlkFx (FFT-based frequency and harmonics manipulation). Also supports OS X (Universal binary) but only Windows version tested.
Extra Boy Pro removal and isolation of audio components (commercial, paid for)
EZmix (commercial, time limited demo available). Also supports OS X but only Windows version tested.
Freeverb Plug-ins
- Freeverb for OS X
- Freeverb2.dll for Windows
- FreeverbToo.dll for Windows
GMulti Multi-band compressor
iZotope vinyl for Windows and OS X
JS plug-in pack - contains plug-ins listed below.
- JS 6 equalizer V1.0.dll
- JS Band Cut V1.0.dll
- JS Compresseur V1.1.dll
- JS Disto V1.0.dll
- JS equalizer V1.0.dll
- Humanizer v1.0.dll
- JS Limiteur V1.0.dll
- JS Magneto V1.1.dll
- JS Mini-sample V1.0.dll
- JS Noise Attenu V1.0 .dll
- JS Noise Filtre V1.0.dll
- JS Oscil resonne V2.0 .dll
- JS Oscil resonne V3.0.dll
- JS PanDelay .dll
- JS Resonnateur V1.0.dll
- JS Vibrato V1.0.dll
jVSTwRapper-based plug-ins (on Windows, Mac OSX PPC/Intel and Linux).

jVSTwRapper is a way of writing Java plug-ins using VST-based technology, enclosed in a wrapper that makes them compatible for use in VST, Audio Units and LADSPA hosts. Thus jVSTwRapper plug-ins can be run on all three platforms.

How To Use Vst Plugins In Ableton

Lisp level-independent sibilance processor
Smartelectronix Plug-ins
- Ambience - reverb plug-in for Windows, OS 9/X (PPC only)
- MjCompressor.dll for Windows and OS XWindows version only has a tabular interface even in Audacity 1.3.8+
REFLEX free - a regenerating delay plug-in, a mixture of stereo delays followed by a dense
Robotizer for Windows and Mac OS X (PPC only)
TAL-Reverb-2 - popular GPL licensed plate reverb
TB Compressor (working demo) in Tone Boosters plug-in bundle - supports 'New York' or 'parallel' compression
UpStereo.dll - stereo widener
UpStereo for OS X(not tested)
VOX_DoctorDemo.dll - De-Esser
Voxengo - free VST plug-ins from Voxengo

List of Plug-ins with known problems

Instructions for adding VST effect plug-ins to the list:

Please do not add VST instrument plug-ins to the list, because Audacity won't work with any of those.
List effect plug-ins that do not work properly in Audacity, giving a short note of the problem, such as 'Audacity won't launch', 'plug-in does not appear in Effect Menu', 'not all controls available', 'audio not processed'.
Please give a download link to the plug-in if possible, enclosing the link inside single square brackets - for example:
[http://www.linktoplugin.com]
Please also give your operating system such as Windows 10 or Mac OS X 10.9.4, the date of your report, and the version of Audacity used.
Feel free to use current Audacity to retest any plug-ins that did not work with legacy VST Enabler or legacy 1.x versions of Audacity. If plug-ins now work, please move them up into the 'working' list.
- Audacity 2.0.6 onwards supports buffer delay compensation. Most plug-ins previously listed below that suffered from inserted silence due to Audacity's lack of compensation are no longer listed.

How To Use Vst Plugins Fl Studio

In addition to the below list, the following plug-ins do not have functioning sliders in Audacity 2.1.0 or later and so will only apply at default settings. See Bug 1083.

JS plug-ins
MDA VST's
stereoizer.dll

Vst Plugins How To Use Music

Plug-in	OS	Date	Audacity version	Symptoms
Auto-Tune	Windows	Dec.2012	Audacity 2.0.1	Tuning by MIDI input is not supported.
BlueCat	OS X	Sep.2014	Audacity 2.0.5, 2.0.6	In 2.0.5, the plug-in interface does not work, so you can only use default settings. The interface works in 2.0.6, but in both versions, saving a preset will lock out the main Audacity window, requiring to close Audacity from the Dock.
CM Vocoder	Windows/OS X	Sep.08	Audacity 1.3.8+	Does not appear
Effect Chainer DX and VST wrapper	Windows	Jan.08	All	can't host any plug-ins
FFX-4 DX and VST Wrapper	Windows	Jan.08	All	can't host any plug-ins
Freeverb2	Windows 7	Oct.11	Audacity 1.3.13	Only tabular interface, no preset support
GRM Tools	OS X	May 2014	Audacity 2.0.6-alpha	Interface cannot be used (so the effects can only be used at default settings) or interface disappears completely when loading preset. The interface is likely to be available in 2.0.6 release, but attempting to save a preset in any Audacity version could lock out the main Audacity window.
GRM Tools	Windows	Sep.08	Audacity 1.3.8+	unspecified
GSnap	Windows	Jan.2014	Audacity 2.0.6	Tuning by MIDI input is not supported.
keFIR	Windows	Apr.08	VST-Bridge 1.1	has no effect on audio
kn0ck0ut	Windows	Sep.2014	Audacity 2.0.6-alpha	Despite Audacity 2.0.6 or later supporting buffer delay compensation, the start of the processed audio has silence inserted and a corresponding length is removed from the end of the processed audio. This also occurs in Goldwave and Wavosaur so is probably a bug in Kn0ck0ut, but the VST version is no longer being developed, only an LV2 version.
Sonic Maximizer	Windows	Sep.2007	VST-Bridge 1.1	not in Effect menu
SoundSoap2 (discontinued) (see also SoundSoap3)	Windows, OS X	2007 (various)	All	Audacity won't launch
Spectro	Windows	Nov.2014	2.0.7-alpha	No spectrum visible in plug-in window
String Studio	Windows	2007 (various)	VST-Bridge 1.1	Audacity won't launch
T RackS 3	OS X	Dec.2009	All	Audacity won't launch
VisualVOX VST	Windows	Jan.2008	VST-Bridge 1.1	No interface, just silences audio
Waves V5	Windows	Dec.2012	Audacity 2.0.2	Hangs Audacity on launch
Waves V8	OS X	Feb.2013	Audacity 2.0.3	Only tabular interface. Two entries (m) and (s) for each effect. GarageBand does not have either problem.(1)

(1) Audio Unit versions of Waves may cause Audacity 2.0.4 or earlier to freeze or crash on launch. In 2.0.5 or later, Waves Audio Units may cause a freeze or crash when the effect is chosen from the Effect Menu.

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