Easily use VST or AU (even 32 bit) in ProTools! Liquid Mix incl.

[James Steele]

This is craaaazy!! So I am still hanging on to my Focusrite LiquidMix. Probably should phase it out since I have Softube Console 1 now. Anyway, it's 32 bit so I have to run Mojave to run 32Lives... but this is a kick! I recently bought a perpetual license for ProTools of Craiglist (which worked out fine... it was a gift seller received unopened). As a proof of concept I wanted to see if I could figure out a way to use LiquidMix in ProTools. That's a challenge. We're talking 32-bit AU for a DAW that only uses AAX. Well updating my Blue Cat Audio plugs, I came across this gem:

https://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/P ... PatchWork/

This thing is unbelievable. It's pricey I guess at $99.... I don't know if there's a bundle, but I installed the AAX version and this silly thing has LiquidMix WORKING in ProTools 2021.7! It seems like this very easily lets VST and AU effects (including those wrapped with 32 Lives) work in ProTools. I haven't done extensive testing... no VIs yet, but seems a lot simpler workaround than VEP and I doubt it will have the latency (assuming I get VIs working) that the VEP solution would introduce.

If you are a doubter... ... I've attached a screen grab of Liquid Mix running in ProTools. I went back and did the screen grab over while PT was playing so you could see level meters going on LiquidMix plug in... the meters on the hardware work fine too. Crazy

I moved this over to General Macintosh since it is not DP related, but for those of you that have PT also (I got mine mostly to transfer projects) thought I'd share this discovery!

liquidmixinpt.jpg (212.58 KiB) Viewed 543 times

[James Steele]

NOTE: I also found this plug in to be a great workaround for plugs that crash DP! For example, there's Hammond B3 VI called Adam Monroe's Rotary. Just $25. https://adammonroemusic.com/organ-vst/a ... lugin.html

So as it turns out, loading the AU for Mojave (he has different versions for different OSs) crashes DP 11.02 but NOT DP 10.13. (Same goes for the VST version... I tried!) Adam is very helpful and he's working on getting an NFR copy of DP11 from MOTU to figure out what changed from 10.13 to 11.02. In the meantime though, I discovered I could use Blue Cat Patchwork AU to run AM Rotary within it's shell. No crashes. Works like a champ, and much better solution than having run in VEP and introduce latency when playing the instrument from a MIDI keyboard.

Oh... also, I did find that Patchwork runs AU VIs (there may not be an AAX version of some VIs... especially older ones) just fine! Truly an amazing plug-in!!

patchworkandamrotaryindp11.jpg (204.73 KiB) Viewed 531 times