Plugin Rack / Host

[JSmith1234567]

I remember looking at this a few years ago, but is there anything out there now that will host a bunch of plugins in one "rack" or "host"?

I've always wished Motu would add some sort of "pane" / preference where you could highlight a channel and it would open every plugin on that channel in one single "pane" or window.

Channel Strip sort of does that, but only for Motu plugins, and it really doesn't open the plugin window/GUI.

I know SoundToys has one for just their own plugins, and I believe Waves has something similar, again for their own stuff only, but is their anything else / recent out there?

[stubbsonic]

Check out Blue Cats PatchWork. I just bought it. Seems like it does what you want. It's especially nice that you can work out plugin setups (including parallel processing) and then be able to use the same setup in other DAW's (i.e., resume your mix in a different DAW, for example).

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

[James Steele]

Check out Blue Cats PatchWork. I just bought it. Seems like it does what you want. It's especially nice that you can work out plugin setups (including parallel processing) and then be able to use the same setup in other DAW's (i.e., resume your mix in a different DAW, for example).

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

It will also let you use non AAX effects in Pro Tools.

[JSmith1234567]

Hey thanks!

That looks totally cool.

I have a few of Blue Cat's free plugins, and they work great, so I'm sure this will too.

Thanks again.

[labman]

We use and really love Gig Performer Unlkocked. (plugin alliance)

[James Steele]

This is somewhat related: ikMultimedia released MixBox today... at least I think it was today. It gives you a virtual rack where you can mix and match their processors. They deposited a free version, MixBox CE, in user accounts today that includes 8 processors. I may as well download and install it I guess.

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/mixbox/

[rp88.2]

We use and really love Gig Performer Unlkocked. (plugin alliance)

Thank you for this-- I am going to check it out.

Have a great 4th of July weekend!

PS Was hoping it was included in Plugin Alliance's Mega Sale, but it looks like it isn't.

[stubbsonic]

PS Was hoping it was included in Plugin Alliance's Mega Sale, but it looks like it isn't.

Yea, I was drawn to try to get Gig Perfomer as part of a sale, but didn't see that it was exempt. PatchWork is a nice price and a really easy install/authorize.

[Michael Canavan]

Another contender for plug in rack host is Unify, it solves some DP specific issues like split keyboards, and in general it's an interesting program. One thing is you can use AU plug ins as MIDI FX like you can in Logic, which on M1's means if it's not native it's still possible to use, since AU is the only format that works with Rosetta. https://www.pluginguru.com/products/unify-standard/

I like a product where the developer is actively answering questions on their forum, that's a huge bonus to me.

[Michael Canavan]

This is somewhat related: ikMultimedia released MixBox today... at least I think it was today. It gives you a virtual rack where you can mix and match their processors. They deposited a free version, MixBox CE, in user accounts today that includes 8 processors. I may as well download and install it I guess.

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/mixbox/

I bought into the 25 for one sale a while ago and MixBox is pretty cool, this new version is Apple Silicon native as well. Now let's see ARC and T-Racks next.

[dewdman42]

I really like Unify. It was the only one that would solve a particular problem for me lately. One nice thing is that you can use Unify to organize all the presets of your favorite synths and then be able to search for them in one place. I feel it is well done.

KushView Element is free or close to free. Free if you want to compile it yourself all the code is on GitHub. Its not a nice little rack though, its more of a modular concept where you wire different plugins together, which is ultimately more flexible quite often, but its not a simple rack concept.

Waves has their StudioRack thing. I never use it...but its out there.

As mentioned, BlueCatAudio's patchwork is pretty good, I tend to use it only sometimes because of a couple limitations.

Akai has something called VIP that does this sort of stuff.

PlogueBidule is another one that is modular concept.

Also there is DDMF which is similar as PlogueBidule and KushviewElement.

[James Steele]

I really like Unify. It was the only one that would solve a particular problem for me lately. One nice thing is that you can use Unify to organize all the presets of your favorite synths and then be able to search for them in one place. I feel it is well done.

KushView Element is free or close to free. Free if you want to compile it yourself all the code is on GitHub. Its not a nice little rack though, its more of a modular concept where you wire different plugins together, which is ultimately more flexible quite often, but its not a simple rack concept.

Waves has their StudioRack thing. I never use it...but its out there.

As mentioned, BlueCatAudio's patchwork is pretty good, I tend to use it only sometimes because of a couple limitations.

Akai has something called VIP that does this sort of stuff.

PlogueBidule is another one that is modular concept.

Also there is DDMF which is similar as PlogueBidule and KushviewElement.

I need to take a look at Unify. As far as VIP, from everything I've read online, it's abandonware. Supposedly updates are promised and it seems promising, but it's not getting maintained.

[dewdman42]

Unify is kind of over priced for what it is, IMHO, but I have still found it useful at times.

[James Steele]

Unify is kind of over priced for what it is, IMHO, but I have still found it useful at times.

That’s funny. I was just looking at the website for it and it seems pretty cool. Comes with a lot of patches and gets rave reviews.

I wish someone made something more along the lines of VIP that let you manage your VI patches with a tagging system like Komplete Kontrol or whatever the plug in is called does. VIP supposedly let you do the same thing but catalog your own sounds. I’ve got so many VIs and sounds I can’t possibly hunt through them all. Lately I’ve been very keen on getting more invested in the Komplete Kontrol system and getting a Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk2. What good are zillions of sounds if you can’t find what you need quickly?

[dewdman42]

I had VIP, it doesn't run on Monterey now. But it was much more elaborate than Unify. It was a full mixer environment you could setup complex patches as you wish and had a MIDI mapping system particularly targeted for the Akai keyboards..but it could automatically tag a lot of presets, which was really interesting at the time. its unfortunate that AKAI basically stopped supporting it. I got it for dirt cheap somehow at some point..I don't think Akai was making any money from it...just using it to sell more akai keyboards.

Unify is a much more simple approach, but it can do a lot of the same stuff with tagging, but you have to manually tag everything yourself. It comes with some presets for some free VST's that are included in it. They are ok. Most of the patches that PluginGuru makes for Unify are over the top patches with lots of arpeggiations and stuff that borderlines on full arrangement keyboards. If that is your thing, then its pretty cool, especially fig you spend even more to buy some of the patch libraries from PluginGuru...but for my money those kinds of patches are usually not usable on my musical projects, they are just kind of something to fool around with. They are too much over the top. Unify enabled him to develop some patches which are kind of like the old Korg Karma on steroids so to speak. Like I said, if you're into that...then Unify is pretty cool and worth the money, but if your not, then it its just really a sub-hosting plugin which kind of costs a lot for what it is, IMHO. I'm not saying its not a cool product it is, I just think its overpriced, but hey spend your money as you wish. I am finding it useful mainly because a lot of the other sub-hosters out there...such as PlogueBidule, Kushview Element, Patchworks, DDMF, etc..they tend to have various GUI problems on VePro...and particularly with Jamstix for some reason. Kushview Element and Unify are actually the only two that work right on VePro, especially a remote VePro slave using Remote Desktop. Both Kushview and Unify are based on JUCE nearly entirely, which means they both get a lot of built in functionality automatically and happen to work fine on VePro. Kushview is free if you compile it yourself or super cheap if you don't want to compile it yourself. It actually does a lot of stuff that Unify can't do. But Unify has are more simple rack style interface which some people may prefer compared to Kushview's modular-cable-everything-together interface. I have and use both.

But at the moment, Unify happens to be the only one that works correctly with Jamstix on Vepro on a windows slave over Remote Desktop ....heheheh.. Literally every other situation doesn't work and its the only way to use Jamstix from a modern Mac right now. So for this use I would pay any price for Unify, just for that...so there you go, but I suspect Kushview will have its bug fixed and will work for me in the future also for this purpose...for free.

Its interesting to think about using Unify for keep all my various plugin presets in one central place..and tagged, if I want to go through the trouble of tagging them. Its a lot of work to set all that up, and I doubt I will do it. On their forum you can find some contributed presets from other people that have gone through some popular plugins and made Unify presets for all the factory presets. In some cases they aren't really tagged very well, they tried to use automation tools to create them, etc.. But anyway, if you want a lot of your plugins having one master preset DB to search for patches...and even better..you can easily setup layered and split sounds using several plugins and save it as a preset to reuse later. its definitely a cool tool for that. If you think its price tag is worth it for you for that, I can attest that the software functions well.