Recently I've been trying out a few different options, including Blue Cat Audio PatchWork, NYRV Systems Agents, DDMF MetaPlugin, and Xlutop Chainer but I am still a little hesitant using any in a real production environment. Has anyone been able to successfully implement a plugin chainer in their day to day setup?

Just a little background...
My current main DAW is Bitwig and I have few key plugins that it wont load properly. In addition, with my style of music, one of the key requirements is to have a dry/wet parameter for any VST effect and unfortunately there are numerous ones that lack such feature. As a result, I came to conclusion that a plugin chainer might be the best approach to bypass these bottlenecks.

After a brief testing, Agent seems like the best option in terms of quick parameter accessibility, low CPU usage, and plugin delay compensation. I really love its ability to customize plugin's crucial knobs without even having to open up the plugin's window. However, I am not so sure about its stability since I've already experienced a few crashes. NYRV Systems advertise that by hosting everything inside the Agent, you will see a drastic drop in resource usage compared to hosting things natively inside the DAW. Can anyone comment on this as I am suspecting it might be just a sales pitch?
My second runner up would be PatchWork but it's a bit awkward with all the clicking involved.

More so, whenever possible, I try to avoid bouncing MIDI to audio to offload RAM and CPU since I like to keep full tweaking control until the track is complete. Nonetheless, as projects get heavier, I am currently forced to render certain tracks. I've been reading a bit about distributed computing and the idea of utilizing multiple networked computers to offload your main DAW. In terms of plugin chainers that possess such LAN capability, Vienna Ensemble first jumps to my mind. Has anyone used this tool or something similar with positive results? Is this something worth the investment or too cumbersome and time consuming?

On the other hand, maybe a plugin chainer is not the best route and there are better ways to deal with incompatible plugins and wet/dry parameters?

Your input is greatly appreciated.

 

Take a look:

VSTHost
http://www.hermannseib.com/english/vsthost.htm
Minihost Modular
http://www.image-line.com/documents/news.php?entry_id=1391136116
Cantabile
https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/
BloXpander
http://www.eareckon.com/en/products/bloxpander-vst-host-for-live-performance.html
Sensomusic Usine
http://www.sensomusic.org/
Brainspawn Forte
http://www.brainspawn.com/
AudioStorm LiveProfessor
http://audiostrom.com/

 

Hi

In Reason you have full control of Routing so you can put many vst fx and split/merge signals with many kind of mixers and the whole chain is saved as a "combinator" which is patch with all settings including the routing.
It make it posiible to mix serial/parallel processing routings.

I'm looking for a VST that will provide such a possibility to host other vst's and enable free routing possiblities so I can make a complex serial/parallel chain and save it a s a whole.

@substorm tx for the question
@ZUK tx for the options you posted, but I would like to find a "fx chain" format that is compatible with a DAW so it can be used both as standalone when live in in the DAW when doing sound design in studio.

 

I found this:
https://www.newsonicarts.com/html/freestyle.php
looks good

 

plenty too check there:
https://www.kvraudio.com/plugins/plug-in-chainer-rack

 

I hate daw dry wet knobs.

If a plugin does not have a dry wet knob it should not have one.
Most likely will turn everything out of sync, or at least create phaze isseus

 

this one looks also cool:
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/chainer-by-plug-and-mix

 

From the early beginning I've been using Cantabile in my studio. Fantastic and reliable for sure. The possibilities are endless. NEVER had a crash or whatsoever! The only thing (for me) is that there is still no VST version for using it in my DAW.

 

I had same situation with izotope RX, i mostly doing some repair and restoration jobs. But RX don't have ability to load some vst plugins, like waves vst shells and so on.

Before i try i mostly use BlueCat Patchwork/MB Mixer, but i also try DDMF MetaPlugin, and some plugins also didn't work and crash like as in RX, then i found this beauty

https://www.plogue.com/products/bidule/

It works very stable, it has delay compesation, and it's very light and it's simmilar to DDMF MetaPlugin but work like seperate program, it has some built in plugs aslo.

 

That's why most of my old mixes sound rubbish. Sound Radix Auto Align fixes this problem now.

 

dude, computers are so powerful now, to the point it don't matter.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_od...40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=i5+laptop&_sacat=0

 

dude, computers are so powerful now, to the point it don't matter.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=i7+laptop&LH_ItemCondition=1000&_dcat=177&LH_FS=1&_osacat=0&Processor%20Type=Intel%20Core%20i7%204th%20Gen%2E&_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=i5+laptop&_sacat=0

you can buy a recording computer for cheaper than your vocal mic fool!

 

All you need is mulab Mux, or vstforx.
http://www.mutools.com/mux-product.html
https://www.vstforx.de/

 

For sending audio+MIDI over network you might want to check Cockos' ReaStream: https://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/