One Vst Instrument player for all?

[Mad Musicologist]

Hi there.

Is there any player on VST instrument basis that can be used universally?

For Garritan I need Aria.

For NI I need at least Kontakt player.

There are the built-in sounds of Dimension pro.

Sometimes it's possible to open some instruments from the Dimension Pro Library in Aria.

But Aria is not fully functional, not reliable to full extent.

This brings me to the idea there  could be a universal VST instrument that works like a browser which "translates" the files for ARIA and those for NI and, and, and, to "it's own language" so all the libraries were accessible through that one player. (I think more than the usual 16 channels aren't possible anyway before reforming and expanding MIDI standards.)

Any suggestions?

Or is my question a suggestion for the ingenious developpiong team @ Bandlab / Sonar?

(There might be some people shouting about copyrights. But hey, all those players are available for free anyway.)

 

[Canopus]

No, there isn’t. And I guess any company trying to create such a VST would get a large number of lawsuits on its hands. To be able to do something like that you would have to reverse-engineer all the different proprietary sample file formats used by Native Instruments, Garritan, IK Multimedia, UVI and all the other players in this field using sample based players. Although I haven’t read all the EULAs of these companies, you most certainly are prohibited from reverse-engineer any of the distributed content. It’s not a matter of whether the players are free or not.

 

[abacab]

In other words, most sample libraries are usually locked to the sample player VST by the company that developed it. It is simply copy protection for their property.

At the moment, I believe NI Kontakt is the most widely used format, with considerable 3rd party support (both paid and free). But the sample libraries themselves are locked to Kontakt.

So if I was going to pick just one, that would be it.

 

Edited February 15, 2020 by abacab

[mdiemer]

The only thing I can think of is VePro. They were having a sale on VePro 7 recently, and I picked it up then at a great price, also got something called Epic Orchestra. I fooled around with putting Aria and a few others inside Vepro, but discovered that for me there was no gain. So it was kind of a waste of money, as the free Vienna Ensemble player works as well for me. I got a few usable sounds from EO (Oboe D'Amore, Cornet, some string patches), but all in all I could get by as well without it.

[marc williams]

Plug  In Guru just released their "Unify" at this past NAAM show. 

 

[Vernon Barnes]

Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol gives you a common browser for many different products including EastWest, Arturia, AAS  XILs Labs and of course NIs own products. There are even sound clips that give an indication of the sound of a patch before you load it. 

It's designed to work with NI hardware but you can still use the browser functions without.

Downside is instruments need to be NKS compatable to appear automatically, the list is growing slowly. You can create your own mapping however and have anything appear in the user tab.

I think AKAI have something similar that is less dependent on a standard.

 

[abacab]

On 2/20/2020 at 4:07 AM, Vernon Barnes said:

Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol gives you a common browser for many different products including EastWest, Arturia, AAS  XILs Labs and of course NIs own products. There are even sound clips that give an indication of the sound of a patch before you load it. 

It's designed to work with NI hardware but you can still use the browser functions without.

Downside is instruments need to be NKS compatable to appear automatically, the list is growing slowly. You can create your own mapping however and have anything appear in the user tab.

I think AKAI have something similar that is less dependent on a standard.

 

I like Komplete Kontrol, but the lack of instrument layering puts it at a disadvantage, unless you layer multiple instances in a DAW host.

AKAI has VIP, which I have, and it works standalone as a plugin host, as well as a plugin for your DAW. You can layer up to 8 VST instruments (channels), 4 VST insert FX per instrument, with sends to 4 busses and  then save as a multi.  The lack of a standard makes it a bit hit or miss which plugins will work with it, but most of my plugins seem to be compatible. Downside to VIP is that AKAI doesn't seem to be very active in continued software development for this product (another inMusic brand), such as no VST3 support yet. AKAI seems to be more focused on hardware.

That new Unify from Plugin Guru  looks interesting, too. Small developer, who implies bigger things are to come! Price looks good right now,  at $59 until March 1st. https://www.pluginguru.com/products/unify-standard/

 

 

Edited February 22, 2020 by abacab

[Jason Botha]

I have a few Midi VST programs that are playing the note I play on my MIDI keyboard when set as a MIDI effect layer in Unify, in addition to what the MIDI VST has been set to play. I noticed this when using Ripchord, Midiq, reMIDI, etc.

Is there a setting in Cakewalk that can stop this from happening? I don't have this issue when using these MIDI VSTs to control my VST instruments in Cakewalk itself (making the MIDI VST the input of the VST Instrument).

Any assistance will be much appreciated.

[jackson white]

The Aria Player shows and plays everything from Dim Pro as well as Garritan. 

[Starship Krupa]

That would suggest a good chance that sforzando would as well, as they are quite similar.

[abacab]

6 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

That would suggest a good chance that sforzando would as well, as they are quite similar.

It appears that sforzando can import and open the individual sfz elements from Dim Pro. But not the full presets, which can be made from up to 4 elements.

Also, sforzando is not multi-timbral like the Aria player.

 

Edited May 1, 2020 by abacab