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General => MusicBee Wishlist => Topic started by: DonGateley on January 31, 2014, 06:53:22 AM
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I'd like to add my voice to the chorus of people who need native VST plugin support. I tried Christian Budde's VST to Winamp converter and although the converted plugin loads (after prefixing its name with dsp_) it fails at finding the .ini file needed by the original VST plugin which has the same name as the plugin and resides in the same directory.
The specific VST plugin I want to use is reajs.dll, a plugin that lets you implement VST plugins using a language that is a simple derivative of C in a really convenient framework without messing with compilers and development systems. It was part of Reactor but they released it stand alone and I've made a couple of VST plugins with it that work well in Adobe Audition. It uses a file, reajs.ini, to parameterize itself but after Christian's converter that can no longer be found or read. I tried naming it dsp_reajs.ini but that doesn't work either.
A link to the Reactor system is: http://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/ There are others like SynthMaker and Synthedit but while more powerful, especially creating GUI's, they are extremely complicated in comparison.
My main desire with MusicBee is to deliver demo's of my plugins for evaluation by others not very sophisticated at audio processing. I can't find a nice player app that can use VST plugins without wrappers that mess up reading .ini files.
I really, really like the design of MusicBee and would love to use it but the lack of VST inhibits me.
Many Thanks
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Have you updated to MusicBee 2.3 beta yet?
Native VST support has been available since Version: 2.3.5082
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Have you updated to MusicBee 2.3 beta yet?
Native VST support has been available since Version: 2.3.5082
<headslap>D'oh. No, I hadn't dug in far enough to see that. Awesome! You've changed my life. :-)
Thanks
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I found the beta thread and got the latest. Is there a portable version of it?
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I found the beta thread and got the latest. Is there a portable version of it?
D'oh again. I hadn't tried to run it yet. I like that you upgrade from where it is installed. That covers both bases nicely.
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Got it working but found some operational problems with DSP Effects in general.
1. When I double click to open the VST effect's configuration I see the plugin's control GUI but in a window that's too small and I must resize it manually. Not a big deal but it would be a lot better if the window that opened contained the whole plugin GUI.
2. Getting to where you can change an active plugin's configuration has a problem that is really serious. When you go to Controls you can't open DSP Effects to change something if it is already checked. When you click anywhere on the entry, it just becomes unchecked rather than opening its page and this resets its configuration, including what plugins are enabled, and the configuration of whatever plugins that might have been enabled and configured. Then you must go back to it via Controls and click on DSP Effects again to activate it and get to the page that allows plugin configuration, activate the plugin again and reconfigure it from scratch . You should be able to click on DSP Effects to the right of the checkbox and open its page without resetting the checkbox and without changing any prior configuration. A side effect of this is that there is no way to modify a plugin's configuration via its GUI after the initial setup because the settings of both the DSP Effects page and the settings of the plugin is reset to default.
3. Even with the DSP Settings window open if I close the plugin's GUI and double click again on its entry to re-open the GUI trying to change something in its configuration, the state of the plugin's configuration has been completely reset. The configuration state of plugins, Winamp or VST, should be persistent even across opening and closing the MusicBee program itself as well as when changing its state while running.
Any consideration given to these state problems will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
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Part of the problem might be that you have the VST plugins in a non-writeable folder and for that you would need to use Portable mode for MusicBee.
But even then i can only get the VST plugins to work on their default settings and nothing seems to save. I dont know why, and possibly a bug with the bass vst plugin dll. I dont really have time to spend on this given its not a very commonly requested thing, so i will remove the functionality
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Thanks for responding.
I sincerely hope you don't mean removing VST functionality. Only a part of the difficulties I found have to do with the plugin state. The remainder have to do with MusicBee state with regard to the DSP Effects overall. If it were possible to get in and out of DSP Effects without changing its state that would go a long way toward operability. With that the VST specific problem would only occur when explicitly enabling/disabling it or when restarting MusicBee. Not optimum but a big step toward it and I think the remaining problem with VST state will turn out to be trivial if someone ever finds the time to look deeper into it. In the meantime a disclaimer relative to enabling/disabling them and that it remains a low priority would at least keep users from being surprised.
I believe also that VST plugin usage will increase significantly when it is part of the main release and when it becomes generally known that it is there. It is a _very_ powerful and useful capability. The world of VST functionality is huge. The site http://www.kvraudio.com gives some idea of that if your familiarity with VST isn't very broad.
Thanks again.
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i'm not planning to spend the time investigating it further at least for this release, and its already been removed
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Incredible! I don't think this is a place to be or an app to use. The attitude is a bit much.
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I have revisited this plugin using a different approach and should now work with persisting and remembering each parameter for a VST plugin.
One thing that is not ideal is if a VST editor is open, it will be automatically closed when the next track plays.
Its now implemented as a MusicBee plugin:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/fxp4xjrz4yur7aj/mb_VST.zip
unzip and put mb_VST.dll in the plugins folder. The vst plugin folder would need to be configured but the default is the normal VST location
To use this the latest v2.4 is needed:
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_4/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
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Thank you. I'll give it another try. In the mean time I got by with a free Win driver, VSTHost, that can host VST plug networks and apply that to all audio on the way out of the system and while that is the ultimate in flexibility I don't really like the fact that a special driver is required.
Yeah, closing the VST plug interface between tracks is not ideal but for what I'm doing it's probably ok so long as the parameters remain unchanged when it is closed and it can be re-opened without them changing.
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I must be doing something wrong. I downloaded the latest version and overinstalled it. Opened the patch zip file and copied the contents into the installation directory, opened mb_VST.zip and copied the dll into \Plugins in the installation directory. When I then open the program and look through its menu I can find no reference to VST anywhere.
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Have you enabled the plugin in Preferences > Plugins?
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There's no entry for it in Edit->Preferences->Plugins
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@DonGateley, if there is no panel for the VST plugin configuration in the Plugin preferences that means the VST plugin (mb_VST.dll) has not been placed in the MusicBee\Plugins folder.
Once you see the entry in the Plugin preferences tab, and the correct path set for the source VST plugins (and restart MB is it needs to be changed) then they should appear in the Equaliser and DSP window as any DSP plugin does
I have updated the VST plugin so any VST configuration editor now stays open when songs change and should hopefully be stable with some of the VST plugins that were a bit flacky before.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/fxp4xjrz4yur7aj/mb_VST.zip
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Installation error. I forgot that I had originally installed the program to a non-standard place. Sorry.
I now get vst host in the Preferences->Plugins panel and I pointed it at my VST plugins directory ok but I cannot remember nor can I find how to access the the plugins themselves. The host is enabled. There is nothing about VST in Control->DSP Effects. Help appreciated.
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sorry don, i fogot to include bass_vst.dll
http://www.mediafire.com/download/soj85cck887a3hq/bass_vst.zip
unzip and place in the musicbee application folder
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Thanks, Steven. I did that along with copying the mb_VST.dll to \Plugins and the patch files to the main install directory and after start up I see the entry for selecting the VST directory in Edit->Preferences->Plugins. I made certain it points at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steinberg\VstPlugins which is what I use.
Where I am failing is trying to figure out how to then select, enable and configure a VST plugin. There is no Controls->VST and there isn't anything in Controls->DSP Effects that pertains to VST. If you can tell me how I should be doing that I'd greatly appreciate it.
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@ DonGateley
I managed to get one working. :o
After all the install and set-up bits, click the equalizer button on the player. The VST plugins should now be in the list of DSP plugins at the bottom.
Tick the one you want to use and double-click that entry.
VST should now open in new window.
Good luck :)
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@Bee-liever: Thanks. Tried that but still only see the four "Native" plugins in the list.
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Incredible! I don't think this is a place to be or an app to use. The attitude is a bit much.
Steven is developing and supporting MB on its own, in his spare time, for free. I think he has every right to remove a not-so-popular feature that would potentially cause him hours of bug fixing until it's ready.