VST wrapper in PT 11HD?

[rcd]

I'm trying to run the VST Cablab 3 plugin in PT 11HD. Do I need a VST wrapper to achieve this or will any other solutions work? Any advice on helping me get the ability to run this plugin in PT would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

[Top Jimmy]

Blue Cat Audio's Patchwork.

[Darryl Ramm]

By definition you need a VST "wrapper", VST plugins cannot run natively in Pro Tools.

Lots of folks are using Blue Cat's Patchwork.

[sw rec]

Yep, Patchwork saved my butt when I first went to PT11 and UA hadn't finished their AAX plugins yet. Worth every cent.

[mesaone]

I think some people make a distinction between a wrapper and a host. The wrapper makes VST plug-ins appear in Pro Tools as a native format, as opposed to a host which is loaded into Pro Tools and itself loads VST plug-ins natively.

The tried and true hosts out there are Blue Cat Patchwork, DDMF Metaplugin (my favorite), Blue Cat MB-7.

[albee1952]

Specifically, it has to be a 64 bit VST. I am able to use 64 bit VST's inside BlueCat's MB7 here and it works great. Running Cytomic's The Glue inside MB7 with zero latency

[Top Jimmy]

Originally Posted by mesaone

The tried and true hosts out there are Blue Cat Patchwork, DDMF Metaplugin (my favorite), Blue Cat MB-7.

And Nomad Factory's Magma.

[rcd]

Thanks for the Blue Cat Audio info, I had not heard of them. So will both MB-7 and Patchwork allow me to run Cablab in PT11HD? Will one work better than the other?
Thanks again!

[mesaone]

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

And Nomad Factory's Magma.

I've had trouble with Magma. While it offers a really nice workflow, VST compatibility seems to be lacking compared to the other hosts. And it doesn't pass MIDI, so it's not what I would recommend to someone who plans to buy one VST host.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by rcd

Thanks for the Blue Cat Audio info, I had not heard of them. So will both MB-7 and Patchwork allow me to run Cablab in PT11HD? Will one work better than the other?
Thanks again!

It's not really a matter of whether one will work better than the other; they both work very well. MB7-2 is a plugin that lets you select the number of bands you can use for processing from one to several. The bands are broken up in frequency bands of the user's selection (user adjustable crossovers). Without plugins it can be thought of as a multi-frequency mixer but with plugins hosted in each band you can do neat things like multi-band compression and such. For running single plugins across the whole frequency domain you select one band and put your plugin(s) there.

Patchwork doesn't have frequency selectable bands. It has a fairly flexible matrix to host plugins in serial, parallel, and combinations thereof. You can use it as a sort of channel strip with plugins of your own choosing. In standalone it can host instruments so that you can play them live without having to run daw software which is good for those instruments that don't do standalone like anything from Spectrasonics. A neat use I have for Patchwork is I host MB7-2 inside it; inside MB7-2 I have it set up for four bands with individual compressors in each band; back in Patchwork I feed the output of MB7-2 to a brick wall limiter and a soft clipper from IK Multimedia. Makes a killer multi-band compressor but is easy to overuse and screw things up. With this kind of setup I can even have different compressor in each frequency band.

Something to keep in mind is Blue Cat has free demos of all their plugins. They do go silent every few minutes but it comes back and continues to function. I'd download each and see how they work for you. Blue Cat stuff is definitely worth the money; get both and you'll have tons of flexibility.