Using VST Instruments

Related topics
VSTI Automate and MIDICC device in the meta device list

Disclaimer

Renoise developers cannot guarantee proper operation of every available third-party VST effect or VST instrument. These products are not programmed by the Renoise Developers, and programming methods used to compile these applications are not known to the Renoise developers. You are advised to download a demo-version of a VST effect or instrument to test within Renoise prior to purchasing a single-user license of this third party VST application.

Mac OS
PPC VST plugins are not Universal Binary (Intel) compilations of VST plugins. PPC plugins run on PPC Mac platforms only. Carefully check that you can download a Universal Binary of a VST plugin if you tend to purchase one for the Mac OSX and use it in Renoise.

NOTE : One single VST instrument can only be used simultaneously on one track, you can use more subtracks for this VST instrument in that particular track, but dividing the instrument across several separate scope-tracks may cause undesired behaviour. Specifically, DSP effects can go beserk.
Why doesn’t it work?: A VST plugin is a separate application that runs on request by Renoise. By using the instrument on more than one scope-track Renoise asks the program to perform one of its options multiple times simultaneously and the plugin can’t do that so the plugin makes the choice to decide which request has first priority above the other.

You may be able to reduce these effects by using aliasses described later on this page. For a fully instrumental split on a scope basis you have to put another instance of the same plugin in a different instrument slot.

When you want to compose in Renoise, you need to use an instrument. An instrument slot can be filled with a MIDI instrument-set, a VST instrument plugin, or you can fill the sample-slots attached to the instrument. You can use various simultaneous input instrument-assembly constructions by mixing up MIDI with samples or VSTi. So you are not restricted to the use of only one type of input to assemble your instrument.

We will discuss the instrument-assembly by assigning a VST instrument to an instrument slot.

VST-Instruments vary across a large range of third-party products.

Each VST Instrument has its own sets of parameters which can be controlled; some have their own editor interface and some don’t. As these are third-party applications, naturally we are not creating tutorials for using these plugins in Renoise. Instructions can generally be garnered from the developers or users of those VST instruments. If you would like to supply a tutorial for a specific VST(I) that works with Renoise, you are welcome to send in the material (screenshots and text / html pages), and I’ll upload them to the proper places.

In cases where VST instruments do NOT have their own interface, Renoise uses its own front-end engine to provide you with an interface for the parameters that can be controlled for the VST instrument. This is a new feature since Renoise 1.5.

I shall demonstrate the use of one of the VST instruments which gives extra insight to another feature that Renoise offers to provide efficient use of VST instruments.

Setting up the proper VST plugin folder

First of all, if we haven’t configured Renoise yet to use VST instruments, it is important to know where to find them. This setting is found via the menu-bar, Edit → Preferences:

Under the Misc/VST tab, on the top-most side, you find the VST Directories panel where the VST-directories are set. Make one or both of them point to the folder where you have installed all your VST plugins. If you have them installed in several places, the best thing to do is get all DLL and related files (including their folder structure!) to those two root-folders and place them there. You don’t really have to *move* them, because you may encounter problems when uninstalling the devices from your system at a later time (for whatever reason you would do this). Browse that folder, and Renoise will automatically scan all your VST plugins for you (this includes VST Instruments and VST effects).

Selecting a VST instrument

Click on the Instrument Settings button to bring up the Instrument Control panels.

Click the Instrument List button to make the VST list pop-up, then select the desired [[VST] instrument. Note: there is a search-box at the very top that automatically has focus, so you should be able to locate a particular plugin by typing the first few letters of its name.

I will in my case select the V Sampler 3 demo.

Summary

• Instrument - Select any of the third-party VST instruments found in your VST plugin folder.
• Open editor - Open the VST instrument’s own editor (or Renoise’s alternative editor) (shortcut: numpad ins).
• Channel - Select the channel which the VST instrument is assigned to (inside the VST instrument editor!).
• Base Note - Set the Base Note of this instrument.
• Assigned to track - When the box is marked, a list appears where you can select the track you want to bind this instrument to. (*)
• Program - Select program (or instrument inside VST).
• Bank - Select VST bank (If VST supports this parameter).
• Preset - Select VST preset (If VST supports this parameter).
• Amplify - Amplify VST instrument’s output (another gain slider).
• Auto suspend - Suspends VST instrument when no output is received, to save cpu usage.
  Cpu usage is displayed right above the auto-suspend option.

(*) The “assigned to track” option gives you the opportunity to lock a VST instrument to a certain track. In this way there is somewhat a possibility to lock DSP / VST effects and the Channel Routing for a certain (range of) instrument(s). The instrument will be played and displayed upon that track only, no matter which other track you use that instrument on also. Keep in mind that the DSP / VST effects and Channel Routing upon any other track will not be applied to the/those instrument(s). If you would like different effects to be applied you could work with several send devices and switch them on / off whenever you want to apply a set of devices set under a send-track, but this last thing also counts for sample-instruments as well. (Not for MIDI!)

VST downsides
Not every VST instrument supports bank and preset-selection controlled from outside its own environment, and the same goes with loading and saving them. Another thing that may cause strange problems is some VST instruments don’t respond to polyphonic key requests. Either the VST instrument does not support polyphonic output, or it is simply not turned on. Open its editor to see if you can find parameters to trigger this event. Another problem may occur when you install newer versions of VST(i)s. If incompatability issues cannot be solved by Renoise, issues can include crashes during loading of a song carrying parameters of a different version VST(i) than that which currently exists. So to prevent this, either maintain an older copy of the VST(i) in the VST folder, concurrently with the newer one, or don’t install it. Obviously, your other option is to emulate the settings manually on the new plugin. There may be more issues that may not have settings from within Renoise to solve them directly. This is one of the few down-sides you have when using VST instruments in general. Renoise developers continue to strive to ensure compatibility with as many VSTs as possible. If you have problems with a particular plugin effect or instrument, please raise the issue on the Renoise Forums.

Once selected, your instrument will be automatically assigned a new name according to your VST instrument settings:

Setting the VST instrument properties (specific example:V Sampler 3 Demo!)

Most VST instruments come ready with a program list, from which you can select the desired instrument from within the VST instrument property panel of Renoise…, however there are also many VST instruments that require you to load a set of samples (patch / preset), or a collection of multi-sample instruments (bank), or to set several parameters to shape your own waves (synthesis generation), before they are ready for usage.

To prepare you for such aspects, I’ll demonstrate how you can effectively use V Sampler VSTI within Renoise. You can do many more things with V Sampler, but I just focus upon preparing it for use and using multiple presets. The trick with V Sampler is that it requires you to load a sample bank in order to be able to use it, so click on the Open editor button in your VST Instrument Properties panel, and the VSTI’s own interface pops up:

Every VST-instrument is embedded in Renoise in its own host window-frame. At the left bottom of each instance you will find the enable Keyboard function. This turns on keyboard mode so you can manually adjust whatever values you need to change in the VST-instrument. If it’s unchecked, your keyboard will act as the original MIDI keyboard functioning, allowing you to audition sounds as usual. Note: the Numpad Ins shortcut stops functioning if keyboard mode is enabled (so the editor won’t close).

As you see, all banks are empty. Let’s quickly select one to load:

As you can see, the above bank has 7 presets loaded. To be able to use them efficiently in Renoise, we need to assign each preset to a channel so that we can use each one individually within Renoise.

Having clicked on the MIDI button, I’ve locked each preset to a following channel. Now, with Instrument 0 in Renoise, I am already able to play the Rub Duck 3 Letters instrument because it is assigned to Channel 1 and it’s the actual instrument.

Using a VST Instrument Alias through channelling

Now if I want to use the second preset, I need some trickery in Renoise to get this going. I select the second empty instrument slot in Renoise, and down in the Instr. Settings table, I select a VST alias called VSampler3 (Instr. 00):

This instrument is set as soon as a VST instrument is loaded into an Instrument slot and can now host as a master instrument. So when selecting this alias, the only thing you have to do is change the channel number, and we have a new instrument set without having to reload the VSTinstrument and the complete bank *again* into memory:

As you can see in the Instruments list, the instrument gets its Alias name, still having program 1 selected:

Alias downsides
You can’t select different programs or banks in Alias instruments, because everything you do in the Alias will be affected on its host as well (with the exception of the Channel and the Base Note). In basic terms, the Alias is nothing more than a ghost image of the host. Now for the other 5 instances you can add a new alias and increase the channel number to get their corresponding presets up front. Currently, another downside is that Aliases cannot be assigned to certain tracks. If you use an alias instrument in track00 and another alias instrument from the same host in track01, the leading alias will determine in which track all aliases will be played. But most of all, when the host-instrument itself is used, all alias instruments output will be redirected to the track where the host instrument is being toggled to play. This also means that all track effects from that track are applied to all alias instruments. You can’t lock an alias to a certain track: every change in the VST instrument properties will affect all other aliases of its host, including the host itself. Only the channel number is currently unique for each alias and host. There is planning for the near future to remove some of the limitations, but currently, you will have to put up with them. You can circumvent these problems by using the VST instrument’s own native effects if it has them and supports them on each individual preset, or you will have to stick to using multiple instances of the same host in Renoise if you want to use different VST / DSP effects in different tracks. Keep an eye out for changes on this part of the documentation.

Once again, the VST instrument world has many third-party VST instrument devices. There are numerous devices you can use, many of which are freeware; look up the pinned notes on the Renoise forums for links to nice freeware or commercial VST instruments around the net.

This wraps it up for VST Instruments, yeah, I can hear you all yelling “But there is so much more you can do…” The actual point of this tutorial is to get new users going and loading up a VST instrument, which is not that difficult. Since I can’t predict which VST each user has, I have focused upon the V Sampler VST Instrument right here. I do have a couple of different VST instruments I can and shall use for other tutorials on this site. (Now that makes it pretty interesting doesn’t it?)

Related topics
VSTI Automate and MIDICC device in the meta device list