With the VST player your software becomes hardware!
The player allows you to activate VST instruments and effects, use them immediately with the same ease of use of real devices, and combine them to obtain a vast range of timbres and configurations that can be recalled with a single click.
You simply install your favourite VST plugins and connect one or more master keyboards, a set of percussive pads, guitars, basses and microphones, to have at your fingertips powerful synthesizers of past and present, organs, acoustic and electric pianos, drums, samplers, sequencers, loopers, guitar and bass amp simulators, dynamic and vocal processors, echo, chorus, reverb, flanger, phaser, distortion effects and many more.
Unlike other similar devices, AudioStation’s VST player is integrated within a digital mixer that can handle VST software instruments as well as real instruments and microphones, and apply VST effects.
Since each channel of the mixer features an independent VST host, with a MIDI patchbay, each musician connected to the console can independently use his own instruments and effects, both software and real ones, and recall his own configurations without interfering with other musicians.
In each channel of the mixer you can plug up to 4 instruments and effects — for a total of 76 plugins in the whole console — that can be connected together in series, in parallel or a blend of the two.
This is a really useful feature. In fact, while software effects are designed to process input signals and to output the result (as with most real effects), software instruments are not made this way; very few are capable of receiving and processing signals from other instruments.
Hence, a serial connection of plugins doesn’t allows you to use more than one software instrument in the same channel of the mixer, although it allows you to use more software effects.
To overcome these limitations, each channel of the player features four different VST routings:
You can use it at its best with a software instrument (in VST slot #1) and some effects (in other slots) or to process with software effects a signal from a microphone or an external instrument (guitar, bass, keyboards). The VST slot #4 positioned after the EQ makes it ideal to host a dynamic processor.
This mode provides several options: using two software instruments (VST slots #1 and #2) and two effects (slots #3 and #4); processing a microphone or an external instrument with two effects in parallel and two in series; using in the same channel an external instrument and a software one (slots #1 and #2) and 2 effects in series (slots #3 and #4).
Like routing 1, this mode is ideal for using a software instrument (slot #1) and some effects in parallel (slots #3 and #4) and in series (slot #4), or for processing with software effects the audio from a microphone or from an external instrument, or for using in the same channel an external instrument and a software one (slot #2) and three effects in series (slots #1, #3 and #4).
This mode allows the use of three software instruments (slots #1, #2 and #3) and one effect (slot #4), or the processing of a mic or external instrument with three effects in parallel (slots #1, #2 and #3) and one in series (slot #4), or to use in the same channel an external instrument and two software instruments (slots #1, #2 and #3) and an effect in series (slot #4).
One or more parameters, even from different plugins, can be easily assigned to the same knob, fader, button or pedal (and vice-versa) and controlled by any of the following MIDI messages:
With AudioStation, using software instruments is straightforward: you simply connect one or more MIDI master keyboards, percussive pads, foot controllers and MIDI guitars to AudioStation’s MIDI inputs.
The MIDI patchbay integrated in each channel of the mixer allows you to route MIDI input signals to plugins and to program different keyboard mappings, split points, layering, transpositions, dynamic curves and much more.
The picture shows an example of a setup with two different tones, layered on the whole keyboard extension (layer) or assigned to two distinct key zones (split).
Further informations are available at the MIDI Patchbay page.
You can use two or more channels of the mixer together to obtain complex combinations of instruments and effects (with more than 4 plugins).
In the same way you can even connect some master keyboards (or other MIDI controllers) to the same channel of the mixer.
These settings are available in Global MIDI Routing, another relevant feature of the AudioStation MIDI patch system. It allows you to route a MIDI input to many channels of the mixer, or many MIDI inputs to the same channel.
Further information is available at the MIDI Patchbay page.
A master tempo generator, with a BPM range between 5 and 240, which ensures syncing between mixing console, plugins and external MIDI devices.
Each scene can have its proper tempo thus maintaining synced delays, phasers, step sequencers, arpeggiators, drum machines and light machines, the internal player/recorder and any other software connected to the console.
In addition, a specific function named MIDI Slave allows AudioStation to synchronize with the MIDI Clock and/or MIDI Time Code received from other MIDI devices and/or software.