VST Instruments on your PC Guide

I use Reaper and Audacity Music Production Suites (both free) to make various styles of music, including: Drum & Bass, Dance, Chillout, Ambient, Hip- Hop, Dub-step and a Mix of these styles.

Want to play high quality Digital Instruments on your computer? You need an application called MiniHost (Freeware), Search in Google. MiniHost 'Hosts' VST Instruments.

Virtual Studio Technology (VST) Instruments and Effects by Steinberg GmBH is an Interface for playing Instrument files that have a .dll extension (Dynamic Link Library) Extension. There are thousands of Commercial and Freeware VST/i on the net, google 'VST Freeware'.

Exract the MiniHost.zip file, Search in Google for ASIO4ALL, install. Asio4All is an Audio Interface, delivering reduced latency between when a sound is played (on keyboard or onscreen) and when you actually hear the sound. ASIO, by Steinberg GmBH, is usually better than DirectX or other Audio Interfaces. You need an ASIO driver like ASIO4ALL to run MiniHost.

So, you have MiniHost running with ASIO4ALL (it will state an error if you do not have an ASIO interface enabled), now you can drag and drop a VST (*.dll) file onto the MiniHost Window, or click File- Open and browse to your VST file. Thats it! You can now play high quality synthesizers and record the output to WAV files.

Note: Never open two instances of MiniHost, this will crash the system, causing a BSOD, but is relativly harmless, you just lose unsaved data.

To get the following instruments and effects (all are Free), copy the name into Google and add the letters 'VST Download', so eg. 'FreeAlpha 3 VST Download', would take you to the FreeAlpha 3 Synth download page in Google.

Here is a list of professional free VST Indstruments (Google): Native Instruments Kore Player Free with free sound bank, Independence Free, EMU Proteus VX, UVI Workstation Sampler with free sound bank, Tacam CVPiano, UVI Universal Player, Plugsound Free, FreeAlpha3, Sonik Synth 2 Free. I will post a blog of my favorite VST FX in the future.

Checkout Computer Music Magazine (from most shops inc. WHS), it includes a monthly DVD containing Audio Samples and some Freeware/Commercial VSTs/Demos. Checkout Audacity and Reaper.

(c) [mercnet]

Image: Shows MiniHost with ASIO4ALL running the HG Fortune Freeware VST Instrument- ProtoPlasmTSM.dll.