Can You Use Vst Plugins With Pro Tools 10

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Can You Use Vst Plugins With Pro Tools 10 Average ratng: 9,8/10 3645 reviews

That means that all the previous free RTAS audio plugins still work with Pro Tools 10 (for now at least).

If you’re involved in audio production, it’s hard to avoid Pro Tools. Even if your DAW of choice is one of the many other professional software sequencers out there, you’ll probably have to use Pro Tools at some point. Although it is a quality platform for audio processing, Pro Tools does have one notable drawback – it doesn’t run VST plugins (well, you could view it as an advantage, if you happen to have unlimited cash reserves for buying RTAS goodies)…

Plugin Play – VST versus RTAS

When you first launch Reason 9.5 it will scan your VST folders. In case you have any custom VST folders set up, you can go into the Preferences Advanced tab and under the folder location section, add any custom folders. If you are only using your system’s default locations on Mac or PC, they should be set up automatically. Manage Your VSTs. VST and AU plug-ins in earlier versions of Pro Tools. If you want to use VST plugins in protools you will need a Host application in this case We at Produces Vault Hightly Recomend a product called: METAPLUGIN by a company called DDMF. We have tested it on Mac and Windows and it works great. Here are the 13 Best Free VST Host Applications that you can use to host your favorite VST Plugins. You can make music without spending money.

Pro Tools plugins are in a format called Real Time Audio Suite, which is a proprietary Digidesign/Avid format. As such, only official products by recognised developers are released as Pro Tools plugins. While this does help to ensure the stability of your system, it also means that the army of DIY plugin programmers out there can’t create any home brew apps.

As VST is an open source platform, there are literally hundreds of free VST plugins available on the Internet. India vst plugin. Many of these are extremely useful. Some of them may not work very well, and some of them may destabilise your system, but you can avoid or uninstall these. In a previous post, I recommended some free VST plugins to get started with.

That’s A Wrap for RTAS

Free vst resonant filter. Unfortunately, there’s no free solution to getting VST into your Pro Tools rig. However, there is a cheap way – using FXpansion‘s VST to RTAS adaptor.

Pro Tools plugins can be quite pricey, so considering the huge arsenal of VST instruments and effects that are readily available for free, it seems that shelling out the £50 or so for the FXpansion adaptor is a wise investment. I’ve been using the device for a couple of weeks now, and so far it has been working extremely well.

Basically, the adaptor is a program that creates ‘wrappers’ for your VSTs so that Pro Tools can see them as RTAS. All you do is run the program, point it at your VST folder and press the ‘wrap’ button.

RTAS Wrapping In Action

When you run Pro Tools, all your successfully wrapped plugins will appear in your plugin selection menu alongside the native RTAS plugins. You can then insert these into your channels as you would any other plugin.

Overall, of the 80 or so plugins that I tested, only four refused to be wrapped. Of the ones that did wrap, one or two exhibited some strange graphical behaviour, and a couple refused to open. However, the vast majority behaved exactly as they would if you opened them in Cubase.

According to tests by SOS, the adaptor even works with certain DSP hardware-driven plugins such as TC Electronic’s Powercore and Universal Audio’s UAD1. If you would like to have access to these in Pro Tools, then this is certainly worth a shot.

Overall, the benefit of having your VST plugins available within the Pro Tools environment far outweighs the cost of the adaptor. Once you’ve weeded out any VSTs that might not play nicely with Pro Tools, the increase in resources is indeed a godsend. If you run into any problems with particular plugins, it might be worth checking out the KVR site for more info, and FXpansion themselves are quite active in ironing out problems in this regard.


VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology. There are three types of VST plug-ins:

  • VST instruments: These plug-ins generate audio and are either virtual synthesizers or samplers. Many VST instruments emulate the appearance and sound of famous hardware synthesizers. Popular VSP instruments include Massive, FM8, Absynth, Sylenth 1, Reaktor, Gladiator, Vanguard, and Omnisphere.
  • VST effects: Effects process audio instead of generating it. VST effects function like hardware audio processors, like reverbs and phasers.
  • VST MIDI effects:MIDI plug-ins process MIDI messages and send MIDI data to other VST instruments and hardware.

VST Plug-ins

VST plug-ins can be used within a digital audio workstation, in programs like Pro Tools and Logic. They’re frequently used to emulate hardware outboard gear such as compressors, expanders, equalizers, and maximizers. You'll frequently find these distributed to emulate certain models of hardware; there's some for vintage compressors, and you'll frequently find effects that emulate vintage hardware (both in instrumental and stompbox-like effects).

Think of VST plug-ins as really affordable ways to make your home studio sound like a really expensive commercial operation.

VSTi Plug-ins

Can You Use Vst Plugins With Pro Tools 100%

Aside from VST plug-ins, you'll also find VST-instrument or VSTi plug-ins. These can emulate really cool, but expensive, hardware (like Hammond B3 and Nord Electro). The quality of these VSTi plug-ins can vary from acceptable to really poor; it all depends on the quality of your system resources (RAM and scratch space on your hard drive, for example), and how well-sampled the instrument is. You also want to make sure that your VSTi plug-in offers true polyphonic content, meaning you can make life-like chords that don’t sound too artificial.

Can You Use Vst Plugins With Pro Tools 10.5

Quality

There are thousands of plug-ins available. Some only take a few hours to produce and are free, but the quality is terrible. Some are made by huge companies and sound amazing, but are expensive. VST plug-in developers try to recreate the sound as closely as possible, but the original instrument is probably always going to sound better than the plug-in. You might be trying to get the rich, full-bodied sound of an organ, for example, but who owns an organ? No one has access to every type of instrument, so a plug-in will have to do. The good news is that VST plug-in technology is improving, so quality can only get better with time.

Can You Use Vst Plugins With Pro Tools 10.2

VST Plug-in Standard

Created by Steinberg, a German musical software and equipment company, the VST plug-in standard is the audio plug-in standard that allows third-party developers to make VST plug-ins. Users can download VST plug-ins on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. The vast majority of VST plug-ins are available on Windows. Apple’s Audio Units are standard on Mac OS X (it’s actually considered a competing technology), and Linux lacks commercial popularity, therefore few developers create VST plug-ins for the operating system.

Where to Find VST Plug-ins

There are thousands of VST plug-ins available, both commercially and as freeware. The Internet is flooded with free VST plug-ins. Home Music Production and Bedroom Producers Blog have robust lists of VST plug-in recommendations, and Splice and Plugin Boutique also offer a ton of free plug-ins.