FREE: Waves VST3 host StudioRack

[Guy Rowland]

StudioRack hasn’t had a ton of press or use thus far, but this update may change that. It can chain up to 8 plugins - not just Waves’ own, but now any VST3 plugin. It can set up macros, save presets, use parallel processing and it has a multiband mode where you can create your own multiband effects with non-multiband plugins. Perhaps most usefully of all, the host app runs as VST2, VST3, AU and AAX - so it’s a simple way to get VST3 plugins in Pro Tools, for example.



https://www.waves.com/plugins/studiorack

[Geoff Grace]

Thanks for the reminder, Guy. I haven’t downloaded the update yet. Looks promising.

Best,

Geoff

[Guy Rowland]

Okay, tried this out. First thing - 321 VST3 plugins scanned and it didn't crash once! Already in another league from Nugen's Sigmod.

Second thing - it works in Pro Tools' Audio Suite. There's a surprising number of plugins that aren't supported in Audio Suite, and I'd hoped Sigmod would fix that for me, but alas. Studiorack however does it without fuss. Easily worth the price of admission for that alone. Except the price of admission is zero, so that sounds like damning with faint praise.

Third thing - it's pretty slick. Everything seems to work as you'd expect. It has that great search box where you type a few letters and it narrows down the options on the fly (it searches for both Waves and VST3 plugs, no gotchas there). I'm not sure I'll be making full use of all its features - I get that plugin chaining presets might be useful, and the multiband option seems very clever, but initially it will be on VST3 chores here. But I might try being clever with it one day, because I feel warm and fuzzy towards it.

Waves seems to be having something of a renaissance of late. And I don't mean their Renaissance series.