VSTArchive

Here is the VST archive page. On this page you will find many plug-ins that will help you enhance the functionality of your DAW.

What are VST's?

VST or Virtual Studio Technology is a method of adding instruments and effects to audio editors and hard disk recorders. In simpler terms, think of all the studio hardware effects, keyboards, drum machines, etc. All of these things are created by software developers to try and emulate some of those effects processors or awesome instruments. Wikipedia has a page on the technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Studio_Technology

A free archive of VST files has been compiled which you may wish to add to your audio processing toolkit. You can fetch the file from:

http://us.cucat.org/aufun/vst.zip

A brief history

Basically, before 1996, you couldn't really create music with effects or neat instruments unless you already had the hardware and mixing console that would route everything where it needed to be. The DAW was mainly used to control the keyboard or other instrument via MIDI and then everything was routed through a traditional mixer. Finally, Steinberg technology revolutionized the digital recording industry by introducing the VST interface. What that meant in short was that programmers and software developers could finally make plug-ins that would emulate all of those hardware based effects units and processors, making home recording far more easy to start doing. In 1999, the VST interface saw a bit of a makeover, and now this same interface was finally able to receive MIDI data from the DAW in question. In short, not only could the effects processors of old and new be emulated or recreated, but so could many instruments, drum machines, synths and keyboards. In recent years, a great deal of these plug-ins have become 64bit compatible and can even receive data or audio now from multiple channels.

Who can use them?

Basically, if you have a digital audio workstation (DAW), you can use VST plug-ins. It's a pretty universal interface for most workstations, and for the programs we cover they can certainly be used. For best performance of VST plug-ins, make sure your system is relatively fast and that you're not running too many things you don't need open while you are working on an audio project. Since your computer is now the one thing acting as the hardware for all of your plug-ins. Make sure you give it enough ram, CPU and of course, a good interface with 0 or low latency.

How do I install these things?

Refer to the GoldWave wiki for instructions on how to install VST's in GoldWave and the Reaper module for Reaper. Each module will have an article explaining the steps necessary for installing VST's in your digital audio workstation.