The Yamaha AN1x Synthesizer mailing list

From: "ELEKTRO DAN" <elektro_dan@...>

> will it be possible one day to use the plg150an or the sw1000xg as a
> vst instrument in cubase??

I'd make that a careful 'yes'. 'Careful', because I don't know exactly how
the SW1000XG works.

VST is a pretty simple concept. You have a piece of software that takes some
audio and/or MIDI as input, and produces audio (no MIDI, as far as I know)
as output. This is an over-simplification, but it's more or less how it
works.

An interesting phenomenon is the advent of DSP accelerator cards that run
VST effects and soft synths. In order of increasing interestingness, those
are the Pulsar somethingorother, the UA Powered Plugins and the TC
Powercore.

If you continue this chain of thought - that VST effects and synths can
reside on an external board - it should be able to do the same thing with an
SW1000XG, provided you can get the audio data from somewhere. Which you can,
because the SW1000XG driver makes the audio available to the system.

Which leads to the question: are you sure you can't route the SW1000XG's
output through VST effects? This is rather important for me, because I more
or less planned to have hardware instruments and software effects.

Technically speaking, you can use your AN1x as a VST instrument, given an
A/D converter and the right software.

> how about the ability to use sw1000xg effects as vst effects?
> the ability to call up these efects in the channel strip?

It should be possible, provided you can freely route any audio from and to
the SW1000XG. But software will never let you past hardware restrictions.

> how about having vst skins on these sw1000xg effects and having
> full automation of these effects?

Given the right software and lack of above mentioned restrictions: yes.

> hope these ideas can be real one day.

It's a good idea. I had the idea once of building a box with PC hardware
that would be a dedicated VST box, presenting itself inside you audio/MIDI
application. But products like the TC Powercore make it largely superfluous,
not to mention easier to get results from.

- Peter