• How To Put Vst Plugins In Pro Tools Free
• How To Put Vst Plugins In Pro Toolsls
• How To Put Vst Plugins In Pro Tools In Pro Tools 12

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

How to Insert Native Instruments Plug-ins In Pro Tools 10 (or earlier versions) In a software host application such as Pro Tools, audio plug-ins can be inserted either as Instruments or Effects. Some Native Instruments applications can only be used as Instruments (e.g. KONTAKT 5) while others are Effects only (e.g. Spice up your DAW with some new plug-ins! If you're a little nonplussed by the concept of plug-ins or how to install them to Pro Tools, check out this step-b.

How To Put Vst Plugins In Pro Tools Free

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. 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

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

Vst drum kit arabic free. 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.

Pro Tools uses a proprietary plug-in format called RTAS (Real Time AudioSuite) which is equivalent to the open source VST plugin format used in other sequencers such as Logic and Cubase. As anyone can create their own VSTs and release them to the public, there are literally thousands of VST plugins out there, ranging in price from free to remarkably expensive. As there is no quality control system on these plugins, their usefulness also varies a lot – but at least for the free plugins, you don’t have much to lose by giving them a go. For Pro Tools users, however, there are still a few ways to expand your RTAS plugin arsenal on the cheap…
(from DAW)

Free RTAS Plugins – Yes, They Do Exist

Although thin on the ground, there are a few free RTAS plugins to be had if you know where to look.

Pro Tools does come with some nifty plugins out of the box, but if you want to grab a few more then try these:

• The Bad Habit RTAS Plugin List
• Blue Cat Audio Freeware Plugin Pack Nice bundle, including a useful analyser.
• Brainworx – bx_cleansweep Free filtering goodness.
  Brainworx – bx_solo Mid/side processing tool.
• Digidesign – Structure Free – Free sampler.

  Digidesign – SignalTools – Metering and analysis.
  Digidesign – Xpand! – Sampler-performance instrument.
  Digidesign – D-Fi – Lo-fi sound designer.

  /vst-plugin-toxic-biohazard.html. Digidesign/Bomb Factory – Free Bomb Factory Plug-ins – Bomb Factory plug-ins now free for Pro Tools users.
  Digidesign/TL Labs – TL Utilities – Metering and monitoring utilities.
  Digidesign/TL Labs – TL AutoPan – Panning effects.

• Elysia – Niveau Filter – Another filtering option for your arsenal.
• Flux – BitterSweet II – Transient designer with a sweet sound.
  Flux – Stereo Tool – Get your panning in order.
• FXpansion – Orca – Free synth with some good options.
  FXpansion – ClapOMatic – Not exactly essential, but an interesting addition.
• Izotope – Vinyl – Make your recordings sound like olde vinly.
• JK Plugs – JK-Pipe – Utility for Macs.
• Massey – Massey Tools – Massey RTAS plugins.
• Native Instruments – Kontakt Player – plays Kontakt sound packs.

  Native Instruments – Kore Player – Sadly discontinued, but still useful.
  Native Instruments – Reaktor Player – Plays Reaktor soundpacks.
  Native Instruments – Guitar Rig 4 Player – Guitar effects processor.

• Ohm Force – Frohmage – Cheesy filter sounds.
  Ohm Force – Cohmpost – For some sound decomposition.

  Ohm Force – Symptohm: Melohman PE – More synth fun.

• Prosoniq – NorthPole – 4 pole filter.
• PSP Audioware – PSP Vintage Meter – Metering.
• Sonoma Wire Works – DrumCore Free – Free drum kit action.
• SPL – Attacker – Transient designer.
• Studio Devil – Studio Devil BVC – Amp modeling.
• UVI Sound Source – UVI Workstation – Sample playback.
• ValhallaDSP – ValhallaFreqEcho – Frequency shifter and echo.

Some of these are actually demo or trial versions, but it’s a start.

Free RTAS Plugins From VST – Time To Wrap Up

If you really want to use VST plugins with your Pro Tools rig, there is a way – you can get yourself a wrapper program that acts as an interface between the VST and Pro Tools itself.

You can buy this program from FXpansion for about €75, and once it’s installed then you can call up your VSTs in Pro Tools just like you would your usual RTAS Plugins.

You can read about my experience with the Fxpansion wrapper program in this post about my VST to RTAS wrapping adventures.

How To Put Vst Plugins In Pro Toolsls

How To Put Vst Plugins In Pro Tools In Pro Tools 12