New Sonic Arts has introduced Freestyle, a VST host for stage and studio.
Freestyle is described as ‘a modular sound design and performance environment’. It lets you combine, split, layer and chain VST instruments and FX.
‘Rack View’ is intended for quickly building patches, while ‘Structure View’ provides complete access to the modular architecture, allowing manual ‘wiring’ between any input and output pins.
Here’s the official video demo:
Freestyle’s Plugin Browser provides access to all a user’s VSTs, and includes full text search plus Favorites organization.
Macro Controls and Performance Snapshots allow the user to take their patches on stage, transforming a laptop into a live-rig / keyboard workstation.
Pricing and Availability
Freestyle is available now for € 99.00 (normally € 129.00).
Didn’t MOTU used to have a sequencer app called “FreeStyle”?
http://www.motu.com/products/software/freestyle
This does seem more spontaneous and flexible than MainStage in some ways. Setting up an environment this way with VST’s does make some sense. I can’t help but think this kind of thing is already available. EigenD is software that has this type of environment (but not limited to VSTs).
Yes, but MainStage is $29 US and has all the softsynths and effects of Logic Pro X. This is $109 US and doesn’t have half of what MainStage has.
I think the difference between FreeStyle and Mainstage is modular vs mixer paradigms.
If I’m not mistaken, EigenD is more of a modular layout, and is free.
What I want to see is something almost exactly like this, but as a VST itself. The linearity of hardware mixer send busses needs to break! I want to wire together instruments and effects in a truly modular digital way, like the Hypergraph in Maya, or the the way Visio/OmniGraffle work. And no visual patch cable skueomorphs. Give me a simple little shell with a GUI that allows those sorts of audio and control routing connections. Then you map parameters to a set of controls much as the video above, and save the whole thing as one VST plug in you can use in any DAW on any track. Oh, and it needs little gizmos that are combinations of animation timelines and envelope followers so you can trigger some one-off modulations that occur repeatedly at appropriate times. That is the future!
Ok, slight correction, it says it can be a plug in as well as a host, which is really cool. Still want to see more modularity in the routing though.
Freestyle has an open modular architecture, you can freely wire anything together in the Structure View. Click and drag from any input or output to create a new wire. The drag and drop actions shown in the video are just for faster workflow…
Hey, super cool! I’ll give it a demo soon. Thanks!
You might check out Audiomulch.
Reminds of Instrument or Audio racks in Ableton but with a great interface. But it needs two things. More macros and LFOs!
I believe the name is already taken.
http://www.motu.com/products/software/freestyle
Names aren’t ‘taken’.
If they are unique and original in a category of products, they can be trademarked and defended. this is difficult to do with generic terms.