VSTHost - Hermann Seibs Hauptseite

In order for this to work, VSTHost allocates a sub-directory for each bank (see “Use Bank…” on page
27) in its Data directory and stores the banks for each performance there.
Export Performance
Loading and saving performances works nice as long as only one VSTHost instance on one machine is
concerned, but it has one big problem: sharing performances between machines and/or users is quite
difficult, since VSTHost uses a very simple scheme to store performances inside the bank. “Simple”
for VSTHost, but not so simple to share, since it uses a (potentially large) number of files plus a set of
entries in the performance bank file, which would have to be assembled by hand – and reinserted on
the target machine by hand, too, including tedious file renaming if the performance is to be stored
under another number.
Since V1.49, VSTHost contains an Export/Import Performance feature which eases things quite a lot.
A complete performance can be exported into one file, which can be easily shared.
This menu entry opens a standard file dialog where you can select the file name of a “VSTHost
Performance File” (with the unmistakable extension .vsthostperf) to store the currently loaded
performance to. After having pressed OK, the complete performance and the current banks of all
loaded PlugIns are stored into this file; that means that it can become quite large.
This performance file can then be easily sent to others, or stored in a performance library.
Import Performance
This menu entry opens a standard file dialog where you can select the file name of a “VSTHost
Performance File” (with extension .vsthostperf) to be loaded into the current performance (see “Export
Performance” above on the topic of performance exports).
VSTHost does not include the PlugIns themselves in the exported performance, only their location on
the machine where the performance is exported. If the PlugIn is not at the same location on the target
machine, VSTHost tries its best to find PlugIns of the same name in the configured PlugIn path and
then shows the following dialog, which contains the original path and the found alternatives:
where you can select the corresponding PlugIn. If there's no PlugIn of the same name available, you
can use the “Path...” button to select one from another location – but it should better be the same
PlugIn, otherwise the bank stored in the performance won't work with it. Pressing Cancel instead
removes the PlugIn from the imported performance.
Note: in contrast to loading a performance (see “Load Performance” on page 28 for details), the
imported performance does not replace the previously loaded one; it is added to the current setup
instead. This allows to use the exported performances as “building blocks” that contain a complete set
of preconfigured PlugIns for a specific task.
Set Data Path
This menu entry can be used to set a new Data path for VSTHost. The default value is VSTHost’s
location, with an appended \Data.
Before V1.43, VSTHost stored nearly all settings in the Windows registry; over time, this amounted to
a very complicated setup with hundreds of sub-keys, which isn’t really easy to work with. VSTHost is
using an initialization-file-based operation now. This makes it easier to change settings outside
VSTHost (one click opens the correct file, no cunning navigation through Regedit’s nested structures
needed), and eases the path to a preconfigured setup – instead of an installer program, just copy the
necessary files together with the application.
VSTHost uses a layered approach; when it starts up, it reads the data path from an initialization file
that resides in the same directory as the VSTHost executable, and has the same name, but with the
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