Hello,

Please give a try to the following plugin:
http://www.yohng.com/foobarvst.zip

It is supposed to be a single VST plugin wrapper for Foobar, which should be more or less complete and usable.

This is readme.txt from the package:

George Yohng's VST Wrapper for Foobar2000 player
Version 1.0

Copyright ©2007 by George Yohng


INSTALLATION:

To enable this plugin, copy foo_dsp_vstwrap.dll to foobar2000 components
directory, which is typically
C:\Program Files\foobar2000\components

then enable the plugin in a DSP manager. Ctrl-P to bring Properties window
up, then select Playback->DSP Manager and be sure that "George Yohng's
VST Wrapper" is in the 'Active DSPs' column.

USAGE:

The plugin control is done through a system tray icon. Please set up
your VST folders before proceeding by selecting "VST Setup..." from
the tray icon menu. "Steinberg Mode" is an experimental mode, which
will allow running some of Cubase internal plugins, which otherwise
would complain, but some plugins will crash in this mode.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

If a plugin crashes on start of Foobar2000, press shift while executing
Foobar2000. This will disable loading of the last plugin on startup.

All settings of VST Wrapper are stored in the file, which is typically
located at:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\GeorgeYohngVST.ini

Deleting this file will reset VST cache and all options to default values.

ADDITIONAL:

This archive includes George Yohng's W1 Limiter, a free sample VST plugin.
To use it, copy it to a directory, which is included in "VST Setup..."
dialog. More information about W1 Limiter is available on this page:
http://www.yohng.com/w1limit.html

TERMS AND CONDITIONS:

Redistribution and use is permitted without limitations, as long as
the package is unmodified.

DISCLAIMER:

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY GEORGE YOHNG "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.
IN NO EVENT SHALL GEORGE YOHNG BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS;
OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR
OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF
ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Very nice component!

Unfortunately, I get the same popping when I manually change tracks that I get with foo_vst.

foo 954, xp, MAudio Audiophile usb

Good stuff. A link to kvr... 2 worlds coming together
Why did you decide to choose the all users application data? Why not use the personal %appdata% on a multi user system?
@nightfishing: no such problem here (and I didn't even have such problems on an old pentium 3 system), but personally I'd avoid usb in audio like the plague... I'd exactly expect clicking and popping, I doubt (not sure though) the usb bus is a good highway for audio..

Nothing related with the usb bus in my case.
I have the same problem (only when changing tracks manually), using Winamp-VST adapter on two different PC's, one with a SBLive (internal) and another with a M-Audio Audiophile Firewire.
So it must be something related with the buffering for the VST adapter at the start of a manual song change.
This does NOT happen when you let songs change normally in the playlist.
I'll try this new adapter and see what happens, but I don't hold high expectations because I think that the problem lies in the DSP routing part of foobar.

Thank you for the feedback.

Please redownload the archive. A click should be gone or softened, depending on what Foobar settings are.

Squeller: I have chosen a common application data for the ini file, because the same file also contains VST cache and VST folder settings. Even though multiple user accounts may exist on the system, typically computer is used by a single person. Do you think it is better to store it in a preferences folder for a particular user?

Regarding USB bus, it is good for audio, even when a high-speed harddrive is running on the same bus. The problems usually lie in software drivers.

I'll give it a try when I get home.

Squeller: As far as USB, other than the vst+foo clicking problem, playback is perfect (with or w/o the vst chain).

I actually do *most* of my studio work on a laptop w/ a couple different USB soundcards, my DAW is collecting dust most of the year :-(

The beauty of the laptop setup (for both a high-end playback setup or a studio) is you do not have to isolate a "tower" to remove unwanted noise in the room.

The portability and low profile doesn't hurt either!

gyohng:
Thank you very much for such generous gift to our comunity!!
It works absolutely perfect here excepting the clicks at the very start of manual track changes, but as I said in the other post, it also happens with foo_dsp_winamp instead of yours, so I'm inclined to think that it's an DSP's architectural problem with adapters.

Thank a lot!

A suggestion:
Would you please consider adding the posibility to bring up the plugin editor with a tray icon left click?
As it is now, both clicks (left and right) on the tray icon do the same, they bring a submenu.
It would be nice and fast to be able to open the VST plugin window with just one click in the tray.
Thank you very much!!!!
Very nice addition to foobar!

Update!
The click's gone!!!!!! .... at least in one of my two PC's

Thanks again... great job!

Confirmed! Click is gone.

Thank you so much for this component!

Regarding my post above about being able to open the VST plugin editor window with just one click in the tray icon, I wanted to add this:
1) in my opinnion what would be really useful would be: - left click opens the vst editor, - following left click on the tray icon closes it.
Maybe you could make the left click action configurable.
Simple and really effective.
2) I'm just missing a global bypass button for the VST editor window, specially useful when using multi-VST's hosts like ACON effects chainer.

But anyway... in it's current state, it is an already wonderful and perfect working plugin!
I'm really grateful to you!
Thanks!!!!!

I cannot unload the vst wrapper. Even after it's been removed from the DSP chain, the vst icon in tray remains always there...

your limiter and the default advance limiter are doing the same job ?

Please redownload the archive. The requested features (bypass and instant show up) added as modifier keys, respectively Alt-Click and Ctrl-Click on the tray.

thorical: I don't know how exactly advanced limiter works, so I cannot give any comment. My limiter provides a louder (if threshold is adjusted heavily - then also squashed) sound. It is a clone of Waves L1 Ultramaximizer limiting circuit, so any info you will find about L1, it also applies to my limiter, except the dithering part, which I don't do.

I myself use it as a compensation for low power of my laptop speakers (esp for classical music). Maybe advanced limiter is also possible to use for this, but I did not look into it.

Wow!!!
Many thanks George!!!
With this two new additions, from my point of view, your plugin is absolutely perfect!
Downloading now!

Really... thank you!

I did some mouse behavior bug fixes (unresponsive about and setup dialogs). Please redownload again.

I didn't find out how to exactly hook insertion/deletion of plugin into the dsp stack. Foobar creates and deletes instance all the time on playback/stop, so the icon and plugin gui would flash if I would handle it there. To keep it more or less permanent, I have handled it on DLL load/unload.

If you can get some more information from the developers, I will change the behavior of the plugin. I am really a busy person, but if there is some clue how to implement it properly - I can do it.

The plugin doesn't seem to support multichannel audio. I'd like to be able to use 6 channels.

I must say that im impressed with the plugin. Its way better than the foo_dsp_vst which doesnt store and reload a chained vst's when using a vst chainner with it. This one does a good job regarding that. It also doesnt crash foobar when closing foobar while multiple vst's are chained.

I use it to load a vst chainner, and i've chainner five vst pluggins, works like a charm.

But I agree with you, I would also like to have it receive 2+ channels and have 2+ outputs.
besides that, its great!

This is nice VST plugin and quite stable for me (doesn't crash as the other one does one me all the time).

However, your VST plugin does not appear to support multichannel audio? I'm using VI stereo->5.1 upmixer VST plugin, and feeding your VST bridge with 6 channels allocated, and the output through your VST plugin appears to be 2 channels only.. The other VST host bridge for foobar does output audio on 6 channels but only problem is it crashes left and right with VI plugin loaded.

George, this component is just beautiful, just tried with some of my big babies and all works perfect!!!
Wowwwwwwwwwwwww! *Tear*

Thanks a lot!!!!

Wow, great stuff! This will most likely replace the old VST wrapper I used, foo_dsp_vst...

Which VST chainer?

Most of VST plugins only support 2 channels, and loading more than 2 channels require additional instantiation and parameter update, which is hard to implement. If any of the specialists can advise here how to do it properly, it is welcome.

To the question of VST chainer, there is one available at xlutop.com, and at acondigital.com. Respectively, the links are:

http://www.xlutop.com/html/downloads.html
http://www.acondigital.com/us_EffectChainer.html

Thanks. I'm using AconDigital's chainer with your VST wrapper now, and it's just great!

Thanks for great plugin!

PS: Found three bugs (maybe not so buggy but annoying):
1. Click on start of some VBR songs.
2. Menu don't close when I click on any other window (I think this is not the best windows menu behaviour)
3. Plugin editor, after restarting foobar, on first load always open preset selection dialog of VST plugin (iOzone 3), instead of plugin's main window.

Wow, very nice plugin Though it freezes when scanning for Sytrus, which is a bit weird since it's a VSTi (you can grab a trial version at www.sytrus.com to try to reproduce it)

Just two user interface suggestions:
- when skipping through the readme I somehow missed the shift trick, perhaps it would be a good idea to add a text like "if this window freezes please restart fb2k while pressing shift" to the plugin-folder-scan window (or simply to put huge emphasis around this in the readme )
- the taskbar icon when the wrapper is not in the list of active DSPs is *very* misleading: I loaded up a VST, tweaked the settings and played a song -- but the VST received no data ; I checked all the preferences accessible from the taskbar icon (unchecked the "Bypass" button, etc), to no avail ; I even registered here specifically to post a bug report when it finally struck me that I had to register it as an "active DSP"
Perhaps the solution would be to hide the taskbar icon when inactive, or if it's too difficult simply to put a tick on the Bypass switch when the wrapper is not an active DSP?

(oh, and a tiny bug: when you click on the taskbar icon there is no way to make the menu disappear by clicking elsewhere, you have to click on something like "About" to get rid of it [note: I have Vista with Desktop compositing enabled, if that matters at all])

EDIT:
Actually, I can't even get the shift trick to work Vista issue?

(oh and FYI on Vista the ini file is C:\ProgramData\GeorgeYohngVST.ini ^^)

there's no support for 6 channels...
can this feature be added?
im using "V.i Stereo to 5.1 converter".

And another thing. When I delete c:\program files\steinberg\vstplugins\ from the path list it appears there again! I don't want to scan that dir at all
Maybe something can be done?

[edit]: I seem to have mixed up this plugin with another one

I don't know what you mean exactly, if you can use the V.I vst plugin you have 6 channels, don't you?

You use the other VST wrapper, not the one discussed in this thread. This one has no 5.1 support.

Oops , I mixed them up. sorry.

Nope, same with XP.

just discovered this plug, quite amazing ! Thank you so much.
Just one thing bothers me, why does it store plugins settings in C:\Documents and Settings... instead of it's own folder ?
Also, the .ini placed in /all users/....
Why do developpers like to scatter things so much !? To mess with our windows (which are already so messy)... ?

New build is in, not many changes. Added local VST plugin folder, and made 'Rescan All' button work.

The 'menu stays up' bug is something in the underlying 3rd party library that I use (Trolltech Qt) in combination with foobar, which is hard to defeat. To make the menu go away, click anywhere in the foobar window.

To answer why files are stored in different directories:

Settings are stored in all users because this relates to VST plugins installed in the system, while individual plugins presets are stored on per-user basis.

Sytrus - the demo of it doesn't hang here on scanning with the latest build.




Some more comments

>> 1. Click on start of some VBR songs.

Hmm, what should happen? I do not hear anything that is not normal. Could it be related to crossfading? (I have it off)

>> 3. Plugin editor, after restarting foobar, on first load always open preset selection
>> dialog of VST plugin (iOzone 3), instead of plugin's main window.

This must be something Ozone 3 specific. There is no control of which windows comes up within the plugin GUI. I only tell it to appear and load the previously stored data, and it's interesting why Ozone reacts this way.

Try loading the plugin inside Xlutop or Acon chainer inserted, does it do the same?



Perhaps this logic is not the best, I have added it so that there is at least one (standard) VST directory in the list for people, who always click Next in all VST plugin installers.

If several people offer something better or simply vote it away, I will remove it.

Thanks,
George.

Good stuff as always. No changes to the W1 Limiter I suppose? The file date hasn't changed at least. I'm using the W1 Limiter for music, in all its simplicity it's still perfect for my needs.