MusicRadar

Cantabile doesn't come with any instruments or effects - you'll need to supply these.

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• Review

Many gigging and touring pros have taken to using notebooks or even desktop computers on-stage, and why not? With all of the brilliant soft synths, samplers and effects, a laptop can replace racks full of gear and, in theory, reduce the stress that goes with managing a live rig.

However, a live software setup must also be manageable, to withstand life on the road. With the Windows-only Cantabile, Topten Software seeks to give you everything a performing musician might need in a plug-in host, with none of the studio-centric bloat that weighs down most DAWs.

More than that, the developer has provided tools aimed at maximising integration between your MIDI hardware and plug-ins.

Overview

Cantabile isn't a traditional plug-in host, so don't expect it to do any DAW-like editing or arranging. What's more, there isn't a single synth or effect in the package, as Topten is leaving the VST-stockpiling to you.

What Cantabile does is provide a thoroughly customisable workplace, with racks for your VST instruments and effects, and a means by which they can be routed to your hardware MIDI and audio interfaces, as well as each other. It gives you quick and easy access to the most important mixing parameters that you might need at a gig, such as each plug-in's gain and pan settings, presets and wet/dry levels.

These functions are provided in 'racks' rather than in a familiar mixer setting, and you can stack up rack upon rack as you need to.

Instruments and effects are loaded into racks, and the racks themselves can be soloed, muted, bypassed and record armed – you can also use them to process incoming audio signals.

This method is flexible enough for just about any plug-in combo that you can imagine, though it's not as freely patchable as a fully modular plug-in host, such as energyXT2.5 or Plogue Bidule.

In detail

As you'd expect from a product aimed at live performance, Cantabile's MIDI implementation is very flexible. Just about any parameter on show can be assigned to virtually any MIDI controller.

For example, plug-ins can be bypassed with a single key tap via the Note to Controller Assignment, or multiple racks can be spread across the key range to create complex splits and transpositions. In fact, you can filter any incoming MIDI data or reroute it as needed.

'Triggers' can be defined, to control external devices whenever you perform certain actions, such as loading a new session. VST parameters can be controlled via MIDI, too, and you can switch sub-sessions via MIDI program changes.

So what's a sub-session? Well, Cantabile's settings are stored as sessions, and a sub-session is a named variation within a session. For instance, a session might contain a selection of racks with their own instruments, effects and routings – a variation of that session using the same plug-ins but different mutes, program banks, MIDI triggers, routing entries and sync options could be saved as a sub-session for fast recall.