Audacity Forum

Audacity works perfectly fine with the plug-ins which come with the package (e.g. reverb), but I am having trouble getting it to work with VST plug-ins...

For both VSTs that I tried (Antares Auto-Tune and Celemony Melodyne), the GUIs loaded fine, but the plug-ins appear to be working with an empty audio track. So when I tell Auto-Tune or Melodyne to draw a pitch graph, nothing shows. The "Preview" button on the bottom left hand side plays the first few seconds of the audio track, then stops.

I would blame Audacity's "beta" status, but http://wiki.audacityteam.org/w/index.ph ... l_Plug-ins says the Auto-Tune plug-in works perfectly with Audacity 1.3, so it's just me. Am I doing it correctly? I highlighted the track I wanted to use and went to Effect > Antares... or Celemony...

louietyj wrote: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/w/index.ph ... l_Plug-ins says the Auto-Tune plug-in works perfectly with Audacity 1.3

I think "perfectly" is an exaggeration.
It would be better to say "it works within the capabilities of VST support in Audacity".

Audacity is not a fully fledged VST host. Audacity does not support Real-Time processing, it does not support VST Instruments (VSTi) and it does not support MIDI. For full functionality with Antares AutoTune or Celemony Melodyne you need to use a full-featured VST host program.

So, very simply, Audacity supports VST plugins only enough to load their GUIs...? The plugin listing made it sound like it at least supported plugins to the extent that they were able to see and work with the audio track...

Update: I've gotten it to work by telling Antares to use internal clock than host. I can't find an option in Melodyne though...

As you've now discovered, Audacity will usually do a lot more than just load the interface, but in some cases there may be some features that are unavailable. In particular, any features that require real time processing, routing of multiple audio streams, or MIDI support will be unavailable.

Both AutoTune and Melodyne are very sophisticated plug-ins. To use them properly you will require a full-featured Host program. Melodyne may not work at all. You're the person testing it, so if you get it to work at all perhaps you will report any special steps required and any limitations that it has.