Did you know that you can use automation to control the plug-ins hosted inside Blue Cat’s PatchWork or MB-7 Mixer V3?

The example below uses PatchWork in Pro Tools 12, but the same applies to the MB-7 Mixer multiband plug-in and any host application that supports automation.

Map Plug-In Parameters

The first step is to select the parameters you want to control from the outside, using the Params Map function, as explained in details in the manual:

Mapping parameters of plug-in hosted in PatchWork

Mapped parameters will appear at the bottom of the PatchWork or MB-7 Mixer GUI, if “Show Assigned Controls” is enabled (icon with 3 knobs in the toolbar):

Mapped Parameters

PatchWork’s parameters called “Control 01” and “Controls 02” are now mapped to the “Drive” and “Mix” parameters of the hosted Destructor plug-in. It means that you can use the PatchWork parameters to change the corresponding plug-in’s parameters and vice versa.

Automate PatchWork Controls

You can now automate the PatchWork controls in Pro Tools (“Control 01” and “Control 02” in this example) – they will control the mapped parameters of the hosted plug-in(s):

Enable automation for the Mapped Parameters in Pro Tools

Record and Replay automation as if the sub-plugin was hosted in Pro Tools.

Enjoy!

Despite all our efforts, sometimes bugs are not caught before the software is released, and this one has an impact on VST3 users on Mac, so we’d like to share more information about it with you, so that you can avoid major problems. If you are on Windows or do not use VST3, you don’t need to read this!

The Bug

We have noticed a bug on the first release of our VST3 plug-ins that affect the Mac versions: the identifier for the plug-ins (used by host to identify a particular plug-in) were not properly reported to the host on Mac.

The consequence was that the plug-ins inserted in sessions created on Mac would not be reloaded on Windows and vice-versa.

The Fix

We are now progressively releasing new versions of our plug-ins with a fix for the wrong ID on Mac (see impacted products list below). But this means that older sessions will not reload the new versions of the plug-ins, as they are seen by the host as a different plug-in.

How To Open Old Sessions

So here is a way to open older sessions without losing any plug-in data. You can then migrate these sessions quickly to use the new version of the plug-in so that they are future-proof.

The idea is just to install the old and new versions side by side, so that older sessions are reloaded with the older version of the plug-in (which would be missing otherwise). Renaming the old plug-in before installing the new version will do the trick:

Open the VST3 plug-ins directory

Rename old plug-ins (for example with “Legacy” at the end, but do not change the extension (vst3)

If the plug-in has multiple versions (Synth, Dual, Mono etc.), do not forget to rename them all. Once you are done, install the new version. Both should now be available, side by side:

Side by side installation

You can now open the existing sessions: the “legacy” version of the plug-in will be loaded, keeping the sessions unchanged.

How To Migrate to New Versions:

Since you probably do not want to keep both versions side by side forever, you can quickly migrate existing sessions so that they use the new plug-in in the future, instead of the old version:

Open the legacy plug-in in the session and copy its state

Replace the legacy plug-in with the new one and paste the state.

Voila! The old plug-in is replaced by the new one, with the exact same state.

Impacted Products

So far, the plug-ins impacted by this change are the Mac VST3 versions of the following plug-ins:

• Blue Cat’s PachWork, between version 1.73 and 1.74 (also affects migration from 1.73 or earlier to version 2).
• Blue Cat’s MB-7 Mixer, between version 2.53 and 2.54 (also affects migration from 2.53 or earlier to version 3).
• Blue Cat’s Plug’n Script, between version 2 and 3.0.
• Blue Cat’s Chorus, between version 4.2 and 4.3.
• Blue Cat’s Flanger, between version 3.2 and 3.3.
• Blue Cat’s Phaser, between version 4.2 and 3.3.
• Blue Cat’s FreqAnalyst, between version 2.2 and 2.3.
• Blue Cat’s Triple EQ, between version 4.2 and 4.3.
• Blue Cat’s Gain Suite, between version 3.2 and 3.3.
• Blue Cat’s Dynamics, between version 4.1 and 4.2.

Other VST3 plug-ins that are not listed above still have the Mac-Windows compatibility issue, except for Blue Cat’s Destructor, Late Replies and Axiom that were released with the fix from the very first version.

Did you know that with PatchWork V2 and MB-7 Mixer V3 you can save your favorite plug-ins (and their entire configuration) to reload them directly from the plug-in menu?

Here is how you can do it!

Save Plug-In and its Settings

Once you have loaded a plug-in and configured it the way you like it, choose Save As from the plug-in menu:

Choose the name that describes the plug-in and its settings properly (in our example we choose “BC Destructor – Clean”, as it is our favorite clean sound with Blue Cat’s Destructor.

Reload Plug-In From Menu

Next time you want to load this configuration, just use the Select menu – no need to manually load the plug-in and set it up again:

Tip: you can create sub-folders when saving the file. This lets you keep things organized, as the directory structure is shown in the Select menu.

One more tip: you can save the same plug-in with different settings in a sub-folder. No need to bother with plug-in presets anymore, as you can load them directly from the menu with a single click!

Enjoy!