Description
You download a synth plugin to hear what it sounds like, and first you have to open a DAW, start a project, add a MIDI track, load the plugin and connect a keyboard — ten minutes of setup for three minutes of listening. SAVIHost removes all of it: rename savihost.exe to the plugin's name — Attack.dll becomes Attack.exe — and double-clicking it opens the plugin's own interface as if it were a standalone application.
The program itself is a few hundred kilobytes, portable, and runs straight from the folder. A virtual keyboard sits along the bottom so you can play notes without any hardware; with a controller attached you pick the MIDI input device and set channel, velocity curve and transposition. It works for auditioning presets, for configuring a plugin, and for using a single instrument live. A wave recorder is built in, so a take you like goes straight to disk.
Rename to bind: naming savihost.exe after a plugin DLL makes it load that plugin at startup, so each plugin ends up as its own executable on the desktop.
Built-in MIDI keyboard: the on-screen keyboard triggers notes directly, so auditioning needs no hardware controller.
MIDI input setup: choose MIDI and wave devices, pick the receive channel, and adjust velocity curve, semitone or octave transposition and BPM.
Preset banks: a set of bank files sorted by genre — slow blues, jazz, dance, rock — ships with it, and your own preset sets load just as easily.
Wave recording: a recorder is included, so what you play is captured to a wave file without opening a second host.
The program itself is a few hundred kilobytes, portable, and runs straight from the folder. A virtual keyboard sits along the bottom so you can play notes without any hardware; with a controller attached you pick the MIDI input device and set channel, velocity curve and transposition. It works for auditioning presets, for configuring a plugin, and for using a single instrument live. A wave recorder is built in, so a take you like goes straight to disk.
Features
Rename to bind: naming savihost.exe after a plugin DLL makes it load that plugin at startup, so each plugin ends up as its own executable on the desktop.
Built-in MIDI keyboard: the on-screen keyboard triggers notes directly, so auditioning needs no hardware controller.
MIDI input setup: choose MIDI and wave devices, pick the receive channel, and adjust velocity curve, semitone or octave transposition and BPM.
Preset banks: a set of bank files sorted by genre — slow blues, jazz, dance, rock — ships with it, and your own preset sets load just as easily.
Wave recording: a recorder is included, so what you play is captured to a wave file without opening a second host.
