Plug-Ins Window

The Plug-Ins window is basically a library of available plug-ins. Metro supports the following plug-in types:

OS X

V1 and V2 Audio Units including Music Devices and Music Effects, VST (Carbonized), VST OSX (mach-o), and any compatible VSTi's designed for Mac OS X. VST plug-ins must be carbonized or mach-o and placed in the ‘OS X VST plug-ins’ folder in order to be found. This folder is inside the Metro folder and is an alias to '/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/'. OS X VST plug-ins can also be placed in '/home/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/ but these plug-ins will not be found by other users in multi-user systems.

OS 9.x

Premiere, VST and VSTi designed for OS 9 or earlier. To be found uncarbonized VST plug-ins must be placed in the ‘Plug-Ins’ folder.

Note: regardless of what operating system you are running, aliases to folders placed in the correct Plug-In folder are acceptable and will be found by Metro. Aliases to files may or may not work depending on the plug-in.

The Plug-ins window displays all the individual effects available for real-time use within Metro. You can double-click any individual effect to add it to an audio track, displayed in the Effects window. Alternatively you can drag a plug-in to the Effects window or to an aux buss fader in the Instruments Mixer window. Control-Clicking a (non-audioUnit) plug-in will pop up a contextual menu with several options including reveal (the plug-in) in finder.

Soft-Synths

VSTi's, Music Devices and Music Effects are synthesizer plug-ins that expect to receive MIDI data and perhaps audio. If one of these plug-ins expects audio then it is best to use it on an aux buss. See the Effects window page to see how to set up an aux buss. After a synthesizer plug-in is installed on a track or an aux buss a new MIDI port will appear in the port popups. Also, tracks that are assigned to synthesizer plug-ins can be mixed as audio files using the Mix audio command from the File menu. This will produce sample-accurate audio on all unmuted synthesizer plug-in tracks.

Metro supports third-party VST-compatible and Adobe Premiere-compatible Plug-in formats. VST Plug-ins allow real-time processing of Audio Tracks as well as off-line processing of individual Audio tracks regions. Real-time processing allows multiple VST Plug-ins or AudioUnits to be run in series across an Audio Track. The Premiere Plug-in format is limited to processing effects off line. All off-line effects processing is constructive - that is, Metro creates a new AIFF file for each non real-time process, leaving your original audio file alone.

Audio Plug-ins are located in the Metro folder or in the Plug-ins directory located within the Metro folder. The Plug-in window displays all supported Plug-ins found when Metro was launched. Since they cannot run in real-time, Adobe Premiere Plug-ins display in gray. All non-soft-synth-plug-ins in the Plug-ins window are also accessible under the Audio submenu within the Edit menu. Choose an Effect from the Audio submenu in order to perform a non real-time process of the current audio selection or Audio Track. Preview allows you to audition a portion of the effect before applying it. For Premiere plug-ins preview time is limited to the For Playback Allocate setting in the Buffer Preferences.

Note: All audio processing in Metro is nondestructive. A new AIFF audio file is created so that the original file remains unaltered.

Select an Audio Track and double-click on one of the Audio Effects or VST effects in the Plug-ins window (Premiere Plug-ins are grayed-out). This opens the Effects window allowing parameter modification and routing configuration of one or more Plug-ins (multiple Plug-ins are routed in series). Add additional effects by double-clicking on other effects in the Plug-ins window. The number of simultaneous effects available is limited by CPU speed. Metro displays a message stating the “Hard Disk is too slow for playback...” if too many effects are used across or within Audio Tracks.