100$ isn't a ton of money, but I'd love to test the VST without buying it.
I'll try to checkout the standalone later .
I'll try to checkout the standalone later .
The limitation is it comes with its own modules (most open source modules available for VCV) and you can't load external modules. But it's already super powerful. Highly recommended.
Cardinal is intended to be usable just like a conventional plugin, which includes having presets that can be exchanged between computers (or even between users).
If Cardinal allowed arbitrary modules to be loaded, there's no guarantee that when the preset was used on a different computer or by a different user it would work, because modules could be missing. One idea for Cardinal is to be able to build "synths" with it, and then represent the result as a preset that could be used anywhere.
The regular Rack plugin version doesn't have this as an explicit goal, and therefore it can allow arbitrary modules to be loaded. You can certainly have presets, but there's no way to ensure that any context in which you use the presets have all the required modules.
> A proper audio plugin should be self-contained as much as possible, as to not interfere with the DAW/Host. (...) A self-contained plugin can't be overstated, as DLL/shared-object symbol conflicts can trigger hard-to-debug crashes.
I'm fine with the limitations, and like the idea of a self-contained plugin that does not phone home. And in my experience, Cardinal is already very solid and feature-complete, even in its beta form.
But one could absolutely imagine a system where you can share setups that use modules that may or may not be available. For instance, you can build, save and share combinators in Reason that use non-standard REs.
I'll try this tonight