VST (without overbridge)

I started work on a VST for the Heat that uses midi (bypassing the need for Overbridge entirely). I only have Bitwig for testing so I’m not sure how it will function in other DAW’s.

I’ve gotten a few controls and the ‘Character’ selection working so far and intend to release a first version once I have all the controls mapped. Automation works as expected and you can record your performance live. I should point out that this is my first VST so if there are some gotchas out there that a seasoned developer is aware of - I may stumble into those :slight_smile:

The reason for the post is part bug report (I created a support ticket for this on June 9th - but no response as of yet). I was wondering if anyone else ran into this annoying issue with the Heat receiving NRPN data. I’ve confirmed that the Heat is dividing all data values by 2.

e.g. The ‘circuit select’ (aka “Character”) has a normal range of 0-7. Sending a ‘7’ via CC causes the device to switch to ‘High Gain’ as expected. But to get that same thing work using NRPN you need to send a ‘14’.

Anyone else seeing a similar problem?

Image showing current progress:

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It doesn’t look like much… but it works and I don’t have to use Overbridge.

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does this mean we can use the analog heat as a soundcard without having to set up all that other jazz?

It means you can use it in your DAW by using the audio TRS connectors plugged into your own audio interface instead of being limited to the built-in audio interface inside the Heat. The plugin supports all the midi controls and automation so you can record your performance as midi data inside your DAW. This is all stuff you can do with Overbridge. However, with my plugin you get no latency and can use your own audio interface.

The only issue with my plugin is that Elektron haven’t released any documentation on the SysEx yet, so It doesn’t support reading the current settings on the Heat.

The work around (for now) is to start by sending all the current settings from DAW to Heat and not using program change. So, if you’re into lots of presets this wouldn’t work for you. I typically start from INIT and go from there.