CARLA a dream studiorack

Remember reason? It gives you that feeling of owning gear and patching cables.

Well, after a long software-break, I decided to check out Carla (on Linux). And I have to say I’m impressed!

Finally a KISS pluginhost with multi-platform plugin-support:

• ladspa plugins
• lv2 plugins
• dssi synth plugins
• linux vst plugins
• win32 vst plugins
• win64 vst plugins
• native soundfont support (.sfz .sf2 and .gig)
• python rdf

One soft-studio rack

Finally one central place to organize all my soft-gear, my crossplatform wish has been granted! A portable soft-studio which can be fed midi and audio by anything.

Sequence as you wish

You can use carla as you wish:

• as a standalone midi sending/receiving soft-studio (using hardware midi seq)
• as a plugin in DAWS

I hope it will somehow support changing patches using midi program change message. Would be cool to change studiorack setups using your outboard midi gear.

How I plan to use CARLA

Im curious if this tool will make me sit more often in front of a computer. As stated before in articles, these days I dislike sequencing songs in DAW’s. I would love to use CARLA as a instrument interface connected to my hardware midi sequencer. Especially the native soundfont support finally allows me to organize my soundfont instrumentcollection. We’ll see :)