Fran,

I didn't even know until now that Mixcraft Pro 8 has a few good analog VST instruments. OK, I made a copy of the whole VST folder located at Program Files/Acoustica Mixcraft 8/VST and moved it to my VST 64 bit folder. Then I had VIP 3.0 and my favorite VST host Gig Performer scan it. Except for a couple of commercial plug-ins (They wanted more money for full versions of these plugins to be used out of Mixcraft) and some other effects plugins, many were detected including two sound packs called Acoustica Instruments (264 sounds) and Expanded Instruments (68 sounds).

These too packs are more like a GM set, and even within Mixcraft the plug-ins do not even have a GUI to edit the sounds. Anyway, these plug-ins do show up in VIP 3.0 with the full lists of patch names and numbers automatically, but only the first sound plays. Gig Performer or other VST host can access all other sounds. I found out that all the sounds in the two packs do respond to midi program changes. Sure enough when I send PC messages to the sound packs within VIP 3.0, I was able to play them all. They played like a piece of hardware; instant, and also with patch remain. All other Mixcraft detected by VIP and Gig Performer played fine.

I think I am going to send two sound packs to Akai Pro. In the meantime, if you need to go back and forth between Mixcraft and VIP, you can load VIP in Mixcraft.


I might add that I run 64 bit Mixcraft and 64 bit VIP 3.0.