Cardinal Rack v22.11 VST2 VST3 AU x64 x86 ARM LiNUX WiN macOS [FREE]

FREE | 29 November 2022 | 2.71 GB
Cardinal is a free and open-source virtual modular synthesizer plugin, available as JACK standalone and AU, LV2, VST2 and VST3 audio plugin for FreeBSD, Linux, macOS and Windows.
It is based on the popular VCV Rack but with a focus on being a fully self-contained plugin version.

More specifically, this is a DPF-based plugin wrapper around VCV Rack, using its code directly instead of forking the project, with the target of having a proper, self-contained, fully free and open-source plugin version of Rack.
See the why section below for the reasons Cardinal exists, also for frequently asked questions check this FAQ document.

Cardinal contains Rack, some 3rd-party modules and a few internal utilities all in a single binary.
All "Core" modules from Rack have been replaced by Cardinal equivalents, simplified to better work for an audio plugin.

Cardinal does not load external modules and does not connect to the official Rack library/store.
All VCV branding has been removed (to the best of our knowledge) in order to avoid any trademark issues.

The VST3 version is in progress, already part of the build but still experimental.

Stable release
Cardinal releases have official builds for Linux, macOS and Windows.
There are Linux builds for various architectures (armhf, arm64, i686 and x86_64), macOS "universal" (arm64 + intel) and Windows 32 and 64bit builds. Both macOS and Windows builds have an installer.

Plugin variants
Cardinal provides 3 plugin variants - "main", Synth and FX.
They are all equivalent in performance and behaviour, with only the IO and metadata that changes.
This is because some hosts are very strict on which plugins are allowed as instruments vs FX, so separate variants of the same plugin are needed.

FX and Synth variants both have 2 audio outputs, while "main" has 8.
All variants have MIDI input and output support.

Main
This variant provides 8 audio inputs and outputs and 10 CV inputs and outputs.

NOTE: Due to AU and VST2 formats not supporting CV ports, this variant is not available for those formats.

Synth
This variant provides 2 audio outputs but no audio inputs or CV ports.
Plugin type is set as "instrument".

FX
This variant provides 2 audio inputs and outputs, but no CV ports.
Plugin type is set as regular "effect".

Screenshots
Because people will ask for it. It is, well... Rack.
But a couple of modules background's have their colors flipped, because damn we want proper dark mode!

Module browser


Basic patching


Carla and Ildaeil plugin hosts


Custom Fundamental modules design



Included modules
At the moment the following 3rd-party modules are provided:


A feature comparison between Cardinal and Rack Pro can be seen here

Changelog:
Hi everyone, we have another Cardinal release, 22.11, with a very welcome change and important bugfixes.
Cardinal is a free and open-source virtual modular synthesizer plugin.
It is based on the popular VCV Rack but with a focus on being a fully self-contained plugin version.

Contributed by Francesco Cameli we now have modules processing order based on cable connections rather than when they were first added to the Rack.
With this, there is now a guarantee that no single sample feedback is introduced between cable connections, unless feedback connections are in place or modules have internal buffering.

As an example, Francesco provided a simple patch that plays a sine wave through a sequence of 54 modules to measure the difference of the starting signal with the end one.
As it can be seen below, with the old implementation there was definitely a delay introduced by the connections.
(since the audio engine steps through the modules in the order in which they were created, ignoring which modules should come first according to the cable connections)

Main Changelog
Add classic subtractive polysynth example/demo patch
Automatically reset modules processing order according to cable connections
Enable CLAP "main" variant (multi-IO audio now implemented, CV ports still TODO)
Fix CLAP audio port types (now set as stereo, fixes loading under Anklang)
Fix memory alignment issues for macOS Intel platform
Fix out of bounds read on host audio 2 meters
Fix VST3 non-main ports not receiving audio
Make macOS native standalone behaving like Linux and Windows regarding buffer-size changes
Mark LV2 CV ports as optional
Only use simde, drop sse2neon (following VCV Rack's approach to ARM binaries)
Module changes
Add RebelTech
Update Meander
Fix crashes when loading patches with Macro Oscillator 2
Fix out of bounds read in DrumKit modules