VST, which stands for Virtual Studio Technology is an instrumental plugin that is hosted in a Digital Audio Workstation(DAW) on your computer. It was established by Steinberg Media Technologies in 1996 as a way of adding effects to audio tracks. It has upgraded the computer from being an audio recorder and a MIDI(Musical Instrument Digital Interface) sequencer to being an established mixing, audio recording, and producing platform. Since it was released in an open format, other companies adopted the technology and started writing the VST effects or instruments. The VST instruments are sometimes referred to as samples. These samples usually have a library bundle known as a sample library. You can think of them as folders that have sampled sounds.įor you to connect to the library, there is a program known as a sampler that hosts the sound patches. These sample sounds are created by people who record a single note of an instrument in a number of different ways. Most samples are usually standalone, which means you don't need a DAW, so you can easily play and hear them.
In addition to that, there are also some VST instruments that come with standalone versions that won't need any additional software.
