John,

Yes - you can use VST plugins in most hosts both during mixdown/playback, as well as while recording, even though the effect isn't 'printed to tape'. ASIO with low latency is the key.

For example, you can do this with gain changes in most hosts, but it's a virtual gain change, instead of a destructive gain change. You can now do it in PG products with envelopes. But only recently. Most time that people talk about gain change here at PG, they are talking about the destructive (read: permanent) gain change made on a file.

And the recommendation for Kjaerhus classic series of plugins is mine but has been echoed here on PG forums by rharv and others time and again.

Whether someone uses these or PG's or others is beside the point. The main point of the 4 pages of discussion is actually that monitoring of effects in mixdown is very important. This is not what Eddie was doing. He was about to go spend a little bit of coin on a solution that would have been much more complicated than just mixing in the box. And still have questionable results in the end.

This was the nugget quote from the whole 4 pages: ""I can't EQ to save my soul in Real Band, but that is mainly because it isn't real time. If I can move sliders while I listen, I do a much better job. ""

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