For those of you who missed our review of Vienna Ensemble Pro 5 earlier this year, then you may not have realised how significant a product it is. What it enables users to do is to host AU plug-ins within Pro Tools. It works seamlessly with its elegant design, it won our Editors Choice Award.

How that Pro Tools 11 has shipped their are many plug-ins yet to port to 64bit AAX, so for those who want to be an early adopter the news that the VEP5 64 bit AAX public beta has arrived will be great news.

We’ve tested it today and it offers all the functionality of natively hosted AAX plug-ins, including off-line bounce and track freeze, but this is no wrapper, VEP5 is a powerhouse of a plug-in that ships with its own orchestra library for around $200. You can even sit it on another network attached computer.

The public beta is here.

We can’t recommend this product highly enough, if you want to leap to Pro Tools 11 but need your VIs, then VEP5 is the answer - it even hosts regular plug-ins too! More here