Portability

I have hardware. Piles of it.

Some bleh, like hordes of digitech and peavy rack stuff

Some standard, like the regular complement of dbx comps and Drawmer gates

And a whole heaping helping of uber gear: Manley, API, Eventide, etc...

So you might be surprised that I almost NEVER use any of it, except during tracking. It all sits idle in a mix. You can imagine I might take quite a ribbing for this practice. I have my reasons

I like my house

I like to mix at my house

I am surrounded by a bearded dragon, a pair of guinea pigs, a Columbian boa, a pair of rats, a plated lizard and a breeding set of feeder mice

However I have to leave my ghetto paradise to track. It could be on a laptop. It could be on our P4 rackmount. It could be someone else's PC. Who knows?

I could be going between editing at home and tracking on another rig several times over the course of a month or more. What if the other PC doesnt have a plugin I've been using? Theres a somewhat functional DSP card here on my mixing computer, but what are the chances of it being on another PC? Those things barely seem to work in the first place.

I need to be able to pull up any sound I'm working on using any hardware in front of me. This precludes DSP cards. Dongles are DEFINITELY a huge no-no. This tosses out most apps and most fx plugins on the marketplace.

I need portability.

I need a small footprint app, which will run on a modest PC

I need hassle free copy protection

I need freeware plugs or better yet, an app with stock plugs that can get the job done.

Think any manufacturers can help me with that?