Steinberg: No more VST2 Development

[Keith99]

Admiral you are out of order in the way you are replying to mn. He has a valid point and if you don't agree just argue your case no need for the insults.

Personally I am going to be learning the VST3 SDK next and hope it has improved from first release. It certainly has promise and really the 2.4 API is very poor its just we know its workarounds now If 3 can produce 2.4 versions easily it will be great but I need to investigate it.

[AdmiralQuality]

Admiral you are out of order in the way you are replying to mn. He has a valid point and if you don't agree just argue your case no need for the insults.

Personally I am going to be learning the VST3 SDK next and hope it has improved from first release. It certainly has promise and really the 2.4 API is very poor its just we know its workarounds now If 3 can produce 2.4 versions easily it will be great but I need to investigate it.

No he DOESN'T have a valid point. And if he can come into the DSP forum and tell us how to do our jobs, I can tell him what I think of it.

The insults are the ones HE'S making at the entire plug-in industry. I haven't insulted anybody.

Your "facts" are completely wrong. Saying VST 2.4 is "poor" doesn't make it so. Yes, you DO need to investigate it. Come back when your VST 3 is working and show us exactly how it's better than a VST 2.4.

And 3.x CAN'T produce VST 2.4 versions "easier" (or at all, from the continuing struggles I'm still seeing on the VST list after 7 f**king years of this nonsense!) You're drinking the Steinberg marketing Kool-Aid too and have NO IDEA what you're talking about. Speaking of insulting!

[rockstar_not]

First of all - thank you to all VST developers. Your efforts and work have made my hobby incredibly fun and interesting for over 10 years. I wish there was a non-profit that I could contribute that would benefit you all.

I do not develop VTS/VSTi plugins - I merely use them - gladly!

Reading this thread, it makes me pine for the kind of cooperation and collaboration that ended up in creating the MIDI standard - which looks and smells and feels much more like a standard, than having one company seem to have so much influence like with Steinberg and VST and ASIO. Recently, either Keyboard or Electronic Musician magazine had a good write-up on how all of it went down back in the day.

It's really too bad that there isn't a multi-corporation, industry wide standard for audio plugins. Who knows if we could ever see cooperation again, like what formulated the MIDI original standard and subsequent updates. Actually, I seem to remember reading that there may be something ad-hoc (probably from the very short dance I did in the Linux world) that does exist. I sure hope some type of more mainstream collaboration on creating a standard. Until then, it seems like a corporation will rule.

[AdmiralQuality]

As a wise man (or maybe a wise ass) once said. "The great thing about standards is there's so many to choose from!"

[mystran]

Reading this thread, it makes me pine for the kind of cooperation and collaboration that ended up in creating the MIDI standard

Is it still the case that VST3 doesn't support MIDI?

[MadBrain]

I've been told by someone working at a plugin company that they don't make VST3 versions because there is literally ZERO demand, even these days...

[aciddose]

What we need is a clean-room spec for VST 2x. Let's not focus on any specific sdk version because we all know they are 90% crap.

Any clean-room version should be optionally "vst 2x compatible" but should also leave room for expansion and ideally would replace the defective/limited implementations with better ones.

I started writing a clean-room description of the ABI but I did not finish. It would need to be examined by a lawyer and approved, and a contractor would need to be hired who is not "contaminated" by contact with the original SDK.

(you don't have permission to access this directory.)
http://xhip.net/temp/vst_interface_specification.txt

This obviously needs a ton of work. The thing about the interface as I have it defined there however is that there is no other way to define it. That means the implementation itself does not have copyright protection. (Obviously: IANAL, this would need to be ensured.)

None of us could ever work on the reversed SDK or even be involved in it because we've already been contaminated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google

[JCJR]

Having paid little attention to this issue, a dummies question. Are vst 2.x ALL 32 bit, and vst 3.x ALL 64 bit? IOW are all 64bit built vst necessarily 3.x and all 2.x guaranteed to be 32 bit builds?

[asdfrewq]

Having paid little attention to this issue, a dummies question. Are vst 2.x ALL 32 bit, and vst 3.x ALL 64 bit? IOW are all 64bit built vst necessarily 3.x and all 2.x guaranteed to be 32 bit builds?

No, you can have vst2 x32 and/or x64. You can have vst3 x32 and/or x64.

[simpli.cissimus]

I am not a developer, just a user...

But..., I ask myself all these years why you allow to be bullied.

Yes, Steinberg, AVID and Apple seem big compared to a small developer,
but you all together are far more powerful.

The best software and synth on which musicians rely on are
made by you guys, not by them !

You all could make your lives a lot easier and less painful,
if you all could agree on one open plugin standard.
Made from you developers !

Why code and maintain three or four standards ?
All this makes software development expensive and time consuming.

One single plugin format is the only thing that makes sense.

If you make it and stop developing VST, AU or RTAS(AAX), soon
every host will adapt and take the new standard, or die out...!

You developers should get organized and get stronger.
Sit together and work together on a new open plugin format.

We the users will support that and use it, so the DAW companies
will have to use it too, sooner or later.

Maybe it sounds naive, but I really think it is that easy.
The only thing that can make this fail is not to try...

cheers

[aciddose]

Why code and maintain three or four standards ?
All this makes software development expensive and time consuming.

One single plugin format is the only thing that makes sense.

If you make it and stop developing VST, AU or RTAS(AAX), soon
every host will adapt and take the new standard, or die out...!

The problem is you have it backwards. The hosts define the plugin standards, not the plugins.

The only way you have any power in this is to be the author of a host, and a host is a very large project compared to most plugins.

We could develop a plugin format, and have! There are many formats available.

The problems are:

1. Hosts with significant market share are not motivated to implement plugin formats with limited market share.
2. Plugin authors are not motivated to implement plugins in a format with limited support (VST3, etc) unless the ROI is there.

So we have a system of feedbacks which settle into the state things are now. This isn't a voluntary system, this is a forceful system.

If Cubase were to drop vst2x support it's doubtless that they will lose (or 'loose' if you work at stienberg) some sales. The real question is what motivates them to make this decision? What is really going on behind the scenes here? If they do make such a decision it is obvious that they believe it provides for their own interests, whatever they may be. Whether or not they are right is another question we will see the answer to in time.

[arakula]

If Cubase were to drop vst2x support it's doubtless that they will lose (or 'loose' if you work at stienberg) some sales.

Making fun of a non-native speaker's error and then misspelling the company name in the same sentence yourself? C'mon, you can do better...

[Urs]

Is it still the case that VST3 doesn't support MIDI?

Well, yes and no. One can use parameters for MIDI instead.

We add 2048 VST3 parameters to cover CCs 0-127 for all 16 channels

Not sure if we found a way to receive MIDI Program Changes.

[aciddose]

If Cubase were to drop vst2x support it's doubtless that they will lose (or 'loose' if you work at stienberg) some sales.

Making fun of a non-native speaker's error and then misspelling the company name in the same sentence yourself? C'mon, you can do better...

How do we know these were not both typos?

The loose thing is just silly though. I would have fixed that after noticing it. After how many years does the code still contain this error? For what? Backward compatibility?

We won't get into that though since we all already understand it perfectly.

[arakula]

The "looseFocus" in VSTGUI is definitely something that falls in the "backward compatibility" range. Although, if I was one of them, I'd have changed it in VSTGUI4, where they broke compatibility to older versions anyway.