Cross-platform/format testing strategies?

[nrgb]

Hi all,
long time listener, first time caller.

I've been developing audio units for personal use for some time and have reached a point where I'm considering porting them to Juce for potential sale. I'm at a loss however on how best to test my plugins considering the huge number of platform/format/daw combinations..?

Is Parallels a suitable Windows substitute?
Will I actually need to buy Logic/Ableton/Cubase/Pro Tools/Bitwig/FL Studio/Reaper/Studio One etc... or is it a case of "If it works in one, it'll work in another.."?

How do solo/small dev teams handle this?

[Aleksey Vaneev]

You'll need to test in all major hosts for sure, they are quite diverse and you can't be sure that testing in one host will be enough. Ableton and Reaper have demos - this is enough for testing. Logic, Cubase and ProTools are harder to get for free I think. At initial stage I actually had to purchase Cubase 4 for testing.

[nrgb]

Thanks Aleksey. I actually already have a few and am prepared to purchase the rest. I guess I was hoping to hear that Juce does such a good job of abstracting away the differences that it wouldn't be necessary... although a quick look at their forums reveals that this isn't the case.

[MeldaProduction]

Ask the developers. If you are "big enough", most of them will give a NFR to you. Sometimes in exchange for your NFRs.

[matt42]

You can get a development version of pro tools. It's straight forward, but you need to have been accepted into their AAX developers program, or whatever they call it.

Studio One has a free version, I think.

[ponce]

The only one forcing you to buy their host is Steinberg.