u-he

amoeba · Post by **amoeba** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 9:53 pm

this i guess applies to all plugs, not just the u-he stuff, but i am curious to hear from mac users if they prefer AU or VST versions of plugins, and why. are there any performance differences or problems unique to one format or the other? i have always gone with AU, thinking apple knew their sh*t, but that may be a bad assumption.

ableton says (re: the virus TI plugin) "Play through latency is too high (AU only)... Status: We are working with Accsss on the problems. There is no solution in the Audio Unit standard yet for the latency issue."

i dunno if that is just plain BS or not, but i have thought about sitting down one night and doing some side by sides AU/VST comparisons myself. but being lazy yet resourceful bastard i am, i thought i'd ask my homies here if they have already done such a thing, or if they had any more solid information they would be willing to share.

thanks! ps: urs, i'd especially like to hear your thoughts about this, if you have any.

djanthonyw · Post by **djanthonyw** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 9:56 pm

AU, because I'm using Logic, and I'm sure a lot of other Mac users are as well.

amoeba · Post by **amoeba** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 10:00 pm

djanthonyw wrote:because I'm using Logic

man, i'm getting so fed up with Live's clock I/O issues i'm about ready to move to logic too. so many thing i love about live (playing live being one of them) but the sync problems are becoming just unbearable.

anyway, back on topic...

beej · Post by **beej** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 10:02 pm

AU.

I you want to compare AU to VST for some odd reason, you really have too much time in your hands, and are just trying to find excuses to not do any music.

For most companies, it's the same code base. There will be no major differences to speak of, apart from things that one format supports the other doesn't.

On the Mac, the defacto audio plugin standard is AU.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 10:42 pm

Advantage of my AUs: Resources are shared, ie. if you use Zebralette and Zebra2 or Filterscape and FSQ6 at once. Or any future flavour of Uhbik. You save memory and maybe have a little performance advantage.

Advantage of VST: A Live project using VST will most likely also open perfectly on Windows. Not quite sure if that's the case with any of my AUs.

CS80 · Post by **CS80** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 10:46 pm

Urs wrote:Advantage of my AUs: Resources are shared, ie. if you use Zebralette and Zebra2 or Filterscape and FSQ6 at once. Or any future flavour of Uhbik. You save memory and maybe have a little performance advantage.

Advantage of VST: A Live project using VST will most likely also open perfectly on Windows. Not quite sure if that's the case with any of my AUs.

what's Uhbik? a new synth?

AU, since I too use Logic as my main host

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 10:49 pm

CWoodOne wrote:what's Uhbik? a new synth?

Uhbik, used as directed, is absolutely safe!

http://www.uhbik.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik

CS80 · Post by **CS80** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 10:55 pm

Urs wrote:
CWoodOne wrote:what's Uhbik? a new synth?
Uhbik, used as directed, is absolutely safe!

http://www.uhbik.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik

LOL, I'm sure it will add the magic and elusive warmth some folks think is missing in Zebra 2....

When I first read that I thought about Bartholomew and the Oobleck from Dr Seuss

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oobleck

Dave Bourke · Post by **Dave Bourke** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:21 am

Remind me never to buy Live.

In the past, I've used both VST and AU. Now the only remaining VST plug-ins on my Mac are the Korg Legacy ones, but that's only because Korg's Audio Units are really just in-house wrappers. Far as I can see, the only advantage VST has over AU is bank handling, although some developers (G-Force is the only one I know of at present) have managed to circumvent that with some of their synths.

Can't talk now - just bought Zebra 2 and all the presets (I owe you big-time for the tip-off, beej). Too busy smiling.

Kind regards.

beej · Post by **beej** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:35 am

Hehe - you're welcome Dave. Glad you're enjoying it!

tetsuneko · Post by **tetsuneko** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 11:16 am

+1 for AU - presets are a breeze to use, and a saved AU preset is immediately usable inside any AU host. I always struggled with VST .fxp/.fxb presets, working across hosts was a pain.

AU also has more flexible IO options?

mkelly · Post by **mkelly** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 1:51 pm

See this thread: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=206022 - while Urs fixed whatever was causing it for Zebra 2/CM there's obviously an inherent difference between the two plugin types that allowed this to happen.

quantize · Post by **quantize** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:25 pm

VST

AU presets are not cross platform compatible...Steve Jobs does not own my sphincter thankyou...

Logic has nice built in plugins, the rest is ass compared to Cubase which has unfairly suffered from bad PR (partly from the sheer stupidity of some users) in
Mac OS, it works very well...if you like doing things the hard way..use Logic.

beej · Post by **beej** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 3:06 pm

quantize · Post by **quantize** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 3:44 pm

yes painful to hear a little dissent isn't it?

tough sh#t

u-he

KVR Audio

on a mac - AU or VST?