Bye bye VST2

[cnt]

I've had zero issues with VST3 on my end.

Old architecture can't be supported forever. As usual, there's always that initial resistance when that old architecture is discontinued.

VST3 has been around since 2008, that's 16 years. So VST3 is also old architecture by now and STILL it isn't what developers prefer or like to work with if they had a choice.

If VST3 was so great Steinberg wouldn't force this really bad license agreements where they force developers to NOT make any VST2 if they want to make VST3 as well.

Personally I had plenty of issues with VST3 versions of plugins compared to VST2 version of the same plugin. There is a difference between supported and demanding people to stop using it.

[TS-12]

Good. All VST plugins should be VST3 long time ago

[Jac459]

Good. All VST plugins should be VST3 long time ago

Good. All VST3 plugins should be CLAP long time ago

[BONES]

Why? VST 2.4 works fine for everyone. CLAP is nothing more than a venereal disease.

[machinesworking]

Why? VST 2.4 works fine for everyone. CLAP is nothing more than a venereal disease.

It's like you didn't read the thread at all. I'll assume you did not.

Right now VST2 for us end users is just fine, at some point soon VST3 is going to be the only way you get any updates to any of your plugins, DAW, OS etc. Not every DAW is doing fine with VST3, since Steinberg do not care how well it performs for hosts, i.e. the plugins you use now that are stable with VST2 might not be stable with VST3, since that's not a rare thing.

It's not the end of the world for us end users, but there could be some dead plugins along the way, not unlike what happened with the Intel to Apple Silicon switch. In fact it will be the same plugins, so older Air plugins like Vacuum , NI Absynth etc. none of those will be able to be hosted in updates to DAWs etc. In fact I can still use to a degree Air and Absynth etc. in Rosetta, but it looks like Steinberg are making that not a possibility for VST2, there isn't going to be any abstraction compatibility layer. Time to think about freezing an old computer.

CLAP is too late for me, but it IMO looks like the future, force the companies like Apple, Steinberg, and Avid to use a wrapper for their proprietary (or arbitrarily obtuse in the case of VST3) formats.

[Jac459]

Why? VST 2.4 works fine for everyone. CLAP is nothing more than a venereal disease.

Because you don't want a plug-in standard to be own by a company. It should be open-source, for practical reasons like what is happening now...

And also why do you want to pay Steinberg each time you are buying a new plug-in ?

I mean they helped the industry and I understand that they earned money from that but it was decades ago and the industry doesn't need a super giant orchestrating everything for the other anymore....

[MitchK1989]

Great, remind me to buy a 4TB C:Drive for my next computer.

The stupidest thing about VST3 is that they can only go on your OS drive.

Can't you just use symlinks?

[Michael L]

Dumb question here:
Why does Steinberg care if people continue to develop or host VST 2 plugins?
How does Steinberg benefit if people stop doing that?

[AtomOfScent]

Great, remind me to buy a 4TB C:Drive for my next computer.

The stupidest thing about VST3 is that they can only go on your OS drive.

Can't you just use symlinks?

Yes you can.

My online backup software doesn't allow backing up Program Files (not important at all ) so I move all my plugin folders elsewhere so they are backed up and use symlinks to point to the original location.

[MitchK1989]

Dumb question here:
Why does Steinberg care if people continue to develop or host VST 2 plugins?
How does Steinberg benefit if people stop doing that?

Steinberg doesn't want to support VST 2 anymore in cubase.
Steinberg doesn't want people to switch from Cubase to Ableton because Ableton works better with their old VST 2 plugins

So I can sorta understand why they wouldn't want to lose customers to Ableton et al off of Ableton continuing to use *steinberg's old SDKs* from a motivation perspective (obviously don't think it's ethical per se, nor do I think it's good for consumers. I would rather everyone just switch to CLAP)

Steinberg trying to send legal demands to Ableton to stop hosting VST2 plugins could wind up in an EU anti-trust situation, but Steinberg can probably get away with bullying Arturia and NI out of doing VST2 and then beating Ableton on having a better VST3 implementation...

[machinesworking]

Dumb question here:
Why does Steinberg care if people continue to develop or host VST 2 plugins?
How does Steinberg benefit if people stop doing that?

My guess is twofold, VST 3 will for quite some time offer a few more things to Cubendo than other DAWs through virtue of it being tailored to Cubendo first, so it's imperative to get people on board. Secondly I would guess there's some frustration with the 15+ year resistance to VST 3 that has been likely a huge thorn on their side in terms of developing Cubendo etc.

Plus, there's the other factor, they leave VST 2 as a open source format, then it stops being their product, and they end up being forced to keep VST 2 around in Cubendo since developers seem to really really not like coding VST 3.

Better to force everyone to abandon VST 2 and move on with their lives. I mean rather than ditch the issues developers had with VST 3 and make a better VST 3 based off of VST 2 etc.

[rollasoc]

if they want to just kill off vst2, why not say it out loud instead of putting in BS like clause 1.6? "6. This Agreement neither applies to the development nor the hosting of VST2 Plug-Ins."

They said two years ago, that they was phasing it out around now.. So it isn't a surprise.

[Audiority]

I guess I missed that in the past: https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-u ... scontinued

Supporting legacy code is expensive and I understand their decision to stop supporting VST2. However, with that decision they would become vulnerable against competitors who still wanted to offer VST2 compatibility, hence the decision to force the entire industry to comply with their new agreement. To me, this is against EU laws.

[rollasoc]

Dumb question here:
Why does Steinberg care if people continue to develop or host VST 2 plugins?
How does Steinberg benefit if people stop doing that?

If they stop people developing new VST2s and not making VST3 versions, then they can stop supporting VST2 in Cubase / Nuendo. So their code base will benefit. This means they need to stop other hosts hosting VST2 to stop people jumping ship.

So all a bit poop!

[rollasoc]

I guess I missed that in the past: https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-u ... scontinued

Thanks, I was just about to search for the link and update my post. ha ha