Bye bye VST2

[S0lo]

I think VST2 wrapper was long removed from the VST3 SDK, no?

Did they now? I don’t know. But this doc seams to still show the wrapper: https://steinbergmedia.github.io/vst3_d ... apper.html

Or maybe it’s an old page.

[mothra]

Why wouldn't I believe that? It's not really impressive. At ~20 employees, that's only 5k each per month. Arturia brings in over $2 million per month, perhaps $4 million. IK Multimedia brings in $1.5 million per month. And you can be sure neither of them are hacking VST2 plugins into a VST3 wrapper.

Funny you mention them, Arturia's AU plugins are actually VST3's wrapped as an AU. Not sure about the VST2s as I delete them after installing.

Korg on the other hand, if you delete the VST2s, the VST3s no longer work. They're not even wrapped, they straight up point to the VST2 file for its resources.

[pdxindy]

Do you really find it is plausible that Steinberg customer would jump ship they obviously like just because there is another format on the market? You think somebody dropped Logic in last couple of years just because it does not support VST?

If the other format offers new functionality that users want? Sure...

The arrival of CLAP in Bitwig has added functionality I previously dreamed about but never thought would happen. If I wasn't already using Bitwig, I'd probably switch because of CLAP.

[jamcat]

What features were those again?
And which plugins support them?

[fuseaudiolabs]

Nope, it's still there and we're still using it. That's what puzzles me in conjunction with all the speculation about the new license agreement.

See here (SDK v3.7.10): https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3_ ... st2wrapper

I think VST2 wrapper was long removed from the VST3 SDK, no?

Did they now? I don’t know. But this doc seams to still show the wrapper: https://steinbergmedia.github.io/vst3_d ... apper.html

Or maybe it’s an old page.

[fuseaudiolabs]

Hi Urs,

Thanks for your thoughts.

Consistency is not really great here.

We went through the process of seeking clarification with a lawyer specialised on the topic, who ended up communicating with theirs. The result for us is: Signing the current license agreement puts an end to VST2 publishing. With certain upgrades to the VST3 SDK comes a new license, and in order to use that SDK you have to sign that license - our old agreement which included VST2 was therefore void for the current SDK.

Asking in their support forum is not helpful as the developers and support people there do not necessarily understand the legal background of the agreement, and have posted wrong information there before, or made promises to rectify the situation to no avail.

I gathered it could be something along those lines, but it would be good to have some sort of official and public statement from Steinberg on this. I also wonder what the odds of them actually enforcing it are.

Judging from the VST 3 SDK Licensing FAQ thread on the forum it seems that their staff at least seems to be in touch with their legal department trying to sort out issues and questions regarding the license agreement. But I get that information shared there might still be wrong - and I don't blame it on the devs - and your lawyer's interaction with Steinberg's suggests that Luca wasn't misreading the respective paragraphs and their implications on past license agreements.

Dropping VST2 support isn't a big deal for us from a technical perspective, but the rationale for removing a feature is always hard to communicate to customers who are affected by it for whichever reason in the case of VST2 (legacy sessions?).

There is a nice and easy feature in VST3 to facilitate backwards compatibility between VST2 and VST3 sessions, which we are implementing. Unfortunately, some DAWs don't, so it might be an issue in some, presumably rare cases.

Best,
Ray

[Urs]

From my understanding the VST2 wrapper code in the VST3 SDK does not equal the VST2 SDK. In order to work, it still requires the VST2 SDK, which is not part of the download.

In this thread sources from the early 2000s till today are cited, and some older statements simply contradict things that changed over time (including creating VST3 plug-ins for 2 hosts as opposed to 20). The only real question is "what it the reality today". The reality today in terms of what you can and can't legally do is reflected in the current version of the license agreement - even if that has not fully transcended the public information available on Steinberg's website, their forum (and staff posting there?) or the way they manage the contents of their Github repository.

It would be nice if Steinberg went out of their way and explained themselves. Maybe then certain host developers would put more effort in the transition. But as it stands now, they simply put most of the burden of their decision on plug-in developers, who need to explain to their users what IMHO Steinberg should have explained in the first place. Plug-in developers can really only speculate about the reason for this move when users ask about it. Therefore, by being quiet about it, Steinberg expose themselves to criticism of all kind, including some harsh tones found in this thread (some so much so in ways that I think isn't helpful)

IMHO it's up to them to take part in the public discussion, but as I said before, they withdrew from any important discussion many years ago. The single sidedness of the argument is not the fault of the developers or users who are affected by these decisions. It's not like people haven't tried to reach out. There simply is no-one answering. For us, it took hiring a lawyer to get answers, and even that process took several months, which in part went through some exchanges that I'm not at liberty to share. I'm happy with their answers, even if the work involved isn't necessarily what I would have chosen to do.

That said, VST3 has matured and the conceptual documentation in particular has been helpful. It's really not as difficult as it used to be thanks to a better understanding of some of its IMHO unintuitive designs. Unfortunately the "nice and easy feature in VST3" that Ray mentioned was not available to us when we started VST3 development as early adopters in 2011 and which we can not invoke retroactively. We depend on IPluginCompatibility. In fact, IPluginCompatibility was the main reason for us to update our VST3 SDK (in conjunction with NI's decision to drop VST2 for NKS), and we're atm not happy as to how few hosts have adopted it yet. I think they should do something about it.

[EvilDragon]

There is a nice and easy feature in VST3 to facilitate backwards compatibility between VST2 and VST3 sessions, which we are implementing. Unfortunately, some DAWs don't, so it might be an issue in some, presumably rare cases.

IPluginCompatibility is the one to look into. Just more hosts need to support it...

[newluc]

[quote=mothra post_id=8871412 time=1710987827 user_id=7200]
[quote=jamcat post_id=8870864 time=1710926907 user_id=447286]
Why wouldn't I believe that? It's not really impressive. At ~20 employees, that's only 5k each per month. Arturia brings in over $2 million per month, perhaps $4 million. IK Multimedia brings in $1.5 million per month. And you can be sure neither of them are hacking VST2 plugins into a VST3 wrapper.
[/quote]

Funny you mention them, Arturia's AU plugins are actually VST3's wrapped as an AU. Not sure about the VST2s as I delete them after installing.

Korg on the other hand, if you delete the VST2s, the VST3s no longer work. They're not even wrapped, they straight up point to the VST2 file for its resources.
[/quote]

hi, i have to say that I removed vst2 and korg plugins all works, and Arturia too, if I remember correctly this is the behaviour of Tone2 plugins I have and some of the Rob Papen. I am on PC

[jens]

I gathered it could be something along those lines, but it would be good to have some sort of official and public statement from Steinberg on this. I also wonder what the odds of them actually enforcing it are.

We've seen in the past that Steinberg staff monitors KVR and whenever they deem it neccessary/beneficial, they'll weigh in.

So a thread with 400+ replies and 14.000+ views that portrays them in no positive way at all to say the least, without any reaction from them whatsoever is quite telling.

If they'd be sure - and would people want to be aware of it - that they'd never enforce it, they would certainly have said so at this point.

So it's most likely not that they're misunderstood due to accidentally bad wording of their legal terms, but much rather they have really decided to seek to bully both plugin- and DAW-makers into submission.

By the way: am I the only one who thinks the timing is curious? CLAP is gaining momentum and once a certain threshold has been reached there'll be no holding back and all of a sudden plugin-makers (such as Black Rooster) will have not much of a reason at all anymore to release VST3 but go for CLAP instead. And at that point Steinberg will have lost their grip almost entirely.

So with that in mind, one could see them as being more desperate than anything.

[Urs]

hi, i have to say that I removed vst2 and korg plugins all works, and Arturia too, if I remember correctly this is the behaviour of Tone2 plugins I have and some of the Rob Papen. I am on PC

So, roughly 50% of developers still wrap VST2 for their VST3s.

(sorry, that is a joke I couldn't resist in respect to some of the more hilarious assertions within this thread)

[diroxe7660]

Perhaps this is just tangential at this point, but the public_sdk portion of the VST3 SDK is BSD licensed. IOW, SB themselves documented a fair portion of the juicy bits of VST2 under a liberal license.

[Sascha Franck]

Honestly, i cant imagine why anyone would want a private commercial entity with their
own best intetests in mind, in charge of an industry standard. IMO thats a recipe for disaster.

Are you talking about Steinberg or Apple? Because, apart from certain differences (and the bigger size of Apple), it's the same on either platform right now.

---

Seriously, the only way we could ever see something end users would profit from, would be a bunch of major players to agree to only release for CLAP anymore. Otherwise you will *never* find Steinberg and Apple to natively support it and as a result, they will always be the ones to grab you at your balls.

But unfortunately, some companies seem to be rather ok with format changes (and other incompatibilities such as those regularly introduced by Apple) as they can charge you some update money. Collateral damage for the users because they're losing entire catalogues of great plugins? Who cares. Apple never did one bit - and right now it seems that Steinberg doesn't, either.

[Sascha Franck]

If they're finally getting rid of VST2, it must mean that VST4 is around the corner. CLAP is only at 1, so they need to pick their socks up and get to CLAP 2 pretty sharpish. Being a couple of versions behind the competition is acceptable, but being 3 versions behind can be seen as lazy. TBH CLAP should have released initially at CLAP 3 just to start on an equal footing with Steinberg, but they're always going to be behind now...

They could as well have started at 11.

[jown101]

It’s a shame because there’s still some vst2 plugins I’d like to run, the new Mac OS doesn’t support 32 lives either