VST3 to VST2 adaptor update to v1.4

[Justin M]

You're not reading properly.

Jeez, are you having a bad day!?

Edwin Jacobs was asking to generate a vst2 style dll, I have helpfully and politely provided a solution.

there is no such thing as vst3shell.exe

shell2vst.exe does not generate a vst2 style dll from drag and dropping a .vst3 on it.

Please read my posts properly as I did not say any of this.

shell2vst.exe generates a set of vst2 style dlls from drag and dropping a vst2 shell .dll on it.

Or, dropping vst3shell onto shell2vst; which creates vst2 dll's from the vst3shell. Please read carefully as that is what I said!

Please read my posts properly as I said exactly that, in the post I linked to, from over 14 months ago.

I'll repeat, being about as explicit as its possible to be. Please read carefully.

I wasn't listening, could you possibly repeat it all again, but in a more aggressive tone, and in a way that does not help anyone!

[whyterabbyt]

Jeez, are you having a bad day!?

Nope, Im just making sure the facts are made clear. Are you having a problem with that?

Edwin Jacobs was asking to generate a vst2 style dll, I have helpfully and politely provided a solution.

Yes, and he asked to generate them from a vst3, which cannot be done with the application you linked to.

there is no such thing as vst3shell.exe

shell2vst.exe does not generate a vst2 style dll from drag and dropping a .vst3 on it.

Please read my posts properly as I did not say any of this.

Please read your post properly, you provided a link to shell2vst when asked for that something that would "generate a vst2 style dll from drag&dropping a .vst3 file onto it"

So yes, you did say it.

Can anyone reading this share a copy of that vst3shell.exe that was mentioned earlier in the thread? (Which could generate a vst2 style dll from drag&dropping a .vst3 file onto it, if I understood correct)

https://www.xlutop.com/buzz/zip/shell2vst.zip

That's you, right there, saying it.

shell2vst.exe generates a set of vst2 style dlls from drag and dropping a vst2 shell .dll on it.

Or, dropping vst3shell onto shell2vst; which creates vst2 dll's from the vst3shell.

Yes, I know, that's why I'd already linked to me saying it 14 months ago. Im glad you got one thing I told you right, at least.

I clearly wasn't reading carefully enough

Yes, I know. That's why I said that, then broke it down as much as possible so you could try and understand it. Not much joy there though.

Anyway, to recap. The OP was asking for vst3shell.exe because he thought it could create vst2 dlls from a vst3. The executable you linked to wont do what the OP asked for. To achieve what he wanted, he'd have to use two things. One of them is the executable you linked to, the other is the vst3shell plugin. You didnt tell him he'd need two things, or that one of them was the vst3shell dll.
I did state all those things.
Then you told me I was wrong, and then repeated the information I'd linked to about about how to use those two things together to do what he wanted.
Are we on the same page now?

[Justin M]

So yes, you did say it.

https://www.xlutop.com/buzz/zip/shell2vst.zip

That's you, right there, saying it.

Hopefully you feel better about yourself now you cleverly proved I said " " (nothing at all)

As this is going nowhere I'll leave this thread and walk away, but please feel free to stay in the playground and enlighten us all with more of your amazing knowledge (as long a post as possible would be nice, with lots of quotes, wasting as much space as possible without actually helping).

See ya!

[whyterabbyt]

So yes, you did say it.

https://www.xlutop.com/buzz/zip/shell2vst.zip

That's you, right there, saying it.

Hopefully you feel better about yourself now you cleverly proved I said " " (nothing at all)

Well actually, before you deliberately misquoted what I'd posted, in an attempt to mislead about the context, I proved that when he asked for vst3shell.exe for turning vst3 plugins into vst2 plugins, you gave him a link to shell2vst which turns vst2 shell plugins into vst2 plugins.

But clearly accuracy and honesty arent a concern for you. Byebye now.

[martiu]

So yes, you did say it.

https://www.xlutop.com/buzz/zip/shell2vst.zip

That's you, right there, saying it.

Hopefully you feel better about yourself now you cleverly proved I said " " (nothing at all)

Byebye now.

why u mad homie?

[whyterabbyt]

[sagamusix]

Hi polac, I'm noticing an issue with some VST3s using this adapter. With some plugins (e.g. Surge or Zenology), the plugin crashes upon calling effClose if the plugin's GUI was never opened. I encountered this while working on shell plugin support in OpenMPT but I verified that the same problem occurs in Renoise, so it's not a problem of my shell host implementation. As Renoise can also directly load the affected VST3 plugin, I could also verify that the same problem does not occur when not going through vst3shell.

To reproduce in Renoise, the following steps should suffice, but I guess any other DAW should expose the same issue:
1. Load the plugin into a song
2. Close the plugin window, save the song and reload the song again (this is necessary because Renoise opens the plugin GUI by default when loading a new plugin into a song)
3. Now close Renoise again. The crash should happen now.

Note: The Surge version I tested this with is https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/re ... /tag/1.6.6
The latest Surge XT doesn't seem to have this problem, so maybe this is a problem with plugins compiled with an older VST3 SDK (as I find it unlikely that two independent developers made the exact same mistake).

[wibblywobblywomble]

Can someone post a straightforward step-by-step set of instructions on how to use this tool to make a single VST3 run on a VST2-only DAW? I'm pretty software-literate but I can't figure it out, and I am sure plenty of other people are having the same issue.

[whyterabbyt]

Can someone post a straightforward step-by-step set of instructions on how to use this tool to make a single VST3 run on a VST2-only DAW? I'm pretty software-literate but I can't figure it out, and I am sure plenty of other people are having the same issue.

VST3shell is a set of VST2 plugins; there is an instrument and effect plugin for each of 32-bit and 64-bit, so four .dll files. instrument plugin is differentiated by being 'vst3i' rather than 'vst3' in the name.
Shell2VST is a pair of executables; there is one for each of 32-bit and 64-bit

(If you are using a 64-bit host, use the appropriate 64-bit plugins and executable, if you are using a 32-bit host, use the appropriate 32-bit plugins and executable.)

If you -dont- want them individually, the VST3shell zipfile can just be unzipped into whatever your DAW uses as its VST2 folder location, and you can optionally remove whichever plugin type/bit combinations you dont want.

If you do want them individually then

1) unzip the VST3shell zipfile somewhere sane.
2) Unzip the Shell2VST zipfile contents into that same folder so you have -all- the contents of both, including the 4 .dll files and the two .exes, in the same place.
3) drag one of the .dll files (effect or instrument version) onto the correct executable (32-bit or 64-bit as appropriate). you will see a command-line box open, give you some info, then close.
4) Doing this should have created a subfolder called VST3, if you look inside that, you will see one .dll plugin for each VST3 of the type you used (instrument or effect); they always seem to be 5kb on my system. (These are VST2 .dll plugin 'stubs' that point to your VST3 plugins 'via' the VST3shell plugin.)
5) Copy whatever stub .dll plugins you want/need from that VST3 folder into whatever folder your DAW uses as its VST2 folder location. Rescan for plugins in your DAW if you have to.

That's it.

Updates to your VST3 plugins shouldnt require redoing this process. If you want to add new VST3 plugins, just redo from step 3.
However do not delete or move the folder containing the VST3shell .dll files.

[wibblywobblywomble]

Thank you. I will note that the .core files also need to be included in the folder with the .dll and .exe files for it to work, so for beginners it is probably best to unzip everything into the same folder.

[whyterabbyt]

Thank you. I will note that the .core files also need to be included in the folder with the .dll and .exe files for it to work, so for beginners it is probably best to unzip everything into the same folder.

Yes, that's steps 1 and 2. amending to disambiguate.

[ETS7]

I tried this tool in magix movie studio and it don't work and the program crashed at startup when loading the dll......

[iwriteyourmusic]

This is the godsend I've been looking for as I still use Sonar 8.5, but unfortunately it doesn't work. When I scan for new plugins, it hands and eventually crashed when it gets to vst3shell.dll. Is this not compatible with Sonar? Or perhaps I did something wrong?

EDIT: Removing the 32 bit versions seems to get the shell to load most of the vst3's. Sonar still thinks the dll is crashing though and keeps trying to disable it, but at least it works. I really appreciate you doing something like this as I'm married to my old sequencer at this point and its only drawback was a lack of vst3 support.

[PureFrancis]

wow, I've been looking for something like this.Thank you so much

[skizzraw410]

If you use the vst3shell.dll for MPC BEATS SOFTWARE to find your VST3s. Your goanna need to do something. Install the vst3shell.dll files (7 files) into your VST2 folder in windows file explorer. After that, you need to go to your VST3 folder and name it something else. I named mine VST Files. Then create another folder and name it VST3. I don't think you need to do this step, but I haven't tried yet. Take some of your VST3 files that were not working before, and place them in the new VST3 folder from the old VST3 folder you renamed. Go to your MPC software and put the file you changed the name to, and the new VST3 folder in the list, and rescan them. Your plugins should all show up, because they are scanning a new folder. The person who wrote this first, I would like to thank him or her, but I don't know who it is.