What are the best reasons to use VST3 over VST2? or should I just use CLAP?

[wuworld]

Clap can't remember presets correct?

[teilo]

OK, I apologize. My problem is with the organized campaign of lies against VST3, not people like you who fell victim to it.

Sometimes I wonder if you are being paid by Steinberg. Where is this so called organization hiding? In a secret bunker somewhere?

Seriously, dude, why is VST3 criticism such a hot button issue with you? You are not protecting anyone. You've just got a drum to bang.

[rod_zero]

OK, I apologize. My problem is with the organized campaign of lies against VST3, not people like you who fell victim to it.

Why so much emotional attachment to VST3? it is not healthy to develop this kind of relationships to brands.

[teilo]

Most of the reasons to use VST3 over VST2 (in any case where both are supported by your DAW) are theoretical rather than practical. The VST3-specific features are not used by many plugins, and when they are, not supported by all DAWs. The best case is, of course, VST3s made by Steinberg and hosted in VSTLive, Cubase, or Nuendo. Outside that ecosystem, YMMV, and you will likely gain zero advantage with the VST3 variant.

[Paul Eye]

Reaper pre-release builds (you can find them here:

You really should remove that link to the REAPER pre-releases. The website very clearly states not to link to it from anywhere (the sole exception being the REAPER pre-release forum).

[AdvancedFollower]

VST2 is being phased out so if you have the option, switching to VST3 now might save you from headaches later.

It's true many DAWs will probably retain VST2 support for a while longer, but Steinberg are no longer issuing VST2 licenses which means any new products from companies that weren't around to acquire a VST2 license won't be able to release VST2 plugins or hosts.

[Audiority]

Reaper pre-release builds (you can find them here:

You really should remove that link to the REAPER pre-releases. The website very clearly states not to link to it from anywhere (the sole exception being the REAPER pre-release forum).

genuine mistake. link removed. thanks for pointing that out!

cheers
Luca

[jamcat]

OK, I apologize. My problem is with the organized campaign of lies against VST3, not people like you who fell victim to it.

Why so much emotional attachment to VST3? it is not healthy to develop this kind of relationships to brands.

My only attachment is to reality. VST2 is dead. VST3 is the current plugin format. Your attitude of clinging to VST2 is what's unhealthy, and developers who followed suit and stuck their heads in the sand for years over VST2's deprecation, now have paying customers who can't use the plugins they were sold because the devs didn't take care to release VST3 versions. That is an extreme disservice, and was totally avoidable.

As for CLAP, it's a nowhere format. There's a handful of small developers who have released a handful of plugins for CLAP in addition to VST3. You are unlikely to see any of the major developers supporting it any time soon, if ever. So it's not even worth discussion right now by productive musicians. Again, that's just reality.

[jamcat]

Most of the reasons to use VST3 over VST2 (in any case where both are supported by your DAW) are theoretical rather than practical. The VST3-specific features are not used by many plugins, and when they are, not supported by all DAWs. The best case is, of course, VST3s made by Steinberg and hosted in VSTLive, Cubase, or Nuendo. Outside that ecosystem, YMMV, and you will likely gain zero advantage with the VST3 variant.

This just isn't true. I use Studio One, and I have had quantifiable advantages since swapping out VST2 for VST3. Tighter automation timing (which matters A LOT on physically modeled bowed instruments), lower CPU use because of plug-in nap, activating and deactivating VSTi outputs on the fly...

Better plugin organization and management, too. With VST2, a plugin's name is whatever the filename is, and if it's been changed, your songs will say it's missing.

[LeVzi]

I believe that all the DAWs which relies on VST2 or VST3 must support CLAP plugin format.

Somehow I can't see Steinberg being too keen to adopt CLAP. It is a direct competition to the VST format, and free (AFAIK)

[jamcat]

Apple won't adopt it either. Nor Avid.
I suspect PreSonus will, since they seem to be very keen on supporting every open format available.

But in the end, every DAW that supports CLAP will also support VST3, while the DAWs with the largest market share won't be supporting CLAP at all. This leaves no real incentive to support CLAP for large developers who prioritize resource management over empty gestures.

[Tj Shredder]

Apple won't adopt it either. Nor Avid.
I suspect PreSonus will, since they seem to be very keen on supporting every open format available.

But in the end, every DAW that supports CLAP will also support VST3, while the DAWs with the largest market share won't be supporting CLAP at all. This leaves no real incentive to support CLAP for large developers who prioritize resource management over empty gestures.

I don’t know if you are a developer. I guess not.
Avid is on the list of developers who contacted the project on their own, which surprised me. U-he actively is involved exactly for prioritizing resource management. It seems easier to base the development on CLAP and then wrap it into a VST3. Within a few weeks after the release, more developers had ported their plugins to CLAP than we have seen ports to VST3 in years after its release… There are enough plugins that support VST2 & VST3, but the VST3 version has problems the VST2 doesn’t. It took years until features VST2 delivered easily had been implemented into VST3, but complicated…
CLAP seems to be the solution. It does not matter if Steinbergs hosts support it or not, as you can wrap them without loss…

But back to the original question. As my host supports all three formats, I tend to use CLAP over VST3 over VST2. Plugins that output standard Midi, might work better as VST2, but I simply try VST3, and only if there are problems, I can fall back to VST2…
As CLAP has the most complete feature set, I get more if I use it. Especially with Bitwigs per voice modulation it shines (and blows VST3 out of the water by a big margin…) Developers are happy, users are happy…

[jamcat]

“Contacting” is not the same thing as implementing. If the competition is giving away free information, of course you take it. Nothing more to it than that. Avid won’t be supporting CLAP. Period. Their entire business model is built around controlling their own proprietary format. They charge developers to license AAX. If Pro Tools started supporting CLAP (or VST) then every AAX developer would stop paying Avid.

Avid didn’t invest millions in developing AAX and the HDX hardware that supports it just to abandon it for an open source format.

[ampetrosillo]

Why the animosity? CLAP is being picked up by several developers, Reaper (one big name) is bound to include it into their official releases any time soon, Bitwig already supports it AFAIK and, being free of charge and completely open, as well as being in most people's interest to use an open standard instead of being at the whims of Steinberg or Avid, I can see it being adopted quite massively. AAX has one thing that CLAP will never have, the possibility to run plugins on their dedicated hardware. CLAP could be supported by ProTools with the limitation of no hardware acceleration whatsoever (*and* they could do it to weaken their competition, ie. Steinberh). I can see Steinberg more reticent to supporting CLAP, maybe.

[jamcat]

See, that's the problem with trying to talk sense to True Believers. They interpret it as animosity and an attack. I'm simply pointing out why you're not going to see widespread adoption of CLAP under their current approach, so you don't grow old waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive.

Of all the plugins I use, I think one has released a CLAP version. As I said, I do expect Studio One will add CLAP support at some point, maybe even as soon as version 6. But I don't expect any major plugin developers with extensive plugin bundles to release CLAP versions. What incentive do they have to do that when their plugins already work in 100% of DAWs?

Steinberg had to go all in and use the leverage of Cubase 12 to force VST3 adoption.
Is Bitwig prepared to do the same with CLAP?