Bye bye VST2

[jamcat]

Best possible (although not likely, some stars have to align) outcome of all of this is 3 walled gardens with their proprietary non-permissive formats and CLAP as an industry standard for everybody else.

That’s not the best possible outcome. It’s the worst possible outcome. It would mean the loss of a great number of plugins, just like the move from DX to VST and 32-bit to 64-bit, and PowerPC to Intel to Apple Silicon, and TDM to AAX. It would be no different than what many are lamenting right now over VST2 to VST3.

It would mean yet another decade-long restart for the plugin industry. It’s just more of the same churn and upheaval that we’ve been seeing for 25 years now. And it would just be another chapter in the saga, not the end of it.

The best possible outcome would be all active formats get supported and everyone can use what they want where they want.

[Agreed]

I wonder what Black Rooster are going to do. Their lack of VST3 support has been a sticking point for some, and every time it's brought up Andre talks about it as being financially unfeasible for them to support VST3 with their existing codebase. What now for them and others in their position?

[urosh]

all active formats

ROFL
you're very concerned about loss of plugins in general (which would happen by divine intervention or alien invasion in my scenario), except for VST2 plugins which should be killed yesterday because you're favorite company pulled the plug the format.

[jamcat]

I haven’t even used anything from Steinberg in 15 years. My favorite company (for DAWs) is PreSonus. They are the only developer who takes an all-of-the-above approach and supports VST2,VST3, ARA, ARA2, and AU in their DAW. And all are rock solid in Studio One. I’m sure they’ll add CLAP support as well, as they’ve already worked with Bitwig to develop the DAWproject exchange format, (and Celemony to develop ARA.)

What I am actually concerned with is future-proofing and finally seeing some stability. As I've said, the demise of VST2 has been evident for a very long time. Some people chose to hide their heads in the sand instead of prepare. What I’ve been most concerned with is that all of the plugins I rely on were VST3 for when this day finally came. I stopped buying plugins that weren’t VST3 and swapped out VST2 for VST3 in every song project I have a long time ago. So I’m not lamenting now, because I prepared a long time ago. And that’s what I’ve advocated here for others for a long time now.

[mothra]

I wonder what Black Rooster are going to do. Their lack of VST3 support has been a sticking point for some, and every time it's brought up Andre talks about it as being financially unfeasible for them to support VST3 with their existing codebase. What now for them and others in their position?

Ahh so is that where they've ended up? Now it's not 'financially feasible'? That's the reason I dropped my BR plugins 2-3 years ago. They said it was coming, and then the waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

[Agreed]

I wonder what Black Rooster are going to do. Their lack of VST3 support has been a sticking point for some, and every time it's brought up Andre talks about it as being financially unfeasible for them to support VST3 with their existing codebase. What now for them and others in their position?

Ahh so is that where they've ended up? Now it's not 'financially feasible'? That's the reason I dropped my BR plugins 2-3 years ago. They said it was coming, and then the waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Well, I'm paraphrasing, but that is the impression I got in the last thread about it. They know users are concerned but I did not see a plan or timeline come together at all. I happen to own everything from them and have given them a decent amount of money for it, and it would be a shame to not be able to use them. Which is why people were so insistent that it would be a good idea to move to the new format, but here we are.

[mi-os]

I wonder what Black Rooster are going to do. Their lack of VST3 support has been a sticking point for some, and every time it's brought up Andre talks about it as being financially unfeasible for them to support VST3 with their existing codebase. What now for them and others in their position?

I'm not wishing Black Rooster anything bad, but VST2 was already old/obsolete when he started his company. I don't understand why it wasn't either both or just VST3 from the beginning.

[Agreed]

Couldn't begin to speculate myself as to why. I've got an email in to support asking them what will happen now, though. I bought the All bundle in 2021 and have bought all the new plugins since - I expected that Steinberg would stop VST2 support, but didn't think they'd actively try to claw back VST2 support retroactively, that seems hugely unnecessary and almost violent toward the industry when the alternative is to just deprecate it in peace. I expected that I would be able to continue to use VST2 plugins just fine, since they work just fine, but the steps here worry me that they could come down on DAW support directly and really screw things up for anyone still using VST2 plugins.

I have a lot of VST2 plugins and VST3 has never offered a compelling improvement over them in a user-noticeable way for me so I haven't made a huge priority of getting off of them. I only install VST3 if it's available, and I don't install VST2 if a plugin has both VST2 and VST3 options. But if not I haven't fretted relying on VST2 here and there. Steinberg feels it is key that we all fret this immediately however, so now suddenly I guess I am. Might try to just move to an open format soon and get out of their walled garden.

[zvenx]

What I always found 'interesting' about the Black Rooster Audio case was Reimund Drawta use to be their programming guy and his other stuff for his own company fuse audio, and the stuff he did for plugin alliance, both for them directly and now thru neold are all vst3 too.
rsp

[ampetrosillo]

What's stopping you from chipping in into a shared fund and kicking their arses in court?

For what purpose?

Best possible (although not likely, some stars have to align) outcome of all of this is 3 walled gardens with their proprietary non-permissive formats and CLAP as a industry standard for everybody else.

He who dares wins, Del Boy would say. (As jamcat above said, having true interoperability would be the best outcome). Being able to run/support (not so) legacy software is important (for DAW makers, for instance, because it means they can ensure that their users can still access their work, which can be important for several reasons also from a commercial point of view; for plugin makers, it saves them from dedicating energy and man-hours to transitioning their VST2 software that doesn't justify such an expense). Also, having an industry standard that is truly open (and three walled gardens that who knows how sustainable will be in the long run) is a good outcome, I'd say. Also, three walled gardens? ProTools + Logic + Cubendo? You really think Steinberg can pull off a whole walled garden (with, say, a VST4 that is completely proprietary) after this whole mess?

[jamcat]

all active formats

you're very concerned about loss of plugins in general (which would happen by divine intervention or alien invasion in my scenario)

Actually your scenario would require the thousands of plugins currently available as VST3 to all port to CLAP, which would be years in the making, and many would never make the transition, as has been the case every time there's a major change. We've already been through that with DX→VST, 32-bit→64-bit, VST2→VST3, Intel→Apple Silicon, etc, etc. Why would anyone want to start that process over from zero all over again?

[jamcat]

I wonder what Black Rooster are going to do. Their lack of VST3 support has been a sticking point for some, and every time it's brought up Andre talks about it as being financially unfeasible for them to support VST3 with their existing codebase. What now for them and others in their position?

I'm not wishing Black Rooster anything bad, but VST2 was already old/obsolete when he started his company. I don't understand why it wasn't either both or just VST3 from the beginning.

Maybe he read KVR and believed the nonsense here and was too afraid of VST3.

[urosh]

You really think Steinberg can pull off a whole walled garden (with, say, a VST4 that is completely proprietary) after this whole mess?

Yes, as long as they have relevant share of DAW market, plugin companies will target VSTx format even if every other DAW moves to something else. They had walled garden in the first place, which was root of all problems, but along the way invited bunch of squatters, and mismanaged garden renovation, so whole situation ended in the mess we're in right now.
By the way, while lot of folks are enthusiastic about CLAP (I'm merely hopeful), it will not be easy to become standardized industry format. Getting Ableton or FL on board would be a work, but getting NI, Waves, Softube and similar on board will be grueling labor. Most likely outcome I'm afraid is sticking with VST3 but with (even more) soured relationship with Steinberg. (I don't have problem per se about Steinberg killing VST2, it's their format. But stewardship of VST2->VST3 transition left a lot to be desired, and transparency at this very moment is abysmal - nobody should guess what are their plans and timelines).

[jamcat]

Steinberg has been weening the industry off of VST2 for 15 years. They've given everyone 5 years advance warning at each and every step of the way. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been paying a modicum of attention, and it's not part of some secret plan to take VST proprietary after over 20 years as the industry open standard.

[MirkoVanHauten]

If Steinberg doesn't want VST2 support in Cubendo anymore, that's fine. I couldn't care less about that crap. They havn't had any work to do on the VST2 sdk for 15 years and they won't in the future. But why force all others, in an absolute disgraceful & disgusting move, to drop it? It doesn't help the branche, it doesn't help devs, it only helps Steinberg. Maybe that's the surprise to anyone even if they've been paying a modicum of attention and that's the motivation to get away from Steinberg. Fool me once...