Steinberg Discontinuing VST2 Support in its products

[zvenx]

There are three plugin platforms of note.
AAX, AU and VST.

AAX is only used by ProTools which might still be the DAW of choice in professional usage.
AU only works on Mac's.

VST is cross platform, I would venture to say it is probably the most ubiquitous plugin format in music.

Believing Clap as a format will usurp it is almost like believing Linux will one day surpass Windows in the number of users.

We all have our fantasies...

Let us see in 5 years where Clap as a format is.

rsp

are you willing to stake anything?
eg ill never use clap, that's how sure i am!!!

just so in 5 years, we can laugh about the time you said you'd never use clap and now look at you!!!
all clap happy!!

lol I am not saying I will never use clap... I am saying it won't replace vst as the industry standard.

u-he is one of my favourite developers, next thing Zebra3 is Clap only and I am on the outside looking in and wanting to join the party .. No I will never say that

rsp

booo you're no fun!!!

we need more betting on the future of plug Ins! why should horses get all the action?

Lol.. I am not willing to cut off my nose to spite my face.. Sorry.

[vurt]

[zvenx]

There are actually a whole heap of "big" developers (and by "big" I mean well known ones who develop a lot of plugins that are currently not vst3) about to (and by about to I mean within the next six months or so) vst3 versions.

rsp

Yeah, and they will put them in VST3 wrapper, vive l'innovation. Or are you seriously trying to argue they will develop their plugins from scratch in VST3?

These are companies that SB are currently actively helping them port to VST3. I doubt if SB is helping them to put them in VST3 wrappers.

And no I can't say anymore for what should be obvious reasons.
rsp

[chk071]

Is it about that? What is more welcome?

Was the switch from Apple to M1 CPU's a welcome opportunity for developers to learn something new? Or did they have to adapt to it, because the market dictated that they have to do M1 native plugins or applications?

Frankly, it doesn't even matter if VST3 is superior or inferior. It's simply a format which is present in a big part of the market. Whether you want to support it or not should rather not be a matter of willingness, unless you don't want to earn money.

Yes, I know, what an asshole I am for saying that.

I really don't want to defend Mac, but didn't M1s at least bring considerable performance improvements to the table? With VST3, the improvements are really debatable, not to mention some things are actually less stable, so the only party benefitting from this disruptive turn of events is Steinberg.

The fact that plugin users have to be told what these supposed benefits of the VST3 format are really speaks for itself, doesn't it. The plugin developers are clearly discontented with the format as it is. There is no give-and-take in this, it is just Steinberg doing as it pleases. And hey, that's okay, it's just that the rest of the field doesn't have to rave about it.

For the end user, 32-bit vs. 64-bit hardly made a difference either.

M1 is debatable as well, considering that you get the same kind of performance, or better, from Intel or AMD CPU's. You won't get super slim passively cooled devices that way though. But, that's something which is purely a matter of Apple's business, and people who want such computers, nothing which in any way makes things easier, or better, for plugin or audio software developers. Actually, it makes it harder, because there is another architecture to support.

[syntonica]

Actually, it makes it harder, because there is another architecture to support.

The differences in architecture are trivial, for the most part, and so is recompiling for Apple Silicon, unless the codebase in question is deeply rooted in hand-written Intel assembly. SIMD intrinsics are easily replaced with any freely available SSE/NEON header. As long as the dev can run the latest Xcode, they don't even need an M1-based Mac to test or compile. I'm sure there are plenty of endusers, such as myself, who will happily beta test.

I would even argue that with the latest compilers and their incredible ability to optimize for speed, now is the perfect time to get rid of any assembler code as it's no longer necessary and a pain to maintain.

[FigBug]

I'm not going to pretend I am smart enough to understand half of this conversation, but can anyone explain why steinberg is so dead-set on killing a stable and universally accepted format in exchange for a format that hadn't been able to become the industry standard despite existing for well over a decade now. I am struggling to understand what they have to GAIN in this situation. Especially as I see a shockingly large amount of people threatening to leave Cubase.

I don't know, I don't think anybody really does, but I have my suspicions. VST2 plugins are very easy to write, which resulted in a lot of shovelware crap in the early days. VST3 plugins are a lot harder to write, which keeps a lot of the amateurs out. Crappy plugins make the ecosystem look bad, add to support costs, etc. So I think they saw a lot of this crap never made the 32bit -> 64bit transition, so they figured if they force the VST2 -> VST3 transition it will get rid of a lot more crap. The gold rush is over, the established plugin companies dominate the market, so I don't think all the crap will ever get recreated for 64 bit VST3.

The #1 source of crashes / support issues DAW developers deal with is poorly written plugins. Reducing the number of plugins that need to be supported and tested reduces development costs. Only dealing with the big established companies that write plugins that actually follow the spec makes life so much easier. Only supporting one plugin format is easier.

The other reason is pride. They can't just say "Sorry, VST3 is crap, we are going back to VST2. Throw away your work." They don't want to keep supporting VST2 which would admit VST3 is a failure. So the only option is to double down and force VST3 to succeed, which it eventually will do. All the major hosts support it now, all the major plugin vendors are getting on board. However, many people are just using JUCE, iPlug2 or their own internal wrappers instead of writing native VST3 plugins. Very few people are tied to VST3 the way they were to VST2. I think that gives CLAP a chance, the fact people already have their plugins abstracted from the plugin format.

I am surprised JUCE never came out with their own plugin format. Everybody who uses JUCE writes an AudioProcessor that gets wrapped in either AAX, VST2, VST3 or AU wrapper. They could have also exposed the AudioProcessor and then every JUCE plugin would have also secretly been a JUCE format plugin. Then there would immediately be a large install base of plugins.

I hope CLAP succeeds, but I think it's going to have a very hard time doing so. Maybe just its existence will keep Steinberg from playing hardball with the VST3 license agreement in future. That could also be a win.

[syntonica]

SB should have said that Cubase is going VST3=only and open-sourced VST2 under an MIT-style license. Everybody would have gone home happy. SB gets their walled garden of properly-written, well-behaved plugins (according to their vision) and the rest of the world goes on as it has. Trying to kill VST2 is a dick move and will only make them enemies.

[Dewdman42]

just remember VST succeeded while competing against Microsoft DX. At the time, Apple had AU on the Mac, but on the PC there was DX. DX was COM based too (sound familiar?). VST2 from Steinberg was much more simple to write plugins for...sure a lot of people wrote little plugins easily...that is part of why it got momentum and took off, eventually pretty much killing DX..

I see no reason why CLAP couldn't do the same thing now, for similar reasons. VST3 sdk is a PITA to develop on, Steinberg is pulling licensing shenanigans, etc.. its just the right kind of conditions for something like CLAP to emerge and take over, at just the right time. Can't you feel the momentum already building?

CLAP is coming to get ya!

[S0lo]

SB should have said that Cubase is going VST3=only and open-sourced VST2 under an MIT-style license. Everybody would have gone home happy. SB gets their walled garden of properly-written, well-behaved plugins (according to their vision) and the rest of the world goes on as it has. Trying to kill VST2 is a dick move and will only make them enemies.

[S0lo]

I see no reason why CLAP couldn't do the same thing now, for similar reasons. VST3 sdk is a PITA to develop on, Steinberg is pulling licensing shenanigans, etc.. its just the right kind of conditions for something like CLAP to emerge and take over, at just the right time. Can't you feel the momentum already building?

CLAP is coming to get ya!

Some statistics out there indicate that a handful of DAWs are very popular, like Ableton and FLstudio. If one of those devs can be convinced to pick up CLAP, a chain reaction might start and others might very well follow.

[Dewdman42]

then nobody would ever use VST3 they would just stay on VST2 forever. That does not fit in with Steinberg's internal priorities.

Honestly, this is nothing against Steinberg...they never pretended to be a good steward of an open neutral industry standard. They floated VST2 out there and the rest of the industry used it for free without any promise of any such neutrality. We used it because it was free and easy. Its really on the rest of the industry for doing that instead of coming with something like CLAP a long time ago.

Do I think Steinberg is entirely self-interested? Yes absolutely but I also see no crime, no company has any obligation to be anything other than that. Its just that the rest of us should not have pretended in our minds that Steinberg was some kind of gracious, good steward of neutrality on this issue...they aren't and never were. They have their own purposes and if you like their software they will continue to produce great software for you.

I agree about a chain reaction. I have already spoken to authors of several subhoster plugins who are already looking into CLAP and they say it looks easy to add. We have reaper and Bitwig looking at it. I wouldn't put it past Ableton at all...probably Image-line too.

I think it will take more momentum and a lot of CLAP plugins floating around before we might see maybe Cakewalk, MOTU, PreSonus join the party.

I think it will be years and maybe never until Steinberg, Avid and Apple add CLAP support. So VST3, AU and AAX wrappers around CLAP are going to be needed for that.

[chk071]

Do I think Steinberg is entirely self-interested? Yes absolutely but I also see no crime, no company has any obligation to be anything other than that.

Thank you. At least someone who understands business on a slightly bigger scale.

[FigBug]

This is going to break a lot of peoples projects once Cubase can't load VST2 plugins. Steinberg's stance is that VST3 plugins can replace VST2 plugins, so users just need to upgrade to the latest version of the plugin that has a VST3 version and everything will be ok.

Except, support for replacing VST2 needs to be in the initial version of your VST3 plugin. This isn't something you can implement later. So, since I never implemented it in the first version of my VST3 plugin, my VST2 users will never be able to upgrade their projects to VST3.

So my options are:

Enable VST2 to VST3 replacement. Now my VST3 plugin will be a 'different' plugin to hosts and all existing projects will be broken.

Not enable VST2 to VST3 replacement. Everybody with a VST2 project will be broken.

Any developer who got into VST3 early when it was still buggy and didn't want users automatically upgraded will be in the same situation. What a mess, for no good reason.

[audiojunkie]

There are three plugin platforms of note.
AAX, AU and VST.

AAX is only used by ProTools which might still be the DAW of choice in professional usage.
AU only works on Mac's.

VST is cross platform, I would venture to say it is probably the most ubiquitous plugin format in music.

Believing Clap as a format will usurp it is almost like believing Linux will one day surpass Windows in the number of users.

We all have our fantasies...

Let us see in 5 years where Clap as a format is.

rsp

A Very Arrogant and condescending response. The beauty however, is that Linux users and their foolish fantasies of open source will never be shut down by a single company's corporate SDK or their ventriloquist hand puppet stooge. Linux has everything to gain from CLAP, and absolutely nothing to lose. I look forward to the future!

[audiojunkie]

There are three plugin platforms of note.
AAX, AU and VST.

AAX is only used by ProTools which might still be the DAW of choice in professional usage.
AU only works on Mac's.

VST is cross platform, I would venture to say it is probably the most ubiquitous plugin format in music.

Believing Clap as a format will usurp it is almost like believing Linux will one day surpass Windows in the number of users.

We all have our fantasies...

Let us see in 5 years where Clap as a format is.

rsp

VST2 is the industry standard. VST3 is something different and isn't the format developers develop on.

CLAP would not have a chance except that Steinberg is doing its best to do away with the current standard. So there is nothing to usurp. If Steinberg were committed to supporting VST2 into the future, companies like u-he would not be switching from developing with VST2 to CLAP. They are doing so out of necessity because VST3 is not a suitable VST2 replacement for them.

CLAP (or something like it) is necessary given the current situation. That is why it has a solid chance of being wide spread.

This! ^^ Saying "VST3" is the industry standard is a joke. VST2 "was" the defacto industry standard. It didn't have to be this way, but it is just as well that it is, so that it can never be controlled by a single company ever again.