Steinberg: No more VST2 Development

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http://www.steinberg.net/en/newsandeven ... -2504.html
Steinberg announces that it will no longer continue to develop and maintain the VST 2 software interface but focus efforts entirely on the Software Development Kit, or SDK, development of VST 3.

Steinberg's host applications, such as Cubase, Nuendo and WaveLab, will continue to support VST 2, but the SDK for VST 2 will be made unavailable by the end of this year.

The VST 3 development kit not only generates VST 3 plug-ins, but also is capable of rendering to VST 2 and AU formats.

This day came sooner than expected... :(

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What exactly does that mean for the user?
Massive, Serum. Diva, Repro-1, HIVE, Spire presets, Reason ReFills more! https://NewLoops.com

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faun2500 wrote:What exactly does that mean for the user?
nothing .. it's a bunch of todo about nothing. They just aren't going to add/change/fix/update that part of the SDK anymore. Someone said they were surprised to see that so soon. I'm surprised it took this long. But, devs can continue to crank out V2.x plugins as long as they want.
If you have to ask, you can't afford the answer

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SJ_Digriz wrote:
faun2500 wrote:What exactly does that mean for the user?
nothing .. it's a bunch of todo about nothing. They just aren't going to add/change/fix/update that part of the SDK anymore. Someone said they were surprised to see that so soon. I'm surprised it took this long. But, devs can continue to crank out V2.x plugins as long as they want.
We technically can, yes, but according to Steinberg, Cubase and their other hosts will stop loading VST 2 plug-ins "someday". Who knows when other hosts will follow suit. As such, adopting VST 3 for new plug-ins might be the prudent course of action..

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It simply means that you should download the VST 2.4 SDK while you still can and hang onto it (backup etc).
Grtx, Marc Jacobi.
VST.NET | MIDI.NET

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But it also states the v2 SDK is being made unavailable by the end of the year which means they are (attempting to) pushing developers towards v3. I guess the v3 adoption rate wasn't going fast enough for them..

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Yes, count on Steinberg host's to ditch the 2.4 plugin shortly after that. But there are a lot of other hosts out there, some not even supporting VST 3 at this time...
Grtx, Marc Jacobi.
VST.NET | MIDI.NET

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and probably they will only release vst3 versions of their plugins, so if you are writing a host, you will need to support vst3.

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Well, HALion 5 is both VST3 and VST2...

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VST3 has been around for five years. Developers seemed to prefer VST2.4 because it has wider support from hosts, and because there is more information available.

But actually, VST3 can render to VST2 (and AU!), and the documentation is actually useful, unlike VST2.4. Most hosts do seem to support VST3 now anyway.

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Unavailable! I get that they want to push devs towards v3, but as a new dev, I found the documentation to be very tricky and incomplete, for v2 or v3. There was no offical Getting Started guide, or hello world example.
<geekygenius/>

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Ninja_Edit wrote:VST3 has been around for five years. Developers seemed to prefer VST2.4 because it has wider support from hosts, and because there is more information available.

But actually, VST3 can render to VST2 (and AU!), and the documentation is actually useful, unlike VST2.4. Most hosts do seem to support VST3 now anyway.
They SAY it can make VST2s, but last I heard all developers who are trying to do this are still having crash bugs. Don't believe the hype. (If anyone is using the VST 3.x SDK to make stable VST 2.4s, please correct me.)

Yes, the only real issue is that there won't be any strictly legal way for newcomers to get a copy of the VST 2.4 SDK after year end. Leave it to Steinberg to try to force people into adoption of their stillborn abortion, VST 3.x by removing "support" for a single file download. Disgusting!

If they want to not be assholes, they should release it into the public domain. (I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on THAT one! They are doing this with the specific intention of strong-arming people into using VST 3. Arne admitted as much on the VST email list.)

:x
Last edited by AdmiralQuality on Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

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geekygenius wrote:Unavailable! I get that they want to push devs towards v3, but as a new dev, I found the documentation to be very tricky and incomplete, for v2 or v3. There was no offical Getting Started guide, or hello world example.
It came out half baked and didn't work, thus the near zero adoption. And without developer adoption, the bugs never get worked out. A classic chicken/egg problem. Steinberg want us to do their due diligence FOR them, discover, and solve all their bugs. So even now, 5 or 6 years after its release, it's still, from what I'm hearing, an unstable mess with far more problems than it's worth.

And the whole justification for the unnecessary complexity of VST 3.x was that they wanted to allow the GUI and the process to run on different machines. 6 years later, WHO is doing that? WHO even has a product that supports it? What HOST do I use for that? AFAIK anyone who's tried has run into the same old brick wall that this stuff is nothing more than a bill of goods and doesn't actually do what Steinberg say it does.

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AdmiralQuality wrote:Yes, the only real issue is that there won't be any strictly legal way for newcomers to get a copy of the VST 2.4 SDK after year end.
They also won't sign the license agreement I guess, and we can't register VST2 Unique IDs anymore. Not sure if anyone has done any of those two things in recent years.

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Urs wrote:
AdmiralQuality wrote:Yes, the only real issue is that there won't be any strictly legal way for newcomers to get a copy of the VST 2.4 SDK after year end.
They also won't sign the license agreement I guess, and we can't register VST2 Unique IDs anymore. Not sure if anyone has done any of those two things in recent years.
:tu:


How's the VST 3 SDK treating you guys lately, Urs? Are you making stable VST 2.4 plug-ins with it? On both platforms? (Or I should say, all 6 platforms. Win VST x86, Win VST x64, OSX VST x86, OSX VST x64, OSX AU x86, OSX AU x64. Sigh... what our job has become in recent years. And Apple have a new OS and XCode to match coming any week now! Arrrrrrrrgh!!!)

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