Much of what I read concerning the difference between VST an AU on a Mac concludes that while AU is theoretically a better choice, in practice, most plugin developers write to the VST API, and then employ an AU wrapper around their VST code. This means that it is usually better to stick with a VST when in DAWs that support them, and only use AUs in Logic.
But there is precious little info from plugin companies regarding the internal architecture of their plugins.
So my question is: Do U-He plugins use an internal AU wrapper, or are the two versions of the plugins directly targeting the corresponding APIs?
A corollary question: Does it matter? Is there any reason to use one or the other should a wrapper be involved?
AU vs. VST2 ... A wrapper?
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- KVRAF
- 2035 posts since 30 Mar, 2008 from MN, USA
CLAP Software Database: https://clapdb.tech. KVR Discussion Topic.
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- u-he
- 30222 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
As you can see with our stuff, all plug-ins within a bundle (Zebra, Uhbik, Filterscape, soon Repro) reside within a single .component file, while the VST2 versions have a .vst file each. So there's no wrapper - we support "true AU", "true VST3", "true AAX".
Does it matter? - Not really. The overhead of calling from one plug-in interface into another is too small to measure on any CPU we support. Wrapped or not is pretty irrelevant. Unless your software supports multiple formats on Mac, in case of which you should decide for only one, due to so-called "name space collisions". Which do not matter with our stuff because we worked around them.
Only, if you use more than one plug-in of a bundle withing a project, AU has the advantage of shared resources. As has VST3 and AAX, but not VST2. VST2 only has that on Linux for our stuff. Crazy!
I have not dealt with plug-in format differences for many years, I can not recall any differences that really matter. Oh yes, in AU you can really group parameters by modules, such as oscillators and filters. It makes for cleaner drop down menus if your host supports it (Logic does). Worth bothering? Maybe. Maybe not.
- U
Does it matter? - Not really. The overhead of calling from one plug-in interface into another is too small to measure on any CPU we support. Wrapped or not is pretty irrelevant. Unless your software supports multiple formats on Mac, in case of which you should decide for only one, due to so-called "name space collisions". Which do not matter with our stuff because we worked around them.
Only, if you use more than one plug-in of a bundle withing a project, AU has the advantage of shared resources. As has VST3 and AAX, but not VST2. VST2 only has that on Linux for our stuff. Crazy!
I have not dealt with plug-in format differences for many years, I can not recall any differences that really matter. Oh yes, in AU you can really group parameters by modules, such as oscillators and filters. It makes for cleaner drop down menus if your host supports it (Logic does). Worth bothering? Maybe. Maybe not.
- U