VST 2.4 vs VST 3

[pongasoft]

I am a bit confused with the state of VST and maybe someone can shade some light.

As far as I understand the state of the affair
* what is commonly called VST is in fact VST2.4
* the "latest" version of VST is called VST3 and is not backward compatible with VST2.4
* VST3 was released almost 10 years ago (Jan 17 2008) [https://www.steinberg.net/en/company/pr ... 3_sdk.html]
* It is very hard to find or even download VST2.4 anymore (documentation, sdk, etc...).
* Reason only supports VST 2.4

Why is it so f*ed up?
Why is it that after 10 years people are still writing and releasing VST2.4 plugin?
Does VST3 suck? Has it not been embraced by the developers?
How are developers writing VST2.4 plugin without documentation and/or sdk?

Yan

[Loque]

Most stuff i foud is VST 2.4. If VST 3 is supported, you can often download 2.4 too..

10 years no development? I never complain again about RE SDK...

[normen]

Its simply that for most plugins you don't need the additional functionality. VST is just a protocol, its not software per se so you can't compare it like "Windows XP to Windows 10", theres no need to update to get bug fixes or "better" stuff. Its more like USB1 vs USB3. Few mice will use the USB3 protocol cause they simply don't need that bandwidth.

[rcbuse]

VST3 isn't backwards compatible with VST2.4. They are similar under the hood for developers, but still not compatible at the binary level. A Host developer still needs to write a new plugin layer for VST3.

There isn't/wasn't a huge incentive to support it out the gate. A plugin developer isn't going to spend the time targeting a format most hosts don't support. A Host developer isn't going to spend the time writing a hosting layer for a handful of plugins. So you have 10 years of slow crawl adoption.

Also, the 2.4 stuff is included in the 3.0 SDK.

[joeyluck]

Unfortunately I have encountered several VSTs that are VST3 only. One of them being tested Motif Rack XS VST (probably because of it being Yamaha/Steinberg).

I too was confused by the difference and how long it's been around. Thought there might be a chance an older VST 2.4 version might work if I could find it. Only to find that this VST first released in 2007, has always only been VST3.

There's been a few more I've encountered as well that are only VST3. And related, some that are AU only. Hoping support is expanded in the future.

[pongasoft]

Also, the 2.4 stuff is included in the 3.0 SDK.

As far as I can tell, yes the 2.4 code is included.. the documentation is not. Which makes it very hard to "start"...

I did find the documentation for 2.4 hosted on this website (http://www.dith.it/listing/vst_stuff/vs ... index.html) which is clearly not official. I guess I am not sure why Steinberg is including the code for 2.4 but not the documentation since it seems to still be the de factor for plugin development...

Yan

[rcbuse]

Also, the 2.4 stuff is included in the 3.0 SDK.

As far as I can tell, yes the 2.4 code is included.. the documentation is not. Which makes it very hard to "start"...

I did find the documentation for 2.4 hosted on this website (http://www.dith.it/listing/vst_stuff/vs ... index.html) which is clearly not official. I guess I am not sure why Steinberg is including the code for 2.4 but not the documentation since it seems to still be the de factor for plugin development...

Yan

The html documentation is generated from the headers/code. I've found that reading the headers was the better way to figure things out. You would think such a popular standard would have better documentation and/or recommendations, but sadly I think the best way at this point is reading headers and old posts on the KVR dev forum.

[pongasoft]

Digging through the VST3 SDK I found this

Code: Select all

public.sdk/source/vst/vst2wrapper/vst2wrapper.h

with the following description:

The VST 3 SDK comes with a helper class which wraps one VST 3 Audio Processor and Edit Controller to
a VST 2.x Plug-in.

So I guess that is one way to go... write a VST3 plugin and wrap it into a VST2.x plugin... This shouldn't really be buried...

Yan