Since I also have some experience with the RE SDK I wondered if it could be possible to port the VST to RE with the current SDK version without loosing any features - regardless of the question if it pays off for Synapse putting the effort into it when people can get the VST instead. I´m interested in the technical feasiblity as a thought experiment.
So I tried some analysis with available data and here are some crucial points I found:
- DSP/runtime optimizations: if the synth uses some operating system/CPU/GPU dependent optimizations it may not possible without adding some switches in code to exclude them for the RE version
- dependencies to 3rd party libraries by DSP/runtime: RE SDK forces a limited set of standard C/C++ library functions and does not allow to include any 3rd party (? - not 100% sure about that). Removing/replacing all these functions from existing code may be some effort.
- amount of custom properties: RE SDK has a limit of ~1000 custom properties. If you export the Remote info of this VST in Reason you will see that this alone exceeds 1000 (~ 1200). And we even don´t see the runtime properties which add up as well. This may be biggest obstacle.
- custom displays/curve drawing and drag n drop: may be possible since supported by SDK. The MSEG curves look and behave quite similar to the GQ-7. We also saw reordering of FX by drag n drop in Expanse and Europa.
- switchable panels: may be possible since supported by SDK
- GUI size: I resized the VST GUI proportionally to fit inside the rack. It is 20% smaller than the smallest version of the VST skin. Some elements get quite tiny and it may be at the edge of acceptable. If RS adds zooming of the Rack to a future version of Reason this problem is not anymore.