VST3's and their future?

[sureno]

i had cubase 4 and had a chance to use the VST3's, i didn't really find anything special about them, i read a comment from a very well established software devloper and to be honest i have to agree with him, it really sums up my opinion of steinbergs approach to development

"Have you any plans at all for VST3 plugins?"

"I do not want to support bad choices of others when there is no need to support them (VST2.4 is fully supported by Steinberg hosts, and is not planned for exclusion from what I've read on their forums). Well, if market asks I'll have to obey, but not right now. "Market" means hosts that support only VST3.


P.S. Of course, I'm sorry for not being 'politically correct'. Simply put, Steinberg's policy toward VST developers is also incorrect, so we are pretty much quits."

"It would seem that the development community has been falling all over themselves to stay *off* the VST3 bandwagon of late."

"BTW, as was shown by many developers, extending VST2.4 to support all "bells and whistles" of VST3 (namely, side-chaining and sample-accurate automation) is a matter of making minor enhancements. Such thing as user interface/audio code detachment could have been implemented on top of VST2.4 as well... Well, as I've replied, throwing VST2.4 away was a bad choice in my opinion. There's a "rule of thumb" in software engineering: do not fix a thing that isn't broken, otherwise you'll end up collecting bugs, instabilities and unforeseen system complications. VST is more than just Steinberg's pet toy today, thousands of musicians and sound engineers rely on its stability, across many audio host applications."

so what do you guys think?

[Dave Boulden]

I'd say the developers being quoted are expressing a somewhat arrogant assumption they understand Steinberg's entire decision for how they moved from VST2.4 to VST3. I'm sure some of Steinberg's reasons are either private, internal development based or even financial or strategic, none of which 3rd party plugin developers may have been privy to. I'm sure the loss of the programming resource from Wizoo (who were snapped up by Digidesign) may also have had some bearing on any decisions regarding any future direction for the VST architecture.

At the end of the day, VST is entirely the IP of Steinberg and is licensed to 3rd party developers... they will quite rightly develop VST as best suits their own needs... that is the nature of business.

[sureno]

Originally Posted by Dave Boulden

I'd say the developers being quoted are expressing a somewhat arrogant assumption they understand Steinberg's entire decision for how they moved from VST2.4 to VST3. I'm sure some of Steinberg's reasons are either private, internal development based or even financial or strategic, none of which 3rd party plugin developers may have been privy to. I'm sure the loss of the programming resource from Wizoo (who were snapped up by Digidesign) may also have had some bearing on any decisions regarding any future direction for the VST architecture.

At the end of the day, VST is entirely the IP of Steinberg and is licensed to 3rd party developers... they will quite rightly develop VST as best suits their own needs... that is the nature of business.

great input dave, thought this may go overlooked.
their being the key word, what about us? but i didn't hear about wizoo going to read up about that, wonder what brought that on?
have you used some VST3 plugs, if so what did you personally think of them?

[Dave Boulden]

What was Wizoo is what we now know as Digidesign's A.I.R. group (Advanced Instrument Research Group) who are responsible for the recent crop of PT virtual instruments... you could even argue that Strike would have been GrooveAgent3 had Digidesign not bought Wizoo when they did

The only main difference with VST3 on the surface is side-chaining and improved multi-channel operation (all VST3 plug-ins should automatically be multi-channel capable.. e.g. stereo or 5.1 or 7.1 or whatever). It's an evolution of the architecture that was inevitable... it seems the 3rd party developers are just grumbling 'cos it means more of a change for them than if SB simply extended VST2.4... obviously that route wasn't in SB's best interests.

[sureno]

so having said that do you think in the future 3rd parties will embrace VST3's? I suppose it will be a forced hand tbh as SB won't support 2.4 forever and VST's are so heavily relied on unless of coarse there is some new wonder format being created out there Imho VST3's where overhyped but you have an excellent point that it's an inevetable coarse of evolution on SB's front

[Monarch]

Originally Posted by sureno

so having said that do you think in the future 3rd parties will embrace VST3's? I suppose it will be a forced hand tbh as SB won't support 2.4 forever and VST's are so heavily relied on unless of coarse there is some new wonder format being created out there Imho VST3's where overhyped but you have an excellent point that it's an inevetable coarse of evolution on SB's front

I think it is very likely 3rd parties will support VST3. Fab Filters Volcano2 supports VST3 and Virsyn's Prism, Bark and VTape all offer VST3 variants.

But the uptake of VST3 is probably not as fast as Steinberg want it to be. Cakewalk for instance made no mention of VST3 in Sonar 8's bullet points... AFAICT. Then again as developers of an excellent rival product I doubt they would rush to suppprt it anyway.

There does not seem to be a huge drive in general to support VST 3 but I think over time it will happen.

[Khazul]

Perhaps part of the problem at this time is their are too many things hitting the limited resources of small plugin companies:

Move to 64 bit - this is proceeding at such a snail's pace.
Move to VST3 - it is an architectural improvement, however to most useful touted for for the average end user working in stereo is side chaing. Well I have been using side chaining for as along as their have been compressors and gates and other plugins that support it. Plugins with 4 input (main pair + key pair) channels are not new to VST3.

The other problem that I see with the whole VST3 thing is that Steinberg took a very long time after the Cubase 4 launch to release the VST3 SDK. Had they played 'nice' with the rest of the industry and released the VST3 SDK when C4 was released, or even put it out to beta long before then, then many other DAWs would be able to host VST3 plugins, which in turn would be a considerable incentive to plugin writers to support it. As it stands, I beleive only C4 supports VST3 - I dont know if the new version of Sonar does - probbaly not as historically Cakewalk have not suppported VST at all directly (only via a wrapper) and only recently included native VST suppport after DX plugins got pretty mmuch abandoned by Microsoft in the move to Vista.

I think their are guilty parties on all sides here - I think Steinberg were doing the right thing with VST3, just the way they went about it was perhaps a bit less than industry friendly and not entirely appropriate for a company in such a controlling position with respect to a technology that everyone else depends upon (Yes - I know its nice that they license it for free, but I am sure they gain far far more than they loose from that...). I dont buy into companies that winge about VST3, as someone said above - it was inevitable, but some winge about everything new and for some small outfits its a struggle just to keep up with the normal pace of change, never mind when a whole hep of technology and platform changes hit at aorund the same time - Apple OS and Platform changes impact this as well by diverting resources and atttention too.

[Monarch]

Originally Posted by Khazul

The other problem that I see with the whole VST3 thing is that Steinberg took a very long time after the Cubase 4 launch to release the VST3 SDK. Had they played 'nice' with the rest of the industry and released the VST3 SDK when C4 was released, or even put it out to beta long before then, then many other DAWs would be able to host VST3 plugins, which in turn would be a considerable incentive to plugin writers to support it.

Yes agreed. No question.

Steinberg wanted to have the exclusivity of being the only VST3 host for months. It looks like they thought they would be better off doing this than releasing the SDK to devs who might have released VST3 plugs before Cubase 4 was out of the door.

I can understand the competitive advantage they were looking for but I think they misjudged the relatively low level of interest in VST3.

Now they want everyone to support it but maybe there is a bit of a developer backlash to deal with now. I think Ableton and Cakewalk are looking at each other to see who bites first. Ableton might.

I have also read that VST3 is not a radical enough change from VST2.4 to even warrant the 3 tag.

I think this is possibly the biggest hassle for devs right now...they seem to have complained about a *huge* amount of work porting their plugs over to VST3 and that Steinberg did not consult 95% of devs about the changes to VST3 while they were working on it.

[Khazul]

At a high level user vuew of functionality, then VST3 isnt really that big a deal, however it was needed as much of an architectural enhancement to deal with a bunch of pressing system issues - 64 bit, easier multi-channel scaling for higher end users. I dont buy that its is essential for side chaining - it isnt, however it does perhaps simplify this a bit at an architectural level.


For plugin developers however an architectural change can be a real pain, or not,it depends upon how you have designed your plugin. Multi-pltform plugin developers tend to fair better as they have often allready designed their plugins for easy adaptation.

As a developer starting to write a plugin - then actually Im targettig VST 2.4 only - the reason is simple - I dont care about running it in Cubase 4, I will only ever been running it in Ableton Live 7 onwards. Actually If Ableton had a public plugin SDK for thier own plugins, I would use that in preference to VST as it appears to allready address the benefits that VST3 could provide to a stereo DAW, and arguably in a better way for end users.

[EdRyan]

Steinberg did it for good reasons, but went about it the wrong way. So many people work using their systems that they should have had a public duscussion about the issues and updates that were resolved in vst 3dk.

Superficially, it's not that big a leap. But it was needed, for the sake of keeping Cubase & Nuendo competitive. Having to use 3rd party plugs to do tricks like side-chaining was really starting to get to people, with green eyes looking at how effortless it was to do in P/T and Logic.

From a programmers perspective though, it's only as much hassle as you make it. If you write a badly coded program, it will take more work to port over. The trick is to keep your programs well defined and structured. That way it's easier to break it down and adapt the instructions that need altering.

It will take off eventually. I remember a similar fuss with ASIO2. When dev's have stopped throwing their dummies out of the pram because they weren't consulted, or their plugs are really outdated...then we'll start seing the updates !

[JAYDMF]

My 2p,

They designed it, everyone bought into it, it took off, look at where we are now?? the side chaining and other features are great and yes im sure they could have tagged it on to 2.4 but at the same time you keep on tagging things on and tagging things on etc and you end up with what ? Windows IMO.

Much better to come out with a new version, get rid of the crap and streamline, which is probably what theyve done, the reason that developers **** and moan is cuz theyve actually gotta do some work and get everything back on track same as everyone pisses and moan when they have to learn something new.

If it doesnt take off it doesnt take off but hey at least someones trying something new and giving us more stuff to mess around with, people have their gripes with C4 but i think its awesome and a much better way of working, its got bugs sure, but what doesnt ?

[tyronehowe]

Originally Posted by EdRyan

Steinberg did it for good reasons, but went about it the wrong way.

Sorry to jump in on your thread, since I use Logic VST3 has no interest for me ... but that quote form Ed so perfectly sums up Steinberg in my opinion.

They are good at coming up with ideas but they always seem to go about things the wrong way.

[sureno]

Originally Posted by tyronehowe

Sorry to jump in on your thread, since I use Logic VST3 has no interest for me ... but that quote form Ed so perfectly sums up Steinberg in my opinion.

They are good at coming up with ideas but they always seem to go about things the wrong way.

Ah what a breathe of fresh air, some one who agrees with my views
i have always said SB have always been concerned with being in the lead for cutting age technologies but never concerned with stability to the degree that they should be, they churn out new feature after feature in their updates and for me never fully see it through and make them stable enough for every day use and abuse

[Khazul]

I dont think anyone here is disagreeing with your views of Steinberg

I agree its riddled with excellent but not-quite-there and abandoned features that I really wish they would put a little more effort into finishing and making really useful.

[tyronehowe]

Ok – now I know I might get flamed for this, but …

Actually I think that Cubase IS the best DAW software around - in terms of features.

It almost always is the first DAW with a new feature. Let’s remember that the audio warping suite (that’s pitch warping, tempo following, tempo matching and so on) has been there since SX3 – over four years ago. It’s MIDI editing has always been excellent (as good as Logic), it’s handling of multi-timbral VIs perfect and logical, automation working very well. Also has FULL PDC, even for external instruments. And of course it is (by definition) the perfect host for VSTs.

Many things that Logic, for example, still doesn’t have now.

But (as this is a huge but), to me Steinberg’s continued arrogant treatment of their customers, and downright lies about software releases is too much. I simply cannot bring myself to support a company (by support I mean purchase their products) that behaves likes this.

Of those amazing features I listed above, a number (including audio warping) never worked properly for many users – this was supposed to be corrected in a final SX3 update that didn’t in fact arrive, even after a year’s waiting and promises. Cubase 4 was clearly rushed out to gain revenue and was generally not stable for quite a few users until several delayed updates arrived.

So it’s odd that the company that has the DAW with the most features is one that I won’t go near again. And don’t get me started on the “overnight” dropping of several major Steinberg instruments.

Apple simply don’t say a word about Logic. Ever. Full stop. And that annoys me a lot – but at least they’ve never lied to me.

And anyway, doesn't Hans Zimmer use Cubase? If so, I guess it can't be TOO bad