Steinberg Steinberg announces "VST 2 coming to an end"

[Ian Craig]

Steinberg has announced that "VST 2 coming to an end".

Here's what they say:

Late 2013 we announced that the Software Development Kit (SDK) for VST 2 would no longer be maintained and would only be available as subset of the VST 3 SDK. Five years down the line and this transitional phase is now also coming to an end.

From October 2018 onward we are closing down the second version of VST for good. While the VST 2 SDK has been unavailable, and so have maintenance and technical support, the subset within the VST 3 SDK will also be omitted.

VST 2 compatibility with Steinberg VST hosts will remain, however, we recommend to root for the latest version of VST. VST 2 was introduced in 1999 and since then the technology has evolved dramatically. Since 2008, the SDK for the third iteration of VST, VST 3, has been available and since then efforts are focused entirely on the further development of VST 3.

"We appreciate that developers and users alike gravitate strongly toward the VST 3 interface that comes with many technological advancements. By bidding farewell to VST 2, we hope to offer everyone a clear direction," comments Yvan Grabit, technology lead at Steinberg.

[JonInc]

I'd be very surprised if MC devs haven't been fully aware of this for awhile. Also, reading the whole statement, this segment stands out:

VST 2 compatibility with Steinberg VST hosts will remain, however, we recommend to root for the latest version of VST...

Bottom line, even Steinberg's own hosts Cubase and Nuendo will support VST2 for some time to come. I think we're years away from having to throw out all of our older VST2 plugins.

[Mark Bliss]

Yeah, I would venture any informed software developers would be aware, as this has been scheduled and announced for quite some time.

In my interpretation, all it really means is that there will be no further development of the old standard as new efforts will be aimed toward the more current standard.

So vst2's architecture or foundation is what it is. That had already happened for the most part as far as I can tell. It doesn't mean plug in producers are going to abruptly abandon the programming or stop supporting old plug ins and force you to buy new. Many will continue to update to include Vst3 versions, and I also expect many plug ins will be released on the Vst2 standard for quite some time.

Many similar standards have continued for decades after their "retirement"

But all that said- here's hoping the pressure on developers to migrate forward means they will focus on doing a better job than they have......
So far, I am still finding Vst3 versions are frequently buggy and often devoid of many of the improvements and features the new standard is supposed to avail.

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

Yeah, Rolling Estonian posted about this back in May. There are so many VST2 plugins out there and so many people loving them and using them, that VST2 is not going to disappear any time soon.

Greg

[Thomas]

But all that said- here's hoping the pressure on developers to migrate forward means they will focus on doing a better job than they have......
So far, I am still finding Vst3 versions are frequently buggy and often devoid of many of the improvements and features the new standard is supposed to avail.

To add to what Mark said above, as I was installing some plugins, I noticed a VST3_ReadMe file by a well known (AFAIK) plugin developer that I've posted below. I think this sheds some additional light from a developer perspective.

"Important information about the VST3 version
--------------------------------------------

During installation, the VST3 version is not enabled by default, and we highly recommend using VST2 for the time being. If you need to install VST3, e.g. if you have existing projects that already include VST3 versions of our software, please use the customization option in the installer, and enable VST3.

After working on full VST3 versions for several months, we were still encountering random errors and glitches - we had simply underestimated the complexity. Steinberg's advice was to do a complete rewrite as "simplified" VST3 (also included in SDK). However, rewriting would have meant considerable work, so we finally decided to call our current VST3 implementation "experimental" until we can afford to take the necessary steps.

Known issues with the VST3 versions:

- they don't report parameters on preset changes
- in Wavelab, they show symbols instead of registration info
- they crash FL 11 beta
- they don't show the selected patch name when a project is reopened

Again: We recommend using the VST2 versions for now. They behave the same, they sound the same, they're tried and tested!"

[Thomas]

Addendum: To the same developers credit, they've apparently been busy on VST3. They've made progress but also learned of some apparent VST3 limitations. A newer version VST3_ReadMe notes:


Important information about the VST3 version
--------------------------------------------

We recently rewrote our VST3 layer from scratch. The original implementation had some flaws, so we followed Steinberg's recommendation to adapt it to our specific requirements...

Unfortunately, we had to cut down on the MIDI Learn functions. Although its user interface is available in our VST3 plug-ins, nothing happens because VST3 doesn’t use raw MIDI data. In order to receive MIDI Control Changes (CC), the plug-in needs to report hundreds of special parameters to the host - one for each CC in each MIDI channel! A clumsy workaround. As this is a common issue, we proposed that Steinberg extend the VST3 standard with a MIDI Learn option. Until this is directly implemented in VST3 hosts, MIDI Learn is only available in the VST2, AU and AAX versions of our plug-ins.

Settings assigned in any of the other plug-in formats will be adopted by the VST3 version, however. This means you can set up your controllers using the VST2/AU/AAX version, then replace it with the VST3 version afterwards!