VST2 vs VST3 - what are the differences?

2

Answers

  • EvilDragon
    EvilDragon Moderator Posts: 1,022 mod

    Basically VST2 is unsupported and discontinued and Steinberg forces vendors not to make VST2 plugins for Apple M1, so...

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,302 Expert

    Actually, Steinberg gave developers plenty of time to migrate their products to VST3.

    From the Steinberg news here:

    https://www.steinberg.net/en/newsandevents/news/newsdetail/article/vst-2-coming-to-an-end-4727.html

    (which unfortunately isn’t available anymore)

    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.​

    And in 2018, Steinberg stopped issuing VST2 developer licenses.

    Regarding the benefits of VST3: Probably only available when working with a DAW that fully supports VST3 features (aka Cubase) and plugins are properly implemented.

  • EvilDragon
    EvilDragon Moderator Posts: 1,022 mod

    Unfortunately, VST3 in 2013 was in really terrible shape with horrible documentation (it's better today but it's still far from ideal, and the whole SDK is quite masochistic in its complexity and approach vs how VST2 was), so you can't blame devs for not being willing to move over.

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,302 Expert

    However, many small companies (even one man shows) managed to offer their plugins as AAX, AU, VST2 and VST3 for years.

    The inevitable was foreseeable. Therefore I’d blame the management, not the developers.

  • EvilDragon
    EvilDragon Moderator Posts: 1,022 mod

    Not without huge amount of pain (or if they used JUCE, they got it for free anyways, somebody else did the work).

    Plenty of threads in KvR developer subforum lamenting how horrible VST3 really is, in fact.

  • Sunborn
    Sunborn Member Posts: 2,241 Expert

    According to an article that i read recently, those are the differences between VST2 and VST3:

    1. More efficient processing

    VST3 is designed so that it only performs processing when there is an audio signal present. This means that CPU resources aren’t wasted during silences, unlike VST2 which would keep processing active regardless of whether there is any actual audio signal at that point in time. This makes VST3 more resource-efficient and potentially increases the number of plugins you can use in a project without overloading your system.

    2. Adaptive input/output

    Traditional VST instruments featured a fixed number of inputs and outputs. Separate versions of plugins had to be implemented for stereo and surround sound processing. Multi-output instruments usually took up a large number of channels even if not all of them were being used. This again would lead to the wastage of resources. VST3 addresses this limitation by allowing plugins to be dynamically adapted to however many inputs or outputs are needed. The same plugin can be put on a stereo channel or a 5.1 channel and it will automatically adapt its channel routing accordingly. This allows for increased flexibility and efficiency.

    3. Enhanced MIDI handling

    VST3 plugins can provide a dedicated event handler bus, which allows for a wide variety of control and modulation messages beyond traditional simple MIDI messages. In fact, support isn’t only limited to the MIDI protocol, and other future control methods may utilize these functions. Advanced control of MIDI at a note level is now supported. For example, a particular event like a pitch bend can be associated with a specific note with a unique note ID, so that the modulation is applied to only that note, even in a polyphonic context like playing a chord.

    4. Support for multiple MIDI I/O

    With VST2, a particular plugin could only be assigned to single MIDI input and output. Now with VST3, plugins can support several MIDI ports at once which can be switched on the fly. This opens up a lot of possibilities while performing music live and allows for more flexible routing.

    5. More organized automation parameters

    Earlier, trying to find a particular automation parameter could get annoying when having to scroll through potentially hundreds of parameters in a VST2 plugin. Some DAWs provide an option to search for parameters from the list, but VST3 has added the ability to categorize automation parameters within the plug-in itself. For example, all filter-related parameters can be sorted under the ‘Filter’ category, rhythmic and time-based parameters can have their own category, and so on. This streamlines the automation process and helps keep projects organized.

    6. Audio inputs with VST Instruments

    We usually associate VST instruments with MIDI input only, but VST3 adds the ability to route audio to plugins, which opens up new possibilities. For example, a synth plugin with an inbuilt vocoder can now take an audio signal as an input as well as the MIDI data for modulation. This also makes sidechaining and cross-modulation possible independently from the DAW’s built-in capabilities. Sidechaining has been implemented for a long time with VST2, but it usually depended on the DAW’s particular routing capabilities to achieve it.

    7. Resizable GUI

    A small but significant improvement, this allows for VST3 plugins to be scaled in size as required, to free up or take up screen space as required. Though this seems like quite a small change, it can make working with big crowded sessions much smoother.

    8. Sample accurate automation

    This means that VST3 can read and write automation data at a very high resolution down to sample level, entailing that automation remains highly accurate even for very rapid and minute changes.

    9. Remote control of plugins via VSTXML

    With the increasing popularity of portable control surfaces being used in music production and live performance, VSTXML provides enhanced flexibility for remote controlling plugin parameters from various control surfaces.

    10. Multilingual support

    VST3 uses text in the Unicode (UTF-16) format, which allows for special characters and non-English characters. This means that it is easier to localize plugins in various languages for developers.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Full article is here: https://www.musicianwave.com/vst2-vst3-differences/

  • Sunborn
    Sunborn Member Posts: 2,241 Expert

    There is however one thing that it is not clear to me, so if someone has an answer, will be much appreciated!

    Supposed that i have an older Cubase project were i use some VST2 instruments, and then i remove those instruments and replace them with their equivalent VST3 versions.

    So, when i re-open this older project, will Cubase find the VST3 versions and use them, or it will saw me an "instrument missing" tab and i will have to reload the instruments as VST3, and loose all the modified parameters?

  • UdoBehm
    UdoBehm Member Posts: 73 Member

    Yes, that was my information too. I pretty much wonder that the NI VST3s are not supposed to have this mor effective signal processing as mentioned under point 1

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,302 Expert

    VST2 and VST3 plugins are really different versions. Cubase is not able to map between them, and will show a missing plugin message if a used VST2 is not found even when the VST3 is around. Therefore I keep the VST2 versions but change them to invisible in the Plugin Manager. This ensures I don’t accidentally create new VST2 instances, but old projects will load fine.

    Some VST3 plugins are able to import or directly use settings from the VST2 version. To migrate existing settings, you have to save the settings as preset from within the plugin (not as part of the Cubase project) and load this preset file in the VST3 version of the same plugin.

  • Sunborn
    Sunborn Member Posts: 2,241 Expert
    edited April 2022

    yep, i was afraid that this is the case... that means endless editing on 80+ projects and saving hundreds of self-made presets, for future use... 🙄 good to know though, thanks a lot!

  • EvilDragon
    EvilDragon Moderator Posts: 1,022 mod

    That's incorrect. It is entirely possible to migrate a VST2 plugin to VST3 even inside the DAW project, but this has to be done by the plugin developer (plugin ID needs to stay the same). Cubendo definitely supports VST2->3 migration, as do some other hosts (FL Studio, Reaper, Cakewalk, Studio One). Check with plugin developers if they implemented this.

    That said I'm not sure if Maschine implemented this either.

  • EvilDragon
    EvilDragon Moderator Posts: 1,022 mod
    edited April 2022

    Again as I said, plugin needs to "subscribe" to this VST3 feature, and it actually doesn't make any sense for instrument plugins, because they basically do shut off their own processing after all voices have decayed.


    Also, points like "resizable GUI" are misleading. Plugin developers still need to make their plugins actually properly scalable. VST3 only has an official API to support dynamic changes of the plugin window size. VST2 was extremely hacky in this regard and different hosts had different issues regarding this.


    Point 6 - instruments with audio inputs was also possible with VST2. But Cubase didn't support that. Many other hosts did, though.


    Point 5 - more organized automatable parameters. Sure, if your host actually supports that. Many actually don't!


    Point 8 - sample accurate automation. There's a reason why plugins don't really do this, and that's because they all do their own parameter smoothing. For that reason, not an awful lot of VST3 plugins actually implement this feature.

  • UdoBehm
    UdoBehm Member Posts: 73 Member

    "Again as I said, plugin needs to "subscribe" to this VST3 feature, and it actually doesn't make any sense for instrument plugins, because they basically do shut off their own processing after all voices have decayed."

    I wished they would (shut off their processing after the decay of the voices). As far as I can see they both (VST2 and VST3) do still consume a lot of CPU as long as they are not being deactivated inside the DAW. Does anyone have different experiences here or can anyone tell me how I can diesable some CPU load if there is no signal on the entrance?


  • EvilDragon
    EvilDragon Moderator Posts: 1,022 mod

    Which plugins are you talking about specifically? Over here Kontakt definitely does shut off the processing after all voices have played their part, for example.

  • UdoBehm
    UdoBehm Member Posts: 73 Member

    Good to know. Massive X, when used as VST3 inside KK VST3

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