Why is Steinberg working so hard to kill off VST2 when it works so well?

[Fender19]

VST3 has been a nightmare since the day it came out ~10 years ago. It is STILL not implemented correctly in many plugins and DAWs. At times it seems even Steinberg's DAWs don't work right with it.

I know VST2 is old but it works nearly everywhere and is solid. So why the push to kill it?

[stratum]

It's pretty cool to derive all classes from IUnknown, that's why

[BlueprintInc]

VST3 has flaws, but VST2 wasn't perfect either. You know VST2 and that's why you see VST3 as a nightmare. Newcomers to plugin development will adapt VST3 much quicker and unbiased.

I think it's the right way to force progress, same like having minimum OS requirements and dropping 32bit. Still there are many happy devs with a license agreement and can provide support for it.

[Rivanni]

VST3 has flaws, but VST2 wasn't perfect either. You know VST2 and that's why you see VST3 as a nightmare.

Not the reason. VST3's are not always as stable as their VST2 counterpart, they are more buggy and sometimes perform worse. In 5 years that might be different but at the moment VST3 is not the holey grail.

[BlueprintInc]

My comment was meant coding wise, sorry.

I would agree with that in a wider term. VST3 support is something that isn't at a level that it should be. Hopefully that'll change now.

But I would not agree on cherrypicking that VST3 is most of the times the bad guy There are reports otherwise too. Any plugin format has its problems and it becomes even more considering the ammount of DAWs available.

From the plugins I have in use and the ones I code, there are no processing performance issues or something like that (at least not meassurable). In the end the processing stays the same, no matter which plugin format.

[Topcheese]

It's called progress, and you can't stop it. Believe me I say the same thing About Samsung every time I use my Note 4.

[Resplendence]

Steinberg is behaving as if it were the world police and from what I've seen, that develops aversity among the community. Add in that VST3 suffers from the same problems that VST2 does, it's hard to see why people and companies would force themselves to follow suit.

//Daniel

[Vertion]

it's hard to see why people and companies would force themselves to follow suit.

sheeple graphic.png

[Deep Purple]

https://www.steinberg.net/en/company/te ... /vst3.html

[Vokbuz]

I may be a minority here but I do not share all this hateful altitude towards Steinberg's actions regarding VST2 forceful deprecation. Just put yourself in Steinberg's shoes and you'll see that it waited for more than 10 years for developers to adapt new API but that did not happen. What would you do? VST2 is really obsolete. Yes, VST3 has its flaws but also it has very good features that do not exist in VST2.

By the way, this is also a very good lesson too. Do not build your product using proprietary API or wrappers internally. API should be abstracted as much as possible away from the core/dsp code of your product.

[Deep Purple]

I agree - it wouldn't make any sense from a business perspective to create a next generation framework then put effort into supporting its predecessor beyond its planned end of life.

There's always going to be a number of people disappointed with this kind of situation though - you don't have to look far on teh interwebs to find someone complaining that Microsoft no longer actively supports Windows XP...

[pottering]

VST2 was not and is not obsolete (only Cubase users seem to think that, apparently due to Cubase subpar VST2 support), they are trying to obsolete it by force (legal threats), which is why Steinberg gets a "hateful attitude".

Also, it is not only about newcomer plugin devs, newcomer HOSTS (not only DAWs, but video editors, etc.) also won't be able to implement VST2 hosting, and will be disadvantaged.

Adding to that, Steinberg sells both plugins and hosts, and their products still support VST2.

So Steinberg is disadvantaging direct competitors of their product line, creating an artificial advantage for them, by abusing their control of a industry standard.

Moreover, VST3 was also an attempt to take over MIDI (putting their "Note Expression" in its place).

So it was TWO industry standards that Steinberg tried to obsolete and take over.

For me it is the opposite, Steinberg is getting away way too lightly here.

[Deep Purple]

VST2 was not and is not obsolete

No, but it has been deprecated, which at some point in the future will amount to the same thing.

Steinberg gave it a 5 year run off, so it's not as if this has come out of the blue.

[pottering]

Steinberg's own hosts still support VST2.

So it is more than a "5 year run off", it is 5 years + how long Cubase and Nuendo retain VST2 support.

I would wait AT LEAST until after Steinberg dumps VST2 support on their own hosts to start talking about VST2 being "obsolete" or "deprecated"

[Deep Purple]

It's quite clear from this article that it has already been deprecated, as of October last year:

https://www.steinberg.net/en/newsandeve ... -4727.html

Any DAW that currently supports VST2 could potentially continue to host VST2 plugins for years or decades to come, but that doesn't mean that Steinberg hasn't killed the SDK or stated that they will no longer provide maintenance or technical support.