Updating Cakewalk Plugins to VST3?

[Moving Air Productions]

I'm not a programmer and fully admit I have no idea what would be involved with this process, but I was wondering if Cakewalk by Bandlab has ever considered upgrading the plugins that used to come with Cakewalk (like the Tube Leveler, Boost11, Percussion Strip, Vocal Strip, etc.) to VST3? I think some tweaks to these and getting them up to today's standards would be an excellent addition to the modern Cakewalk.

Thoughts?

[Starship Krupa]

What would be the benefit(s) of having those plug-ins in VST3 format rather than VST2?

What changes do you think would get them "up to today's standards?" I personally think that they work pretty well as they are, including the UI's.

BTW, the Feedback section is a better place for suggestions.

[Moving Air Productions]

This is just a question. There are a couple reasons for it:

1. They don't recommend combining VST2 and VST3 plugins on the same channels, so if you're combining plugins (95% of what I run is VST3), and I have had some glitchy situations with combining 2 and 3.
2. VST3 plugins are more efficient. There are a lot of things that make VST3 a better all-around platform to work in. For a little more info, check out https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/vst-2-4-vs-vst-3-0-who-cares-you-do/
2. VST3 is the standard and VST2 will eventually be phased out. Might as well keep things usable for a while.

This conversation has been going on for a while. I found other threads about it on the old Cakewalk forum. http://forum.cakewalk.com/VST-vs-VST3-Plugins-m3363634.aspx. Since it doesn't appear to be a gigantic leap, programming-wise, from 2 to 3 (they seem to be built on the same base coding), so I thought I'd ask.

[Jimbob Blues]

5 hours ago, Moving Air Productions said:

I'm not a programmer and fully admit I have no idea what would be involved with this process, but I was wondering if Cakewalk by Bandlab has ever considered upgrading the plugins that used to come with Cakewalk (like the Tube Leveler, Boost11, Percussion Strip, Vocal Strip, etc.) to VST3? I think some tweaks to these and getting them up to today's standards would be an excellent addition to the modern Cakewalk.

Thoughts?

I agree, I use a few VST2 plugins that I would like to see "upgraded". I too am not a programmer and have no idea how difficult it would be to accomplish but it would be nice.

[Xoo]

1 - Who says?

2 - That Sweetwater article explicitly says "Myth: VST 3 plugins are more efficient" (they can be, as there are some features that VST 3 supports more easily than VST 2, but there's no guarantee).

3 - VST 2.4 is only being phased out if a host/plugin wants it to be (there are some restrictions on new developers, but not those with existing VST 2.x licence agreements).

The (non-DSP) coding is *very* different, so this is not necessarily trivial at all.  And since the existng plug-ins work, why "waste" time re-writing them?

[Starship Krupa]

On 6/14/2021 at 2:54 PM, Moving Air Productions said:

1. They don't recommend combining VST2 and VST3 plugins on the same channels, so if you're combining plugins (95% of what I run is VST3), and I have had some glitchy situations with combining 2 and 3.

Who are "they?" If you are having problems combining VST2 and VST3 plug-ins in Cakewalk that is a bug, either in the plug-ins or in Cakewalk. If you're getting it in some other DAW, well, yet another reason to use Cakewalk. My experience is that I can mix VST2 and 3 with no issues, in both Cakewalk and Mixcraft. It doesn't even get a second thought. When installing plug-ins, I now go with VST3 when it's available, but see no real advantage to this practice.

One thing I will say, there is more than one plug-in I have where the VST3 version doesn't work but the VST2 version does.

Your reason 2 and....other reason 2 are both things that Craig's article listed as "myths." Cakewalk still supports DXi and is highly unlikely to drop support for VST2, especially considering how all of their bundled plug-ins are in VST2 (or DXi format). Ableton didn't even support it until 10.1. Dropping support for VST2 plug-ins any time in the foreseeable future would be a suicide move for any DAW. Most of them at this point even support 32-bit plug-ins, which I find slightly odd, but why force people to ditch software that they probably paid a lot of money for?

Yes, the VST3 spec expands on the available features. Most of those features had already been included by plug-in manufacturers' implementation of VST2. (sidechaining, resizable UI's: little-known fact, the VST2.4 spec includes resizable UI's)The one biggie, the ability to go dormant when they're not processing audio, is a feature that I have seen exactly one developer implement, Meldaproduction. And he only implemented it last year. This is after 12 years of the VST3 spec being the standard. One single developer (other than, perhaps Steinberg) has implemented the feature that, to me, is the only really useful one.

Craig's article is excellent and thorough and I agree with every point he makes. I also have to wonder whether some of the "myth" trash talk he mentions came from my forum posts, as I have had a loud mouth about knocking VST3. Since the Meldaproduction implementation (I own 57 of their plug-ins, so this is pretty huge) I have backed off a bit, but I still think that VST3 is the "New Coke" of plug-in standards. It could have been a lot better, could have implemented lots of things like multiple instances of a plug-in sharing the same kernel, the ability for the plug-in and the host to share patch info, integration with control surfaces, improved error handling, inter-plug-in communication, etc. What if there were easier ways for plug-ins from different manufacturers to communicate with each other, like being able to sync LFO rates and delay times without locking them to the project tempo? I would LOVE such a feature. All of that could have been put in the spec.

I tend to rant about this subject because it bothers me. I've had a lot of experience with crashy VST3's, my former main DAW, Mixcraft, only got their support working in the most recent release. Before that, I avoided VST3's like the plague. Yes, the issue was with their implementation, but what was it that forced them to have to do that?

The plug-ins I would love to see get aesthetic makeovers are the Sonitus fx. An update to VST, scalable more "2020's" interfaces. I think they sound great, I just don't use them because the UI's are too tiny for my eyes. The Cakewalk Creative set, not so much, too much good freeware will do what they do.

[Jimbob Blues]

 

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