Cakewalk may not handle plugins version in the best way

[Jacques Boileau]

And the important word in this title is 'may'. I don't want to imply anything, just want to relay info to the devs.

Sometimes Cakewalk will show the version of a plugin, sometimes not. Sometimes it will show only the VST3 when both VST2 and VST3 is installed, sometimes it will show both. I am talking about the plugin browser.

This happens with the upcoming versions of Soundtoys plugins, which will now include both VST2 and VST3. The version is not shown for both VST2 and VST3, and for some plugins both VST2 and VST3 are listed in the plugins when 'Hide Related VST2 plug-in' is ticked. I have communicated my findings to Soundtoys and they had this to say:

Quote

 

Thanks. This is likely the same issue that we were seeing with Reaper with the VST3 UIDs of plug-ins that have spaces or special characters in their names.

VST3 versions have 128-bit unique identifiers that can be specially defined to signal that a plug-in is equivalent to a VST2 version. Unfortunately this is scarcely documented and defined, resulting in different hosts handling plug-ins with spaces/special chars in their names differently. Cubase appears to handle this by removing non-alphanumeric characters from the plug-in name for the purposes of generating this UID. We have chosen to implement this in the way that Cubase handles it, since Cubase users have no choice but to migrate to VST3 on Apple Silicon.

Since Steinberg are also the developers of VST3, I’m considering their implementation as “correct” absent any other information. In my testing, Studio One handles things the same way. I think Reaper has a change in the works that will fix this as well. So I think any fix for this would need to come from Cakewalk/BandLab with respect to how they match plug-ins with non-alphanumeric characters in the name.

 

 

[Jim Fogle]

@Jacques Boileau,

Thank you for sharing the feedback you received from Soundtoys.

[user 905133]

53 minutes ago, Jacques Boileau said:

I have communicated my findings to Soundtoys and they had this to say:

Quote

VST3 versions have 128-bit unique identifiers that can be specially defined to signal that a plug-in is equivalent to a VST2 version. Unfortunately this is scarcely documented and defined, resulting in different hosts handling plug-ins with spaces/special chars in their names differently . . . . 

Since Steinberg are also the developers of VST3, I’m considering their implementation as “correct” absent any other information.

 

Sounds like an opportunity for CLAP developers to avoid this kind of issue and to get it right!!!

[scook]

1 hour ago, Jacques Boileau said:

Sometimes Cakewalk will show the version of a plugin, sometimes not. Sometimes it will show only the VST3 when both VST2 and VST3 is installed, sometimes it will show both. I am talking about the plugin browser.

This depends on the VST3 migration settings in preferences and whether the plug-in developer supports automatic VST2-to-VST3 migration.

[Jacques Boileau]

4 hours ago, scook said:

This depends on the VST3 migration settings in preferences and whether the plug-in developer supports automatic VST2-to-VST3 migration.

Yes, for 'Replace If Possible on Project Load' you need support from the plug-in developer. But to clean up the list of plugins by eliminating VST2 when a VST3 is present ('Hide Related VST2 Plug-Ins' option) it might be possible to enhance it.

[azslow3]

17 hours ago, Jacques Boileau said:

Since Steinberg are also the developers of VST3, I’m considering their implementation as “correct” absent any other information.

In the perfect (or at least logical...) world, what they document should be "correct":

https://steinbergmedia.github.io/vst3_dev_portal/pages/FAQ/Compatibility+with+VST+2.x+or+VST+1.html

For programmers: note there is NO character filtering in the name converter, the name is used verbatim.

But Steinberg's world is not perfect nor logical.  Steinberg at some places implement things not according to there own documentation (so I will not be surprised if they use different function in Cubase).  And since the documentation does not describe many details (f.e. in which encoding plug-in name should be...), developers just guess what they should do. I wish all developers abandon VST3, I know that is not going to happened any time soon. But there is already one "major" DAW which support LV2 on Windows ?

 

[Bill Phillips]

20 hours ago, Jacques Boileau said:

This happens with the upcoming versions of Soundtoys plugins, which will now include both VST2 and VST3. The version is not shown for both VST2 and VST3, and for some plugins both VST2 and VST3 are listed in the plugins when 'Hide Related VST2 plug-in' is ticked. I have communicated my findings to Soundtoys and they had this to say:

Are you asking about problems you've experienced with SoundToys VST3 plugins or problems you expect to experience? I ask this because I just verified that the version 5_5.3.7.16421_64 that I have for SoundToys V5.3 is the latest version available to me and it doesn't appear to include VST3. No VST3 versions installed and the installer doesn't reference an install location for VST3.

I'm asking this because I've been hoping that VST3 versions would become available but haven't found them.

[Jacques Boileau]

4 hours ago, Bill Phillips said:

Are you asking about problems you've experienced with SoundToys VST3 plugins or problems you expect to experience? I ask this because I just verified that the version 5_5.3.7.16421_64 that I have for SoundToys V5.3 is the latest version available to me and it doesn't appear to include VST3. No VST3 versions installed and the installer doesn't reference an install location for VST3.

I'm asking this because I've been hoping that VST3 versions would become available but haven't found them.

I am talking about the next version. They have started an open beta, so anybody can try them out and report bugs, which I did. An open beta is available to anyone and usually mean that they are a month or two before a final release.

If you search this forum you will find info about it, that is how I learned of it.

You are correct that the current release (5.3.7) does not contain VST3 but the next release (5.3.8) will.

Edited August 14, 2022 by Jacques Boileau

[Bill Phillips]

5 hours ago, Jacques Boileau said:

I am talking about the next version. They have started an open beta, so anybody can try them out and report bugs, which I did. An open beta is available to anyone and usually mean that they are a month or two before a final release.

If you search this forum you will find info about it, that is how I learned of it.

You are correct that the current release (5.3.7) does not contain VST3 but the next release (5.3.8) will.

Thanks. Good to know. Thanks for doing the beta testing. I'm glad to see VST3 versions coming.