Join the AIR Beta Programme (potentially a deal)

[Starship Krupa]

I woke up to this email today from InMusic/AIR:

"We've been listening to you and know how much you've missed using our classic plugins.

It's time to bring them back, better than ever, and we need your help to make it happen. Be among the first to experience the Apple Silicon and VST3 versions of our classic plugins."

Followed by a link that took me to a registration page that referred to it as an "open beta," and requested my name and email address.

The email also features an image of a sheaf of their instrument plug-ins, including my faves Hybrid 3, XPand!2, Vacuum Pro and Boom.

The ones I mentioned are not just my favorite AIR synths, they're my favorite synths PERIOD. And I'm not a total bottom feeder when it comes to soft synths, I have Chromaphone 3, Ultra Analog VA-3, and MASSIVE, among others, and Hybrid 3 and XPand!2 are still my best go-to's for inspiration (Hybrid's arpeggiator system is freakin ferocious).

I am cautiously optimistic about this development (no pun). In the past couple of years they released new synths that obviously leveraged some of the classics' underlying code, and while they're nice enough, they're basically cut down versions. But it indicates that AIR have at least hired some developers, and that they do good work.

Too many good plug-ins have fallen by the wayside during the transition to VST3 and Apple Silicon, so the fact that they're putting attention to these is good news. At least there will be these upcoming releases to update the dusty code.

They don't mention the #1 requested feature since the last major updates, which is a resizable UI. That has been screamed about so often on KVR that if they don't include it, people will be calling for boycotts of InMusic's entire product line.?Nor do they mention whether there will be any bug bounties that result in free licenses for people who submit unique showstoppers. It would also be nice to get a modernized skin for Hybrid 3; the current brushed aluminum one is starting to look a bit dated.

Of course I expect the subscription fear brigade to check in with assertions that this is a harbinger of subscription-only pricing to come.? But seriously, none of AIR's recent releases has been offered under that licensing model. And given AIR's history of decades between updates, there would be few takers.

I signed up, and when I know more, so will you....

[Starship Krupa]

DANGER!

I installed the beta, VST3 only, and it deleted all of the factory presets in the ProgramFiles(86) folder. This resulted in the synth only finding some of the expansion presets I've bought, and my user-created ones.

No sweat at my house, I just copied the preset folder from my laptop, but beware. Their traditional lameness in regard to installers is in full force.

[Starship Krupa]

Okay, in case anyone else gets their Hybrid 3 installation messed up by the new installer, I figured out what was up with the presets "lacking something," even after I restored them to the test system.

The installer also deleted my Program Files(86)\AIR Music Technology\Content folder, which contains the wavetables, phrases, and part-presets.hybrid files.

After I copied those back from my other system, everything worked fine with both the old VST2 and the new VST3 versions of the synth.

My recommendation is either wait for them to fix the beta installer or be aware that some of the resources may get deleted/moved from your current installation.

Also, at least at this point, the feature we've been waiting/begging for, the scalable UI, is not present, at least not at this time. It looks and acts just like the last VST2 version.

So unless you dig software testing (which I do), don't bother. It looks like the new version is also going to use iLok, so the only reason to grab the update would be if you're going VST3-only. I guess that makes it only relevant to Cubase and Apple Silicon users.

More news as it develops....

[Last Call]

This is great, I own 2 but never use them coz I am on latest Silicon Mac.

And if you say they are your favorite, I can’t that lightly!

Thanks for sharing the great news.

Edited May 8 by Last Call

[kricho]

Public Beta 2 available

https://www.airmusictech.com/beta-download/

[Tianzii]

On 5/8/2024 at 12:05 AM, Starship Krupa said:

I woke up to this email today from InMusic/AIR:

"We've been listening to you and know how much you've missed using our classic plugins.

It's time to bring them back, better than ever, and we need your help to make it happen. Be among the first to experience the Apple Silicon and VST3 versions of our classic plugins."

Followed by a link that took me to a registration page that referred to it as an "open beta," and requested my name and email address.

The email also features an image of a sheaf of their instrument plug-ins, including my faves Hybrid 3, XPand!2, Vacuum Pro and Boom.

The ones I mentioned are not just my favorite AIR synths, they're my favorite synths PERIOD. And I'm not a total bottom feeder when it comes to soft synths, I have Chromaphone 3, Ultra Analog VA-3, and MASSIVE, among others, and Hybrid 3 and XPand!2 are still my best go-to's for inspiration (Hybrid's arpeggiator system is freakin ferocious).

I am cautiously optimistic about this development (no pun). In the past couple of years they released new synths that obviously leveraged some of the classics' underlying code, and while they're nice enough, they're basically cut down versions. But it indicates that AIR have at least hired some developers, and that they do good work.

Too many good plug-ins have fallen by the wayside during the transition to VST3 and Apple Silicon, so the fact that they're putting attention to these is good news. At least there will be these upcoming releases to update the dusty code.

They don't mention the #1 requested feature since the last major updates, which is a resizable UI. That has been screamed about so often on KVR that if they don't include it, people will be calling for boycotts of InMusic's entire product line.?Nor do they mention whether there will be any bug bounties that result in free licenses for people who submit unique showstoppers. It would also be nice to get a modernized skin for Hybrid 3; the current brushed aluminum one is starting to look a bit dated.

Of course I expect the subscription fear brigade to check in with assertions that this is a harbinger of subscription-only pricing to come.? But seriously, none of AIR's recent releases has been offered under that licensing model. And given AIR's history of decades between updates, there would be few takers.

I signed up, and when I know more, so will you....

I hate when a VST consumes the CPU when not used.

I’ve started the cleanup process for my VSTs. No VST3 means that they’ll be deleted somewhere in the near future. I’ve kept only a few VST1/2 instruments and effects that are great, but still plan to ditch them or replace them with others in the near future.

AIR instruments are great and I’m suuper glad that I can upgrade them to VST3.

Xpand2, Hybrid3 and Vaccum Pro are great and powerful synths.

Edited July 26 by Tianzii

[Starship Krupa]

5 hours ago, Tianzii said:

I hate when a VST consumes the CPU when not used.

You'll probably hate to know that most VST3's still don't implement the feature where they shut off when not passing audio. I've only seen one developer implement it, and that developer also implemented it in their VST2's, AU's, and AAX's.

That ability is just a possible feature, developers are not required to implement it. Same with the other "new" features like UI resizing.

Steinberg only create the standard. They don't enforce it. It's up to the individual plug-in (and host) developers to implement the available features or not.

It's also possible (even common) to make VST2's that implement the "new" VST3 features. MeldaProduction's VST2's do the shutting down when not passing audio trick, and any number of developers' VST2's feature UI resizing, sidechaining, etc.

VST3 doesn't really add much, if anything, to what's possible within the VST2 spec.

It did create a canonical location for the DLL's, which was great, cured the eternal support issue of "I installed the plug-in and it doesn't show up in my DAW," but it also seemed to coincide with developers no longer supporting the API that populates hosts' preset managers with presets from the plug-in. VST3 uses an external preset system that fewer developers implement. It's turned into a situation where each plug-in has its own proprietary preset manager, which is a pain, 'cause you have to figure out where it is for every developer.

Sonar doesn't populate its native preset menu with the VST3 .vstpreset files, I know that at least S1 and REAPER do.

As long as your host(s) still support them, and they still function, there is no practical reason to stop using VST2-only plug-ins. I think Cubase and Nuendo are the only DAW's that stopped supporting them. And there are still some plug-ins where the VST2 version works with certain hosts while the VST3 version doesn't.

[Tianzii]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

You'll probably hate to know that most VST3's still don't implement the feature where they shut off when not passing audio. I've only seen one developer implement it, and that developer also implemented it in their VST2's, AU's, and AAX's.

That ability is just a possible feature, developers are not required to implement it. Same with the other "new" features like UI resizing.

Steinberg only create the standard. They don't enforce it. It's up to the individual plug-in (and host) developers to implement the available features or not.

It's also possible (even common) to make VST2's that implement the "new" VST3 features. MeldaProduction's VST2's do the shutting down when not passing audio trick, and any number of developers' VST2's feature UI resizing, sidechaining, etc.

VST3 doesn't really add much, if anything, to what's possible within the VST2 spec.

It did create a canonical location for the DLL's, which was great, cured the eternal support issue of "I installed the plug-in and it doesn't show up in my DAW," but it also seemed to coincide with developers no longer supporting the API that populates hosts' preset managers with presets from the plug-in. VST3 uses an external preset system that fewer developers implement. It's turned into a situation where each plug-in has its own proprietary preset manager, which is a pain, 'cause you have to figure out where it is for every developer.

Sonar doesn't populate its native preset menu with the VST3 .vstpreset files, I know that at least S1 and REAPER do.

As long as your host(s) still support them, and they still function, there is no practical reason to stop using VST2-only plug-ins. I think Cubase and Nuendo are the only DAW's that stopped supporting them. And there are still some plug-ins where the VST2 version works with certain hosts while the VST3 version doesn't.

Thanks for the info. Didn’t knew that. I thought that was a standard for VST3, to cut processing if no signal passing through.

Do you know how to test a VST3 if they implement that feature?

For me, it’s about fastness. Once I’ve cleaned up my VST folders, DAWs load much faster, scan much faster new plugs and for me is much easier search and find specific VST. But as you said, that’s not VST3 specific.

Edited July 26 by Tianzii

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, Tianzii said:

Do you know how to test a VST3 if they implement that feature?

For me, it’s about fastness. Once I’ve cleaned up my VST folders, DAWs load much faster, scan much faster new plugs and for me is much easier search and find specific VST.

I don't know if there's any way to test a plug-in to see if it's shutting down when there's no audio. Usually the people selling the plug-in make a fuss about it in the marketing blurbs.

Yeah, quick scanning, it's why if a plug-in installer doesn't allow me to install only the formats I want, I'll go in search of the unwanted formats and delete them.

[Joakim]

4 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

You'll probably hate to know that most VST3's still don't implement the feature where they shut off when not passing audio. I've only seen one developer implement it, and that developer also implemented it in their VST2's, AU's, and AAX's.

That ability is just a possible feature, developers are not required to implement it. Same with the other "new" features like UI resizing.

Steinberg only create the standard. They don't enforce it. It's up to the individual plug-in (and host) developers to implement the available features or not.

It's also possible (even common) to make VST2's that implement the "new" VST3 features. MeldaProduction's VST2's do the shutting down when not passing audio trick, and any number of developers' VST2's feature UI resizing, sidechaining, etc.

VST3 doesn't really add much, if anything, to what's possible within the VST2 spec.

It did create a canonical location for the DLL's, which was great, cured the eternal support issue of "I installed the plug-in and it doesn't show up in my DAW," but it also seemed to coincide with developers no longer supporting the API that populates hosts' preset managers with presets from the plug-in. VST3 uses an external preset system that fewer developers implement. It's turned into a situation where each plug-in has its own proprietary preset manager, which is a pain, 'cause you have to figure out where it is for every developer.

Sonar doesn't populate its native preset menu with the VST3 .vstpreset files, I know that at least S1 and REAPER do.

As long as your host(s) still support them, and they still function, there is no practical reason to stop using VST2-only plug-ins. I think Cubase and Nuendo are the only DAW's that stopped supporting them. And there are still some plug-ins where the VST2 version works with certain hosts while the VST3 version doesn't.

There are other useful features  of VST3 depending on your use case, ex Note expression, surround out, sample accurate automation, better remote support and while some plugins may support  side chaining I prefer  a standard approach without vendor workarounds etc.

Summary of new VST3  features: VST features

I don’t mind VST2 plugins  (in many cases it’s all the same) but the fact that a VST3 version is missing may be a sign that the plugin is no longer maintained.

i only install the VST3 version myself although these plugins generally tend to have more issues. It’s probably  because they are using  a lot of new code and  the situation should improve over time.  It’s already a lot better than it was 1-2 years ago.

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, Joakim said:

There are other useful features  of VST3 depending on your use case, ex Note expression, surround out, sample accurate automation, better remote support

All of these are features that have been implemented in VST2 plug-ins, and they are all features that vendors aren't required to implement in their VST3's.

They aren't "features of VST3," they're features that were already built into some VST2 plug-ins, then Steinberg wrote up a spec that recommended how to implement them going forward.

All Steinberg did was decide how they would prefer other people to implement certain features, then they wrote that into the spec. A big chunk of it came from the PreSonus extensions, most of which were originally conceived and implemented during the VST2 era. One of the big "new" features that Steinberg claimed for VST3 was sidechaining. I don't know when sidechaining first appeared in VST2's, but I do know that it was around a long time before the VST3 spec was published.

I have yet to see any plug-in with features that only became possible post-VST3. My system counts off over 600 plug-ins when the DAW does its scan. My toolkit of plug-ins includes suites from iZotope, MeldaProduction, and IK Multimedia, as well as a large number of plug-ins from brainworx, Waves, and other heavy hitters. With all of them, I can still install the VST2's if I choose, and with all of them, there is no difference in function between the VST2 and VST3 versions. I once heard that with some Waves compressors, in order for sidechaining to work in Cubase you have to use the VST3 version, but that's it.

Ask yourself: if VST3 allowed plug-in and/or host developers to do things that they couldn't do before, wouldn't they tell us how great their new VST3-only features were, to encourage us to upgrade to the latest versions? To my knowledge, the only company that's ever talked about how great the VST3 spec is is Steinberg themselves. Everyone else seems to see it as a pain in the *****, and it even inspired some companies to form a group and come up with a competing standard. I guess it's insurance in case Steinberg decides to pull the same stunt in the future.

In the long run it may save work for developers who want to implement features that depend on a lot of host communication, but I doubt that will ever make up for the extra work developers had to do to comply with a new plug-in spec. Their testing load for VST's effectively doubled once they started supporting VST3. As someone who used to make his living testing software, I can tell you that that extra labor is very much not free. More work into development and testing=higher prices for the end product.

I've yet to see any benefit to consumers or non-Steinberg developers in the move to VST3. There may someday be, if plug-in and host developers start actually using the extensions, but I won't hold my breath.

[mettelus]

3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

A big chunk of it came from the PreSonus extensions,

An interesting side topic from this was their implementation of Sound Variations (very akin to articulation maps) since SO5.2. While users can create these manually, it provided the ability for the vendor to embed them into the plugin directly so you can just open a plugin and boom, they are all there and mapped 100% accurately. I have reached out to a few vendors on some plugins with complex mappings and essentially got back "too difficult to implement" even though the vendor has the precise mapping in house to benefit the user tremendously (i.e., the vendor knows the "full map" while each and every user must fumble with creating one manually... although these can be shared, they are often lackluster in many cases). The intent was to save users a lot of time, but being linked to only one DAW it took off like a lead balloon.

As mentioned above with the VST3 spec, there is no requirement to implement the full feature set, which has also led to instances where a VST3 version may not work properly, but the VST2 version does. So much of this falls back onto the vendor side.

Quick Edit: The 8 minute mark in the above video demonstrates the ideal case for how Sound Variations can load if embedded by the vendor... simply open the instrument, and they are loaded automatically.

Edited July 27 by mettelus

[CSistine]

10 hours ago, Tianzii said:

DAWs load much faster

But nowadays projects load slower and slower, because the number of plugins that do automatic version check (internet access) is rising! What a stupid world!

[CSistine]

3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

but I doubt that will ever make up for the extra work developers had to do to comply with a new plug-in spec

And I doubt that the users will ever be compensated for the trouble they had to handle the issues with a 2nd format! ?

Another flash of wit: The new idea with this silly VST3 subfolder, do you think it will improve plugin scanning? It's really another stupid, sophisticated flop that makes scanning slower! The more folders the more slower, it's quite simple! That's why I also hate plugins that need/install a folder full of other stuff in the same folder as the plugin itself! That maybe okay if you just have 30 plugins, but who has that few? ?

[Starship Krupa]

11 hours ago, mettelus said:

I have reached out to a few vendors on some plugins with complex mappings and essentially got back "too difficult to implement"

Once I learned about the PreSonus extensions, I asked the Cakewalk devs about it and they had a similar response, but pointed out that they had already implemented some of them. Of course, ARA began life as a PreSonus-led extension, and Cakewalk has always been solidly behind that as well. An issue they cited was the one you flushed out, which is that the plug-in has to make use of it for it to be of any use to the host,

It's just the same as with VST3: if the plug-in isn't supplying the information, there's nothing the host can do.

To be sure, the ability for a plug-in to pass things like articulations and instrument names (a la drum maps) to a host would be reeeeeally useful.

[mettelus]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

To be sure, the ability for a plug-in to pass things like articulations and instrument names (a la drum maps) to a host would be reeeeeally useful.

What may or may not play into this is the ones I asked about have dedicate/proprietary playback engines. VSL onboarded with this even before the release of SO5.2 (what is demonstrated at the 8-minute mark in the video above), but it didn't seem to catch on unfortunately. From my perspective the marketing potential for VSTis to include Sound Variations (they could even say "Your DAW may call them Articulation Maps") would be huge for potential customers.... rather than the "Hey, figure out how our playback engine (or your DAW) works and you are good to go!" it would be "Get our cool instrument, and you will be composing to its full potential by just drag/dropping it into your host!" (all articulations and controls are exposed and labeled... contact your DAW if you cannot see them!).

DAWs will give access to things that are exposed to it by the plugin, but then a lot of manual work is (often) required as long as they are exposed (some proprietary ones are not). This is something each and every user must trudge through (sometimes for hours), and still may not be "right." I had a hunch when asking that some vendors would prefer forcing their playback engine on users, rather than let the users drive the playback engine seamlessly with their DAW... if Sound Variations were included, the user only needs to load an instrument and (could then) close the engine window, so users might never actually look at "the awesome GUI" created for it.

[Lamia6]

Hmm with the prices of their new synth plugins, even on sale, thinking it might be a good time to pick up a pack with the ones I'm missing (Loom II and Riser). Good that they are working on updating them, but the prices may increase after the fact.

[Starship Krupa]

On 7/26/2024 at 5:50 AM, Tianzii said:

Xpand2, Hybrid3 and Vaccum Pro are great and powerful synths.

They sound crazy good, especially considering that you can regularly pick them up for ten bucks apiece. They must have been outrageous compared to the competition when they first came out. Hybrid 3's ability to layer arpeggiators means that you can have patches where you hold chords and get a melody and bass line along with them. I built an entire song around that feature.

For AIR to go to the trouble of making VST3 versions must mean that even at the bargain bin prices, they're still cash cows, which is great.

[Kirean]

Have they said anything about making the UI bigger?

[CSistine]

8 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

They sound crazy good, especially considering that you can regularly pick them up for ten bucks apiece. They must have been outrageous compared to the competition when they first came out. Hybrid 3's ability to layer arpeggiators means that you can have patches where you hold chords and get a melody and bass line along with them. I built an entire song around that feature.

For AIR to go to the trouble of making VST3 versions must mean that even at the bargain bin prices, they're still cash cows, which is great.

The only thing that worries me is the login-authorization on new products! Meh!

Though I like the old products with iLok authorization, I don't know whether the changes also change the authorization (regrettably happened with several providers)!