A Steinberg-developed "Vienna Ensemble Pro"style plugin server leveraging Steinberg's ownership of VST3

The plugin server app Vienna Ensemble Pro. has become de-rigeur in most professional composers studio setups who work in film and the media such as Hans Zimmer and lessr mortals who also work with the typical huge sample libraries - typically made for KONTAKT - but also available in proprietary sample-player plugins like PLAY etc

Composers use Vienna Ensemble Pro to store huge orchestral libraries in a way in which the plugins get hosted OUTSIDE of the DAW itself. This has huge workflow advantages that can be ascertained simply by googling “Vienna Ensemble Pro”.

Vienna Ensemble Pro. has had a hugely significant improvement in productivity and workflow for countless composers and is almost just “standard” in the same way Pro Tools has been for the recording studio and film post production world.

However it is not without problems.

Were Steinberg to come out with their own take on a plugin-server they would have one big advantage - namely that Steinberg OWN the VST3 standard and specification. VST3 has been designed and discussed as being something designed very much for continual enhancement and one significant way it could be enhanced would be to provide built-in support for all the issues and complexities of running plugins in a client-server. type of arrangement.

This means issues such as saving changes to parameters in plugins hosted remotely, simplifying the whole management of hosted plugins ands DAW sequencer templates, and being able to run the audio and sample engine remotely on the server-end while presenting the GUI interface and automation parameters LOCALLY on the DAW itself - as if the plugin were being hosted locally.

Currently the three players in such client server systems are primarily: Steinberg (or Apple for audio units) , Native Instruments (for KONTAKT+NKS) and the makers of Vienna Ensemble Pro.

By Steinberg bringing out their OWN take on Vienna Ensemble Pro - they could ensure that many things get done “right” - and have everything much more seamlessly integrated into Cubase - because Steinberg would be writing the code for VST3, Cubase AND the new server app.

Now ideally HALION would be the ideal sampler type app to use here - and indeed would have to support such client server features - but its also clear that the vast majority of sample libraries are for the KONTAKT sampler and this isn’t going to change any time soon.

Not only this but NI clearly have an edge concerning the integration of their HARDWARE KEYBOARD CONTROLLERS with KOMPLETE KONTROL and thus NI have to be a key factor and collaborator in this process.

Of course by having a plugin server written specifically for Cubase (and VST3) it would add greatly to the USP of Cubase.

This would be incredible.

plus one million

Anything NI related is up to NI.
KONTAKT isn’t even VST3, good luck with that.

The idea of having Steinberg make a competitive software solution that uses slave computers, I’m all for.
Even a modern option to link several Cubase(pro) LAN computers would be welcome.