Cubase Windows project uses Spectrasonics VSTis (Keyscape, Omnisphere, Trillian). I open the project on Cubase Mac, unfreeze, and the interface does not load. “No parameters found”.
Fresh instantiations of the plugins work fine.
All the instruments’ sample etc are in place and registered.
Any suggestions please?
thanks
Maybe in the older (frozen) tracks you had VST2 versions which for some reason you’ve uninstalled?
The issue was using Cubase Mac in Apple Silicon native mode which I understand does not use VST2 plugins.
SOLUTION: To use VST2 plugins on Cubase 12 Pro Mac, launch in Rosetta2 mode. Then for each VST2 plugin, save the preset. Launch in Apple Silicon mode. Add the VST3. Load the preset. Laborious!
FEATURE REQUEST: Cubase Mac in Apple Silicon mode please recognise VST2 plugin and load its VST3 Apple Silicon native equivalent if found? (eg. Spectrasonics Keyscape, Omnisphere, Trillian)
Cubase already does that if the plugin developer took the necessary steps to make the VST2 and VST3 versions compatible. Sadly, several developers don’t do that and it seems that Spectrasonics belongs to them (i remember another thread with a similar problem with Omnisphere)
Hi,
VST 3.0 came out in 2008 [Wiki]. 15 years later, some plug-in developers are still using VST 2. Why? They are also not writing software for Windows 7. I don’t get it…
Please, ask the plug-in developers to follow the latest standards.
Firstly, Keyscape is already available as VST3, but also as VST2, because some Hosts don’t support VST3 (or not fully/unstable).
Why? Imho because Steinberg failed to convince that VST3 offered any real benefits for plugin/hist developers compared to the complexity of porting to it, and the cost of that.
A lot of developers don’t like VST3 because it is quite over engineered and complex, documentation was sparse for a long time, and it lacked features compared to VST2, especially with regards to MIDI processing, and from what I’ve seen on developer forums, communication wasn’t always helpful or constructive, more like “our way or the highway”…
Only when JUCE started offering support for VST3 and Steinberg resorted to legal measures (stopped issuing VST2 license) and brute force (not supporting VST2 on Apple Silicon) adoption rates for VST3 started to climb.
Just my 2c…
This isn’t a wish for Spectrasonics to offer VST3 versions of their plugins. They do.
It’s a wish for Cubase 12 Mac Apple Silicon to see a VST2 instance in an opening project and offer to substitute its VST3 equivalent because VST2 is not supported.
You say it’s up to the plugin developer? What is your source for this statement please? It seems to me that the plugin developer would have no mechanism because Cubase 12 Mac Apple Silicon will never open their plugin. It’s a function that would need to occur in the host, to see the VST2 called for in the project and communicate with the VST3 plugin instead?
Then maybe the VST3 plugin needs to confirm that it can handle being substituted for the VST2 version?
Any docs on this I can forward to Spectrasonics please?
HI, here’s an old thread for Sonar, but the idea is basically the same:
https://noelborthwick.com/2014/01/22/developer-notes-sonar-x3-vst3-internals/
I actually think that I’ve noticed such migration to NI’s plugins inside Cubase. I’m not 100% sure, but I will when back to my PC.
https://steinbergmedia.github.io/vst3_dev_portal/pages/Tutorials/Guideline+for+VST3+replacing+VST2.html
(granted, in the earlier years the VST3 documentation has been quite absent, but this has changed in the past few years)
The host must of course also support this, but Cubase does that and has been doing this for years with VST3 plugins that are prepared for VST2->VST3 migration.
Due to this issue I’ve had failed continuity of VST2 to VST3 plugins with Wallander NotePerformer, EastWest Spaces II. and XLN Audio.
At least in the latter case the developer now understands the issue and is addressing it …
The way a DAW project with a lot of plugins loaded works is that inside of the project file, each plugin is stored with a unique numerical ID, which allows you to transfer a project between different computers and operating systems. When loading one of our VST3 plugins in macOS versus loading it in Windows, the ID’s that identified our products were different. That’s why the projects failed to transfer between Windows and macOS: from the point of view of the DAW, our plugins on Windows were entirely different products than our products on macOS. More investigation revealed that the reason for the ID’s differing was that we had built our products with very subtly different build settings, a certain preprocessor macro was set differently on the two platforms.
Steinberg have been a big part of the problem with changing licensing rules and requirement to give up VST2 commercial licenses for a commercial VST3.
And giving out GPL license that conflicting the GPL rules. Let’s hope that VST* dies and we are building plugins with some real standard that can be used on open system and commercial systems without interfering from third-parties.
You’re a dreamer, aren’t you ? 
Maybe. Maybe not. CLAP is at least some people that are working on a better solution.
And I have no doubt that free and cheap will win over closed.
Recent software updates from Spectrasonics claim “Adds support for VST2 to VST3 replacement.”
Yay!