Yes. I’ve been using JBridge here and it works fine.
that adapter is the wrong way round
this adaptor/wrapper is mainly meant for hosts that don’t support vst3 plugin
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This is my experience so far while trying to find a suitable and future-proof solution for hosting VST2 plugins in a VST3-only environment:
- JBridge: I contacted the developer some months ago. He wasn’t very interested at that point in extending JBridge to support VST3 wrapping. A real pity because, in my opinion, this would be the cleanest and better solution, as it would allow us to even go from VST2 32-bit plugins straight to VST3 64-bit.
- Blue Cat’s Patchwork: I’ve been testing this specifically as a VST3 fx and instrument in Cubendo. Worked very nice so far, lots of features and few compatibility problems, but maybe kind of overkill and expensive if you simply need a VST2 > VST3 wrapper. Also, you lose the possibility of identifying which plugin is being hosted by only looking at the Cubendo mixer, something common to plugins hosted inside another plugin.
- DDMF, KushView, X42: All these seem to be based on a generic JUCE host which, in my experience, doesn’t work very well in Cubendo, and cause unexpected crashes. Also, some plugins are not correctly recognized and can’t be opened.
- Bidule: I haven’t tested this yet, but the concept looks similar to Patchwork on paper, with some of the same pros and cons.
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One might add Vienna Symphonic Library’s “Vienna Ensemble Pro” to the list. This app is most useful for hosting virtual instruments, of course, but it will also happily open any kind of VST-plug in (VST 3 support coming any day now), and even AU (on Macs).
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Old thread but I’m revisiting to add that Bidule is doing a good job of bridging VST2 plugins to VST3 hosts (Cubase Pro 12 and Dorico 5 for me) now.
It’s been very stable. Only ‘quirk’ about it to me is that in order to get more than 2 audio inputs and 4 outputs I needed to do a quick tweak in windows registry (plist for mac folks). Now I get 4 inputs and 32 outputs in Cubase and Dorico.
We started years ago to throw out all companies that couldn’t offer vst3.
No matter how long you can muddle through with vst2, these plugins are no longer supported and will cause errors and crashes in the future because they are not adapted to the respective new operating systems.
I would therefore no longer start new projects with vst2 plugins. In 4 years you may need these projects again and then there may no longer be any possibility.
What is still possible today may no longer be possible in 4 years. We’ve now had many years to change. We have radically replaced and removed these vst2 plugins.
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I am down to two that I haven’t found replacements that I’m happy with yet but ya, I’m doing the same thing. If a company can’t be bothered to update to VST3 then I’m going to find another plugin to use if possible. There really isn’t an excuse, the VST3 standard came out 15 years ago. A company saying “We won’t update to VST3” would be like a company saying “We only support Windows Vista” we are talking about technology from that long ago.
I have a feeling that if Steinberg does actually go through with killing off VST2, they’ll get off their butts and update. For all the whining I’ve seen about it being difficult to implement a new plugin format… they all implemented AAX when Digidesign suddenly said “Know what? We have a new plugin standard for our DAW going forward.” Companies just sucked it up and released AAX versions because they had to.
Totally agree, and same here, but still down to two VST2 instruments that will not be updated, for which Bluecat Audio’s PatchWork may be a solution. One of these VSTi’s is basically a sample player, so over time, I can revisit the old projects and render the tracks for archival. The other one is more problematic, because what it does is rather unique, and therefore I would like to keep using it.
This is why many of us in the pro audio world, always, always, always RENDER any MIDI instruments into an audio file. Future proof.
Once a performance has been approved as final, there is absolutely no reason to keep it as MIDI or as a virtual instrument. Commit, and move on.
The ones that thus far are nearly irreplicable for me are from Garritan libraries. It’s not that every instrument of the library ‘en total’ is all that great, but it covers so many instruments that no other product ever has, and probably never will. Most certainly not at that price point (just a modern string section library these days can cost more than the entire Garritan Ultimate collection…even if you throw in the ‘not cheap’ flagship Abby Road CFX grand piano)!
I’ve looked around, and frankly, I can’t find replacements for stuff supplied in the Concert And Marching Band collection: Sousaphones, Mellophones, Baritones/Euphoniums, field-battery percussion across a good 80+ years of drum shell/head evolution, etc. All that stuff comes in COMB2 in soloist and section variants (lots of samples from different players/horns, so you can pile stuff on and not suffer so much from the waveform ‘cancellation’ issues we get from modern and ‘expensive’ libraries that only have one or two of each instrument/player sampled in the box). Most of it comes with different mutes too…even decent wawa and plunger simulations.
The Garritan harps are still pretty darn hard to beat. I’ve tried much newer libraries 8 times the size (up to five mic positions for example) but they are PITA to ‘mix’ and generally sound ‘out of place’ unless you use them with a ‘matching’ pre-mixed companion library made in the same studio by the same people. Even then, they’re not quite as ‘complete’ in terms of articulations, dynamics, and harp playing effects that come in the box.
The pipe organ collection is still quite useful. Again, it includes scores of organ ranks from around the world that no one has ever sampled before, nor since, and they’re still very ‘useable’.
I’m constantly reaching for Garritan for Brass and Winds (mixed and matched from all of the various Garritan Libraries). Modern sound sets ALWAYS have a ‘hard edge’ to the trumpets…like the bells are going to rattle off! Nice for an ‘epic’ score, but sometimes we just want a boring, mellow/round/mature trumpet sound that’s ‘centered’ in pitch and doesn’t ‘swell’ and start ‘forcing vibrato’ into notes (whether you want it or not). Modern libraries always ‘go flat or sharp’ on the attack and sound like tounges are wagging out the end of the bell (yes, even if you use the softer ‘layers’). With Garritan, you use an extra ‘overlay’ patch doubled in an ARIA slot ‘if’ you want that ‘brassy edge’ to crossfade in and out of passage. Leave the overlay out, and it’s a nice, sweet, mellow, tone with a more ‘centered’ fundamental pitch, more like a ‘military wind band’ would use.
Several things in the world instrument collection come in handy on a regular basis. Again, quality can vary on some of these, but it’s an ample collection there to experiment with ideas and work up a solid sketch.
The Jazz and Big Band set is still very useful and quite expressive (Drum kits kinda suck unless one tweaks the SFZ files a bit, but the rest is still quite viable for doing Jazz/Swing…anything with Trumpets/Bones/Saxes…a few unrivaled specials like a very expressive Flugel horn). Solid options for a wide variety of mutes on these things. Extraneous noises can ride controllers (valve clatter, wind seep, etc.). Quite frankly, there’s nothing else like it on the market, and it’s one of the most MUSICAL libraries I’ve ever messed with.
It’s true that Sforzando comes in VST3 and can host these oldie but goldy Garritan libraries, but it’s only single channel, and quite often it’s much better to have the 16 channels and 32 audio outputs ARIA provides to work with (bouncing articulations and textures around from a single score track, or setting up ‘overlay layers’ [like described earlier to get the ‘epic’ brassy sound])!
Kinda irks me that MakeMusic won’t build a modern VST3, 16 MIDI channel, 32 output SFZ player (or pay Plogue to do one). I know it’s an OLD library…but it’s still a go-to tool box for so many projects. I’d ‘pay’ for an ‘upgrade’ to get a modern player for these old SFZ libraries. They get used that much in my projects!
Another perk to them…one can pile on dozens or even scores of tracks and still use less CPU and memory than just one or two instruments in the most ‘modern’ libraries that cover these sorts of instruments. Even on an ancient single core sub 1ghz CPU with say 2gig of ram, 30 to 60 tracks isn’t a problem.
For stuff that’s old and no produced/sold anymore, it makes me sad but I understand. I am not going to get up on a company for not updating an old product, even if I still like it. Thankfully I don’t have any of those at this time.
What gets me is that the two I have are current, on sale now, products. They also both have AAX versions, and AAX launched in 2011 with ProTools 10, whereas VST3 launched in 2006 with Cubase 4. Both were also released initially well after that.
That’s where I get angry where lack of VST3 support is just a “Oh we don’t wanna,” thing. They supported AAX because they had to, and they still sell the software, they just don’t want to update to VST3.
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Then again, every DAW on the market works just fine with VST2 cept maybe Cubase/Nuendo/Dorico on M1/M2 macs (that can’t or don’t wish to run Rosetta)?
So they’re still supporting 99.9% of the hosts out there.
I have about 5 hosts installed on a Windows machine, and for now, every single one of them runs VST2 just fine. All of them but the Steinberg ones have VST2 working on M1/M2 Macs without Rosetta now (or allow using au plugins instead).
I’m just bridging a few things ‘now’, so hopefully I can still get my stuff working if I upgrade to VST2less Steinberg hosts in the next year or two and stuff like Garritan still hasn’t made the jump.
I also NEED the bridge to use HALion 7/Sonic 7 in my VST2 only hosts (the majority of them). HALion not coming in VST2 put a serious dent in my workflow 
I thought implementing more HALion sounds in more work across the board would be a good investment and provide some consistency in the sound pallet. Instead it’s been a major PITA. Another reason I hold off investing in Iconica, seeing as the player doesn’t work in quite a few industry standard hosts out there anymore.
Still no perfect solution I’m aware of. However, regarding what I said above, I’ve been participating on the beta testing of Kushview Element for a few months now, and I must say that it has come a long way to postulate as a serious contender for the perfect wrapper: fully modular, complete PDC support, embedding of third-party plugins, and very stable in general. I think the developer is eyeing a final v1.0 release to the public sooner than later.
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