How Does Cubase Distinguish Between x64 & x86?

I have many VST’s and VSTi’s installed as both x64 and x86 versions because I also use Ableton Suite. Of course, I have separate VST Plugins x64 and VST Plugins x86 folders where I install the appropriate plugins and tell Cubase 5 x64 to see both (because some of my plugins are 32-bit only). My question is, how do I know which version of a certain plugin shows up in Cubase 5 x64? For instance I have Plugin “X” in both folders and Cubase 5 x64 is seeing both folders, so how do I know if that plugin is the 64-bit or the 32-bit version?

This can be a pain if you have a lot of plugins. I would suggest not having any unnecessary 32-bit-only plugins in the x64 path, and for those that you really need, make new copies of them in a seperate folder and point C5x64 at that as well, instead of at the entire x86 folder. This is not as easy as it sounds with plugins that have installers, of course, but perhaps you can locate the 32-bit plugins and copy the DLLs?

Another way might be, assuming that most 32-bit-only plugins will be VST2, you could move some into a subfolder of the main x86 plugin folder (which will change the hierarchy of how they appear in the VST rack as well unfortunately) and then point the x64 Cubase only to that subfolder.

One final idea might be to use JBridge, that way you can give C5x64 an x64-only folder as well as a JBridge’d folder, and from what I’m hearing that might be a little more stable, depending of course on the plugins, and the 32-bit plugins get to stay where they are; you’d JBridge only those that you wanted to use inside C5x64.

As to what Cubase does when it finds both a 64-bit and a 32-bit version of the same plugin (e.g. as with Kontakt 4), well, I don’t know – but I would try to avoid doing this at all costs!

This is the way I have it set up. I have a JBridge folder for the original 32 Bit plugins. I have a target folder where the created bridged files go when you run the JBridger app.

Then I have Cubase scan the target folder for the VST2.x plugs.

This way, all my 32 Bit plugs have [jbridge] prefixed upon them and they are not only easy to spot, but they run very efficiently as opposed to the VSTBridge.

This is also the suggestion made by John Walden in his article on the subject in January 2011’s Sound On Sound.

are there known 32bit plugins (i heard waves v7 are) that behave bad in Cubase x64 especially when jbridged?