How to find out whether a plugin DLL is VST2 or VST3

Cubase
1

Often, I find on the internet free plugins which come without a setup.exe.
Therefore I need a way to figure out whether these are VST 2 or VST3 to know to where to install them.
I could not find any articles or forums posts or utilities to help me with this.
Does anybody know the answer?

2

Hi,

DLL files are always VST2. VST3 plug-ins have the *.VST3 extension.

1 Like
3

and how to find out whether the VST DLL is v2.4 or earlier version?

4

Well, that’s generally true, but I’ve also had developers provide a single dll that they also have you copy and rename the extension to vst3 and put in the VST3 folder and works as both VST2 and VST3.

That certainly doesn’t mean you can do that with any VST2, so if you can’t get a clear answer from the developer, I’d generally assume any dll is yes, just a VST2.