Steinberg stock plugin side-chain and Waves bug

Nuendo
1

OK, this is a weird one that has been bugging me for a while. I just recently discovered how to reproduce.

With just a Waves stereo plugin (vst3) on a mono channel, every thing works fine. But when I insert a Steinberg stock plugin that has side-chain capacity (compressor, gate, expander etc) anywhere in the project, the right (unused) channel of all stereo waves plugins (that sit on mono channels) start to peak with levels of 380dB.

This seem to only affect waves plugins in conjunction with Steinberg side-chain enabled plugins. It might be a Waves issue but it only happens when I also use Steinberg stock plugins.

This doesn’t matter much for linear type plugins (eq) but seriously destroys everything dynamic or pitch etc. Using a mono waves plugin solves the issue. But it would be easier to work with just one plugin instead of mono and stereo versions, with vst3 it should just work, right?

To reproduce:
Create empty project.
Create 2 mono channels.
On channel one insert a stereo waves plugin, like REQ4 stereo or Stereo Deesser.
On channel 2 insert Steinberg compressor.
Watch the meters on the waves plugin.

Best regards,
Johannes

Nuendo 12.0.70
MacOS 13.1
Waves 14.0.0

2

No, not necessarily so, and especially not in case of Waves et.al. who supply dedicated mono/stereo/multichannel versions of ther plug-ins for one reason or the other. Mind you, this is not working the AAX-way, where multi-channel tracks can be processed by coupled mono plug-ins with ease.

3

Yeah ok, but the stereo versions work just fine with every other plugins apart from the Steinberg stock plugins with side chain. I can be a bit scary to have a project that suddenly stops working when inserting a stock plugin. It might be a “feature” of the Waves plugins as you suggest and I should know better and plan for that. But I’m still curious if this is a bug that can be fixed.

For me it seems more convenient to be able to copy plugins and complete channels between mono and stereo channels. Also I would like to shorten the length of the plugin lists…

best regards,
Johannes

4

+1! We’ve been asking for reliable “auto-grouping” for any (mono) plug-in to any number of channels for years. VST3 should actually offer this, but in reality it is completely dependent on the manufacturer’s implementation.