I’m trying to understand why some kid with a wordpress blog is able to make and sell a $20 VST bridge that is better than the bridge offered by the company that invented VST technology. Does anyone know why/how this can be possible? Steinberg could probably hire this guy really cheap for this one project and have a flawless bridge built into Cubase… although I can’t understand why they aren’t able to do it themselves.
Cubase’s vstbridge
= 4GB for all 32-bit plugins together
= Only one 32-bit vst Gui displayed at a time
= Instability
jBridge
= 4GB per 32-bit plugin
= Multiple 32-bit vst Guis displayed at the same time
= Stability
I dont know why but, I can say jbridge works 100% better than Cubase 6 built in bridge. I was having lots of troubles with the Cubase 6 vstbridge. I decided to try out the demo and an hour later bought the full version…All my 32 bit vsts work flawlessly now…The guy who programmed jbridge really deserves some credit! Great great product!
I must admit. Cubase 6 would not bridge 10% of my plugs. It would load a few, then crash. Same thing kept happening. Sitting in anticipation to see the new looking project and waiting for my plugs to load. It took almost an hour before I decided to give up with the vst-bridge. Ran jbridge and was up in running in less than 5 mins after loading all of my 32 bit plugs for the initial first time. Don’t know how it works so good, but i’m sure glad it does.
The best thing would be for all plugin manufacturers to produce 64 bit version as there is always some risk with 32 bit plugs not working , even with jbridge (Jamstix 3 causes some issues for me for example).
I’ve been banging on about the VST Bridge this since the dawn of 64 bit Cubase (Cubase 4 if memory serves me). Steinberg simply won’t respond to logic! Meanwhile, we (the paying customer, user, whatever!) continue to get a raw deal here!
I was amazed when Yamaha tech support told me the VSTBridge is not a supported item! It’s almost like he was saying “It’s not supposed to work you goof”… I wish there was a JBridge for mac. Oh well…
It is a well known fact, and the pinnacle of irony, that Steinberg’s VSTbridge is the worst one out there. jBridge is much better, but also not perfect, as there are too many plugins out there and only 1 developer working on jBridge. Solution? Use x86 cubase, and VSTi that use lots of ram (samplers, romplers) bridged through jBridge giving them access to more ram. At least that’s what I’ve found to be the least painful experience, after pointlessly trying to use x64 cubase for 2 months. In this time I’ve also learned of another problem; many x86 plugins that actually do work in vstbridge use significantly more cpu in the x64 cubase version. Ofc, there’s always the option to only use x64 plugins, which would be the ideal solution, but as we all know, they are still far from widespread.
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
In my W7-64bit system (I’m still on 5.5.2-64bit), some 32bit plugs & VSTi’s J-Bridged successfully, others were more stable with VST Bridge. I still receive J-Bridge errors on occassion.
I think we have to acknowledge that we’re in a transition state at the moment, while plugin manufacturers gradually migrate to 64bit, and the ongoing hard times mean that developers are more likely to pile work into new whizzy marketable features to get more sales, than a most-likely free upgrade to 64bit versions of existing products.
So nothing in the meantime is going to be ideal. jBridge works well most of the time (for me it’s a life-saver with Waves plugs - and they are arguably the biggest plugin developer, who are not only not 64bit yet, but also don’t work with Steinberg’s VSTBridge even!).
I’m not sure, but I think Steinberg’s bridge is more efficient than jBridge when it works. jBridge uses a rather round-the-houses technique of sending the audio over an internal network protocol back to the host (Cubase), which Steinberg might see as too inefficient to adopt with its latency overhead. I dunno, that might be absolute rubbish, but there must be some reason Steiny don’t go that way, and in the meantime we’ve got to make the best of what we’ve got and ride it out until all the plugs we use are 64bit. Using the 32bit version of Cubase just seems too retro to me - I want to be there dragging the plugin developers into the new era and stride onwards and slightly to the left!
I emailed the developer about this yesterday and he said he is currently working on a mac port of jBridge that will hopefully be ready in a few months. Although, he did say there is still a lot of work left to do on it.
Yeah, I’m REALLY hoping Waves steps it up and starts converting to 64-bit. I read somewhere that they said it will still be a very long time before they make the switch… apparently their reason was that they just have too many plugins to convert. I just got a mac and I guess I’ll be stuck using 32-bit Cubase with the ram limiations until the mac jBridge port drops because I need to use Waves plugins… SoundToys too.
Still, I figured Steinberg would have a masterful grasp of VST since they developed it and would have a flawless built in bridge… which would be a huge sales/marketing point in my opinion. Maybe they’ll improve it with the next update.
I’m sorry but that’s just paraphrasing Steinbergs official response on the matter, which most here know very well, and which was proven wrong after a heated debate on the longest SB forum thread ever, which not only got actual news coverage, it also got steinberg to reconsider and finally improve the vstbridge to where we are now.
This did help the matter quite a bit, and kudos to SB for listening to their customers (for once), but this “transitional period” is starting to sound like wishful thinking; just look at waves 8. Released now. Still 32bit. If x64 was the standard SB wants it to be, we’ would have been much further along by now IMO. If this problem plagued all x64 DAW’s, then things might be different, but as things are now, this is only a problem of cubase x64 users, and we’re obviously not incentive enough for companies like waves (etc.) to make the update.
When is a computer system NOT in a “transition period”?
No. 64bit OS has been here for what 5 or 6 years? It’s obvious with ALL the third party development that a 64bit DAW will NEED to bridge back to 32.
I own 2 VIs that do not have 64bit…BFD2 and NI’s ancient B4. The B4 works fine with the built in Bridge. BFD2 crashes it every single time. FxPansion told me it’s 100% Steinberg’s bridge at fault…third party bridges work fine. I donwloaded the demo of JBridge–it seems to work, although, I have run into some oddness here and there. I’ll probably buy it, because I’ve never found a drum lib I like as much as BFD2.
…or I’ll just keep both versions of C6 installed…using the 32bit one when I need to do drums, render as audio and move it to 64bit.
Anyway–“transition period” is just a cop out. They had the bridge in the C4 beta (that frankly I’m still sore they didn’t make a reality)…then C5…the big 5.5 update…now C6…at this point, it should be 100% solid. Maybe it would help if there was a sticky thread where people could post specific plugs that don’t bridge correctly. That way Steiny has a running list to troubleshoot–there’s no way they can test everything, right?
So, there you go-my entry…BFD2, latest version and older 2.1…causes the VSTBridge.exe to hang (not responding)…ON EXIT…so, you can use it…it hangs on exit–which hangs the app and prevents saving. If you task manager kill the process, I think it will come back and allow you to save. Or maybe just allow you to remove the plug and then save–one of the two. FXPansion seems to know what the deal is–why don’t you just ring them up. I’m sure they’d like it fixed as much or more than Steiny.
…and yes. I don’t even own Cubase 6 yet and I can say that it still sucks.
Do yourself a favor and get jbridge for BFD2. I have it, I use it, my system is complete x64, and I love it. yes, it is still a little CPU heavy, but nowhere near the 18% CPU and hang on close that it used to. (now around 6-8% CPU).
For those people giving 64 bit a hard time. It’s stable, it’s great, I love it, and I won’t be needing 32 bit from 6 months ago on out. Since I’ve moved, 4 plugin manufacturers that I use have put out 64 bit versions. Going 64 takes a bit of work, but it’s like an endorphin rush when you’re done. Yer hooked.
Waves is overpriced, bloated pluginware (and yes I do use it )… and you are using only Waves as an example of this 64 bit “problem”. Personally, I don’t give a sh!t what Waves thinks of us. There are plenty of x64 plugins out there that work just fine.
64 Bit will be the standard, possibly even within a year, and then 32bit users will be behind the bar.
I’ve ditched the Waves plugs a-l-o-n-g time ago…with their WUP policy. That was it for me. Plenty of other plugs out there that meet or exceed anything the Waves plugs ever did.
Steiny’s Bit bridge sucks donkey’s gonads BIG TIME!!!
In fact is sucks like yo’ momma!
Why can’t they just offer they guy a deal and licence it from him is beyond me!
Yes, correct. In comparison, Steinberg’s bridge sucks and it sucks big. However as someone already mentioned, Jbridge is not perfect. We can only hope for more 64bit plugins from manufacturers.
