I’m looking for a workaround or patch that would let Sibelius, which only supports VST2 plug-ins, load Pianoteq 9, which now provides only a VST3 version.
As far as I understand, Sibelius requires a .dll (VST2) file, but Pianoteq 9 no longer includes one — Pianoteq 8 was the last version to offer a VST2 build.
Has anyone found a VST2–VST3 bridge or another solution that would allow Pianoteq 9 to work inside Sibelius? Any insight, patch, or workaround would be greatly appreciated.
That’s not what jBridge is for, it is for letting you run old 32-bit VST2 plugins in a 64-bit VST2 system.
The Sibelius team should really be prioritizing VST3 support, they should have had it long ago already. Everybody else is supporting VST3 now. Even Band-in-a-box, which is traditionally very slow at bringing in newer technologies, started supporting VST3 earlier this year.
There are quite a few solutions out there that let you host a plugin inside another plugin. Vienna Ensemble Pro for instance, but that costs $$. There is the free AudioGridder that might work too - I haven’t tried it. But really Avid should fix this.
I would suggest to just stay in version 8 of Pianoteq for now and keep the pressure up on Avid.
I haven’t personally tried any of these in Sibelius in a long time but you can give them a try (Though I did use Bidule for years with Sibelius to bridge in VST3 versions of HALion/Groove Agent on Windows systems, and it worked).
Free Options:
I’ve had some luck with this Juice based bridge with some older hosts before. Seems like I had to try different versions posted at KVR until I found the best one for my system. I started with the latest version 1.3.1, and worked backwards. Seems like with most hosts the latest one was fine, and with some hosts I had better luck with older versions.
I’ve checked out Kushview Element, and it did a good job. Only problem is this one will filter out program changes for its own use (which might actually be good if you want to manage a list of complete VSTprests via PC events). So, if your plugin needs direct MIDI Program Change events to pass through for some reason, I’m not sure how to get Element to simply pass those through to plugins that it’s hosting (maybe there is a way, I simply did not figure it out). Element - Kushview
Audio Gridder is an amazing piece of software that’s free. It’s a bit like Vienna Ensemble Pro in concept. It hosts plugins in its own sandboxed server (can be on the same machine as your DAW, or off on another machine), and provides VST plugins to communicate with the instruments there (through IP networking protocols). It’s also great for helping hosts that can’t seem to manage multiple CPU cores well. Sandboxing your instruments in AG can help with that. AudioGridder – DSP servers using general purpose computers and networks
Not Free:
Bidule has been one of the best investments I’ve ever made when it comes to music related software. It’s a swiss army knife of a plugin It can bridge different plugin types into a host, and so much more. Bidule
It can bridge different plugin types into a host, and so much more.