VST3 Bundle backward compatibility

Developer VST 3 SDK
1

Hi Yvan,

in the 3.6.10 SDK the Windows plug-in is now placed in a ‘bundle’, ala macOS and the old way is deprecated.
Might this not break compatibility with hosts that expect the old location ?
Ideally they should be scanning the VST3 folder and its descendants, but I’d prefer to be sure and not ship two installers.

Also am I right in interpreting the doc that

MyPlugin.vst3/Contents/x86-win/MyPlugin.vst3

should be present only in

/Program Files (x86)/Common Files/VST3/

and

MyPlugin.vst3/Contents/x86_64-win/MyPlugin.vst3

only in

/Program Files/Common Files/VST3/

Thanks!

2

Hi,
we have checked nearly all hosts we are aware off and every host worked with bundles out of the box. No exception found.

Cheers,
Arne

3

Good to know, thanks !
By the way and FYI the new SDK is up on github but not here 3rd-Party Developers Support & SDKs | Steinberg.

4

It will indeed work with existing hosts because they already scan subfolders and will still find the .vst3 files, just a few levels lower than before.

What was the reason to change this btw? Forcing some structure on where plugins put their resources?

5

Hi Arne,

Did you check Cycling 74’s Max? On Windows 10 it does not seem to find/load the new bundle style VST3 plugins. For example, the “helloworldWithVSTGUI” plugin that is shipped with the SDK. Anyone else having this problem with Max on Windows?

I have reported the bug to Cycling 74 but perhaps you can also let them know so it gets fixed :wink:

Thanks,
Steven

6

Here we are in 2025. Apparently Samplitude Pro X8 Suite (the latest and greatest) still does not descend into the bundle-folder structure if a project previously used a plugin stored in the old format. I found that Pro X8 Suite failed to load IK Multimedia’s recently updated Lurssen Mastering Console, now stored in a bundle, when opening a project that used to load Lurssen when stored as a file, the old non-bundle format which was deprecated in 2018. After renaming the bundle so that it wouldn’t clash with the plugin name, I moved the plugin up to the level of the top of the bundle, and Voila! The project loaded the plugin. I found exactly the same thing with MF-108S (Moogerfooger Cluster Flux).

7

Hi
Did you inform the Samplitude developers?
Cheers

8

Hi Yvan,

Yes, I did.

They responded just today that they had fixed the problem with the latest patch (24222) which I have installed already a few weeks ago. It is not a complete fix because to complete the job, one has to delete a VstPlugins.ini from the folder:

C:\ProgramData\MAGIX\Samplitude Pro X8 Suite

In other words, start over again. I am testing whether or not this actually works right now. Many of their “fixes” don’t actually work. In fact, when one deletes the file above, it gets restored from somewhere, so the file needs to have all the plugin information deleted out of it.

Sorry for the lenthy reply, but I wanted to provide information in case other Samplitude users come here like I did searching for information about backward compatility of the the bundle format with Samplitude.

Regards,
Dave

Update (27 Jan 2025): No surprise, testing failed.