To add to this, a little call out to Daniel:
If you could add Play by East West to the list of VST2 plugins that Dorico will be able to work with, you’d make me a happy little boy … Play is the sampler of all of EW’s virtual instruments, which are magnificent … the Hollywood series in particular. Very spectacular in terms of sonic quality, and ease of use.
I’m actually not 100% sure whether Play is VST2 or VST3, trying to figure that out.
Thanks!!
Play is VST2. Some people have problems with it, so maybe less likely to be white listed. VE Pro would avoid the issue if you have it.
But if you don’t have it, that’s another €235 to shell out to get Dorico to use your existing sample libraries. No thanks!
And you need a hardware dongle (another 25 euros or so).
It would seem, in regards to the topic in question, that Steinberg is at least making a conscious decision. Vendors that chose not to go VST3 made such a decision too, and as is the case here quite a few people complained about that. I am sure they stand by their chosen path, as should Steinberg in my opinion.
VST 2.0/1999, 2.4/2006, 3.0/2008, 3.5/2011
VST 2 SDK maintenance discontinued in 2013
(Wikipedia VST)
It is now May 2016 and there is plenty of support from vendors in regards of VST3, so Steinberg is not going back. IMHO, any complaints ought to be sent to the vendors that refuse to go VST3 or they never will (maybe they won’t even then), which would mean that eventually you’d be forced to change system in order to actually remain on VST2.
Why do I feel this way? Because I like the VST3 functionality. It rocks, literally! 
“I want to converse with replicants, not pedaling a box propelled by a combustion engine invented 150 years ago.”
I beg to disagree boldly. VST3 might be the better technology, for sure, but the reality is, VST2 is still widely in use. And with just not supporting VST2, one just creates lots of completely unnecessary trouble for the Dorico user just for a “technology war”.
All the end user wants is to use his or her tools without problems. And even if we get the plugin vendors to convert their products to VST3 “just” for a notation software, which is most highly unlikely, it will take a considerable amount of time and it will involve quite some upgrade cost for the end user as well.
When VST2 really went out of use, then it will be the time to drop host support, but not any earlier! Otherwise, the user suffers.
It will be interesting to see if Cubase 9 drops support for VST2
I have The Grand 3 and Dark Planet (running Windows 64-bit & Cubase 8) and I can only access VST3 versions of these, but the website says VST2 is supported.
Lots of VST instruments etc are only VST2 and obviously plenty of older ones and those in existing projects. They really should enable a choice and maintain backward compatibility for VST2
Goodness!!..I’ll be most displeased having spent most of my month’s paycheck on EWQLSO and Choirs and cannot use it in Dorico. East West is NOT a baby in the music industry at all. I am certain, though, that EW will convert to VST3…they HAVE kept up to date in the past, so I hope they will convert to VST3 soon as well. But, Steinberg should whitelist PLAY as well. I’m with Peter Roos on this one!
Agreed.
As VST3 is now 8 years old, pretty much all sample developers have dropped the ball on this one. However, the workaround is to use Vienna Ensemble Pro to connect and load PLAY in that. As a matter of interest that’s what a lot of users do when working with Cubase, Pro Tools, Logic, etc. anyway, and it has the advantage that you only need to load your template once and you can use the same template for multiple programs.
Hmmm. Now here’s a thread I wished I’d dipped into earlier…
It’s going to take me a month or so to get up to speed with Dorico and no question, the Halion samples are more than good enough for sketch work. So it’s not a problem right now but long term: no Play? no Pianoteq? And yet I can call them both up in Cubase? What gives?
Is this a battle of wills we’re seeing here? Forcing manufacturers to upgrade (I think Pianoteq have specifically said they won’t implement VST3) or miss the boat? At what stage might implementing the VST2 bridge that Cubase adopts be an option for Dorico?
maybe a nice solution for Dorico´s VST3 ?
=> you can use Blue Cat´s “Plugin Chainer” - this plugin supports VST2.x FX and Instruments:
.
You can whitelist any VST2s that you want. Kontak is whitelisted by default.
that means I can use NI´s Kontakt VST2 in Dorico?
Yes, correct.
Hi Daniel:
What about EW Play - is that still on the list as well?
And, if I may suggest, EW’s Spaces as well. A spectacular convolution reverb, which is right up there with Altiverb (but at a fraction of the cost, and as a software reverb). I know you love the shiny knob of the Halion reverb, but Spaces has some really fancy shiny knobs as well.
Thanks!
In order to include your needed VST2 (not tested from Steinberg)
quote from an another thread :
you have to add in this file (vst2whitelist.txt) the name of the VST2 plugins you want to use in Dorico. For example if you want to use “Model-E.dll”, add this to the vst2whitelist.txt:
Kontakt 5
5653544E694F356B6F6E74616B742035
Model-E
00000000000000000000000000000000
Here_theName_of_the_plugin_you_want
00000000000000000000000000000000
be sure that Here_theName_of_the_plugin_you_want is the name of the file providing this plugin: for example Model-E for Model-E.dll, if you do not know the id of the plugin just like in the example enter this number 00000000000000000000000000000000 (32x zero).
and restart Dorico…
I’m using El Capitan 10.11.6, and this solution doesn’t seem to work. Adding new entries to the whitelist does nothing, and moving/renaming it only ends up removing Kontakt from the available VSTs.
could you please zip up the contents of following directory:
$TMPDIR/VstAudioEngine
in this folder we can get information about which VST2 plugins are refused…