Why are version 2 plugins not supported in Cubase Pro 12?

I have purchased a lot of version 2 plugins from Universal Audio and don’t understand why they are not supported in Cubase Pro 12. I have to resort to using Cubase Pro 11 in order to use what I’ve paid for. This IS NOT RIGHT!!! Can this be something that’s considered a bug and be changed? C’mon Steinberg! Help us out with this!

Hi,

No, it’s not a bug, it has been announced. Here is (one of) the official statement:

Ok. I get that. Use Rosetta 2 on M1 Mac mini. What about a PC?

Version 2 still works on a pc. It could be 2 years before v2 is removed. By then all plugin makers should have updated to v3

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Hi,

I can confirm. On Windows, the VST 2.4 (and above) plug-ins are working the same way as it was in Cubase 11.

Thank you everyone! My anxiety level just plummeted.

Randy

Thanks so much, Martin.

Thanks Mkok!

I believe that Steinberg announced upcoming end of life for VST2 more than five years ago. Developers have had a very long time to prepare.

Re UAD there is some talk here:

This is something that will really impact my workflow as I have many UAD plug-ins. There are now a handful of UADx VST3 plug-ins available. These do not run on UAD hardware. Who knows how long Universal Audio will take to port them all over. I really need DAW that will support VST2.4 plug-ins. I’m slowly learning Pro Tools. If Cubase 13 doesn’t support VST 2.4 then it is unlikely I’ll upgrade unless there is new UAD hardware that supports VST3.

For now, Cubase 12 works fine on my MacBook Pro M1Pro.

You can open VST2 plugins in Cubase 12 on MacOS (Cubase running in Native mode) using a wrapper like Blue Cat patchwork.

I don’t know about Universal Audio plugins that run directly on UA hardware, but I think it should work.

Hi,

Another way is to use Vienna Ensemble Pro hosting server, what I found the best “wrapper”, because it’s not a wrapper at all.

That may be much better, since the VST2 plugins you open with a wrapper, with Cubase 12 running in Native mode, have to be written for Native mode.

But you could have Vienna Ensemble Pro on a separate Intel-based computer… or I guess on another MAC with VEP running in Rosetta mode… OR I suppose on the same MAC as Cubase, with VEP running in Rosetta mode on that same MAC.

Options.

Sorry for coming to this chat late but I’ve just purchased a UA Twin Apollo X which comes with a number of UAD plug-ins. I have a Mac Mini M1 running Cubase 12 and when Cubase 12 starts opening, the flash screen indicates Rosetta is selected (I’ve checked this in Applications/Cubase 12/Info…and the Rosetta box is checked) but when I open a project in Cubase 12 and look for the UAD plug-ins, they are nowhere to be seen. They do appear listed under Plug-in Manager, but do not appear in any of the Insert folders (Dynamics, etc.). Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong? I have contacted UA and they have replied instantly, explaining this whole business of VST2/VST3 compatibility with Cubase, etc. but Steinberg have not replied at all. I would really appreciate it if someone could help me out. I have updated and authorized the UAD plugins on the UAD console, so that’s not the issue, and the first time I opened Cubase 12 after installing those plugins, I could see Cubase was checking - and I presume incorporating - all those plugins. It may be a simple solution, but I cannot fathom what the issue is…

Hi and welcome to the forum,

To me it sounds like you have custom plug-in collection created. Is this the case? If yes, try to switch to the Default collection, please.

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I agree with randy_underwood in the first post here, and I think this is weird because this is a choice made by Steinberg, to not support VST2 on specifically Apple Silicon, while other DAWs actually may support VST2 on Apple Silicon. So it’s not impossible. I have a lot of older plugins and they work fine in Studio One 6 on Apple Silicon, for example Toontrack EZMix 2 that does not support VST3 on Apple Silicon. And when running Cubase, I cannot use EZMix 2 at all because of this Steinberg choice. And it’s infuriating at times :confused:

The VST2 option may seem useless to some people, but while others feel abandoned since they invested largely on a very stable Mac OS platform running Steinberg Cubase, and have vast amounts of legacy plugins. Apparently Steinberg thinks this is a non-problem, but I disagree.

Therefore I’m more and more reluctant to upgrade at all. I’ve been using Cubase since 1990, and have been very lojal! But once I had to move to Mac because of strange Cubase bugs, I suddenly had to realize that Steinberg does not care for legacy support - so I had to switch to another DAW.

I’m sure this is not all good business for Steinberg, but that’s their choice.

And for those of you not feeling it’s a problem - good for you :wink:

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I don’t think you should put all the responsibility on Steinberg for this. Software technologies and standards is a fast changing field and to think a piece of software from decades ago will run fine on the latest and greatest OS might be too optimistic.
Take your EXMix 2 as an example. This software was announced in 2012, if I’m not mistaken. That’s 4 years after Steinberg released VST3. Why would they release a new major version on a platform that is destined to become obsolete? Toontrack has had 15 years to update their software to the current standard.
I understand the frustration but I also think there’s two sides of the coin.

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