Will Steinberg ever clean up the VST3 API?

Steinberg Lounge
1

I have wondered why devs have fought the VST3 API for years now and in the last few months I’ve read many threads by several VST developers where they candidly admit that the VST3 API is not the clearest and most consistent they’ve encountered (surprisingly, Avid’s AAX currently holds that crown, outside of the PACE code that is…) and that often requires clever workarounds to counter the deficiencies.

The difficulty of implementing VST3 and the limited additional functionality it offers over VST2.4 are the most common complaints.

So as a customer who is VERY interested in VST3 functionality (in particular the sidechaining and multi-channel capabilities), I was wondering if Steinberg is aware of this (likely) and if they are planning to do anything about cleaning things up to make VST3 more attractive, rather than just resorting to a heavy-handed deadline approach to enforce compatibility -i.e.: announcing VST2.4 will be discontinued “soon”.

I am not a programmer, but surely the multitude of devs holding out on VST3 can’t just be a bunch of lazy programmers; the latest discussions I’ve read clearly demonstrate that devs are forced to work hard to compensate for the limitations in the API.

It does a disservice to everybody involved, customers, devs and themselves, for Steinberg not to clean up the VST3 API; as a standard creator, Steinberg bears the responsibility to make VST3 as clear and as effortless to implement as possible.

2

Heh. Sounds like Cubase.

3

I don’t think after all these years, that this is the core of the argument for not supporting VST3, or at least that was not the case a couple of years back. There is something else that has been brewing out there these past few years… and the arguments are unfortunately more often with customers (wanting VST3).

(But that is just my opinion of course, but as you I have spent many past years in-the-field, so to speak.)

Also, I’d like to know about the specifics of these claims of limitations in the VST3 API, in comparison to the VST2.4 API. Since Steinberg was also the creator of the previous VST versions, this would be very interesting to know. I.e. the specifics, not a run-around dissertation on some obscure dislike. :wink:

4

Not being a programmer as well, my analogy to this whole topic is
like when jazz went from Dixieland to BeBop.
or in physics: Relativity to Quantum mechanics.

Some of the old players just couldn’t hang.
They simply didn’t have the chops.

{‘-’}