Sure but there is no driver, it’s class compliant.
Thinking of using the 25H2 release as an excuse to do a fresh reinstallation of my DAWs, from scratch. I don’t NEED to do this, but I am very frustrated with how many plugins I have accumulated. It’s honestly overwhelming at this point, and I think it’s been distracting me from being more creative and productive. I want to reverse course, simplify my installations to only install the best of the best… basically start from a clean slate.
“Executive function overload” is a real thing! 
Well good luck with that! You know Black Friday is just around the corner… 
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! Don’t remind me!!!
Every year I promise myself, “this will be the year when I don’t buy a bunch of plugins and libraries on Black Friday,” and every year I pretty much fail.
But THIS year will be different. I already have everything I want and need. More than enough. Do I really need anything else? No. No. NO! I will just limit myself to upgrades this year. JUST upgrades. ONLY upgrades. EXCLUSIVELY upgrades. I promise. 
Suuure it will!
25H2 update here went just fine and only took ten minutes. I did have to go in to Windows Control Panel > Sound > Speakers > Properties > Advanced > “Allow Exclusive” - DISABLE
and
Also the same under Windows Control Panel > Sound > Recording > Properties > “Allow Exclusive” - DISABLE
They were both checked after the update. After unchecking them everything seems fine.
Well, I “sort of” did that in building my new Windows 11 system and choosing which plugins (and versions of other software) to install. I’d had my previous PC for almost 11 years, so, not only did I have a lot of plugins, including freebies that I never really ended up using (or maybe did at one time), but some of those plugins got plenty of upgrades over the years and changed names as they went along – e.g. iZotope Ozone 6 (maybe even earlier), 7, 8, 9, 10, 11; Arturia Piano V, V2, V3; etc. And, of course, I had VST2 versions of all the plugins that were old enough in addition to the VST3 versions.
When I say, “sort of”, other than plugins I never expected to use again, I did install pretty much all my plugins (if they were still available to install – I think there ended up being two or three casualties that I would have preferred to still have). However, I only installed the most recent version I had of plugins and software, for example, Ozone 11, Piano V3, Cubase 14, no old versions of SONAR, just the new version, etc.
Here’s the rub, though:
The other day I needed to do a quick remix, specifically to generate stems through a different mastering chain than the older stems I had. The original stems had been created for a 2021 single of the song, mixed in Cubase 11. Last year, though, I did a remaster in Cubase 13, starting from the unmastered mixes, rather than the underlying project for an EP, and I liked the sound of the EP version better – the only difference was the mastering chain. I’d start from my Cubase 13 project but disable the unmastered mix track and reenable all the underlying tracks, including submixes and effects tracks. It would be a good test for my new system, because there was a lot there (and my new system came through with flying colors on the performance front).
But there were a few small catches that kept this from being as quick a remix as it should have been. For one thing, the Arturia Piano V was missing – I substituted Piano V3, but it didn’t have the same preset as I’d noted having used (though I think the one I used was at least very close). Another was that two plugins showed up as missing, PSP MixTreble2 (only available as VST2) and PSP X-Dither (was VST2 in the older project, but they’ve since made a VST3 version, and I could easily recreate the settings I would have used, so no big deal). With MixTreble, though, I’d have to substitute another exciter to try and approximate the effect I got with MixTreble2. I’ve got plenty of options, and I tried them all, listening to the master from the EP to at least have a reference for the vocal sound, trying to get as close as possible. Easier said than done, and the best I could do was “close enough”. (Even if I’d had a VST3 version of MixTreble, I might have had to experiment because of settings. If I’d installed the plugin on the new system, and also installed Cubase 13, and maybe Piano V, the remix should have been more of a no brainer.) So I also had to render new full and instrumental mixes, instead of just the stems, as I wanted the stems to match the mixes as closely as possible for the sync opportunity I was doing this for.
Had I been just upgrading from WIndows 11 24H2 to 25H2 on the same system, I wouldn’t have cleaned anything out for the express reason of remixes and compatibility with older projects. But I did want to start fresh on this new system, and, despite this issue, I’m not going to go back and install the older software. (Not that I didn’t install some quite old software, including some that are no longer available for purchase and are no longer supported by the developers. Some required some significant workarounds to install but are still my “go to” packages for their specific functions. The Garritan Stradivari Violin and Gofriller Cello and SampleModeling Kontakt-based saxes are a few examples.)
Yep, I’ve experienced this same frustration many times. It’s the tradeoff of cleaning up and minimizing with a fresh new DAW installation. My strategy over the years involves several steps to keep my sessions more compatible (too many steps to list), BUT I am also not consistent with my own policies! Therefore I still run into this problem of course. It’s not too bad in recent years, but the problem can definitely get a lot worse when my plugin library starts spiraling out of control with too many options. Hence ANOTHER reason why I need to trim the fat again and get my systems nice and tidy again. They got a bit out of control this year, I hate to admit. So this 25H2 situation is a good excuse for me to clean up my act and start with a clean slate. Cross fingers I don’t succumb to Black Friday temptation this year!
If only Black Friday was just a day. We could hide out in the woods and deliberately forget to bring our mobile.
But they cunningly stretched out our misery to Pre- and Post Black Friday weeks.
Run for your DAWs, fellow engineers!
Same here. Most of my remix projects go back a lot farther – to my SONAR uses, so I’m having to do some work in SONAR to get files to bring into Cubase for remixing. SONAR hasn’t yet turned off VST2 support, so that has sometimes helped, though I mostly avoided letting VST2 versions of plugins get installed this time around (key exceptions were for plugins I knew I used a lot in the old days where I was installing the VST3 version anyway). But, back in those days, I wasn’t yet aware of what many of the backward compatibility issues would be. As for this latest thing it’s conceivable I could have used a frozen vocal submix from the original single project (if I had one – I often did on my old system for performance considerations at mixdown time). In any case, this sort of thing, and especially the no more VST2 plugins thing, at least makes me think a log more about additional considerations for my project archives. Most of the time, when I’m remixing, I don’t consider the plugins in use at the mix level, only the equivalent of what would be on tape since the idea is often that the reason for remixing is to make a significant upgrade in the quality of the mix (and I can certainly do better with my additional years of experience and upgraded “toys”). This one was an exception, though, since all I needed was updated stems.
LOL. I already have something in mind for Black Friday and/or end-of-year sales this year – if the price is right. Blame a free year of UAD Spark with one of last year’s year-end sale purchases.
Why? Why not just hit the on/off lightswitch for vst2 to “on” in Cubase 14?
And then use your preferred vst2 ver of MixTreble.
I thought I was pretty well sorted for Black Friday this year… just a few odds and ends and nothing expensive.
Then Spectrasonics announced Omnisphere V3 and UVI announced Falcon 2026! 
vst2 plugins can be used. Cubendo 14, 15, 16, 17…etc.
There’s always a seamless way…..just like running 32bit vst.00 plugins in Cubendo14. Piece of cake. jbridge, bluecat etc. Non issue in windows-land.
Steinberg just doesn’t want to hear any questions about vst2….out of their hair….don’t-call-us etc.
Works for me.
I do that every couple of years as my interpretation of “best of the best” changes every couple of years.
The current promo for Falcon is well worth it, it’s one of my go-to synths, love it. If you already have it, Falcon is a free update so thankfully I’m covered. So that one doesn’t count towards Black Friday for me. And Omnisphere 3 is a no-brainer in my book, I’ve been a Spectrasonics customer for a long time, like so many others here. But it is technically an UPGRADE so it also doesn’t count towards Black Friday. (BTW, check jrrshop for a discount for Omnisphere upgrade, right now it’s $169 instead of $199. I hope that’s not an error.).
So at least for these two, there’s no Black Friday hypocrisy for me. Any UPGRADES are fine in my book. 
I like your thinking. I’m going with it.
LOL. I said almost the EXACT same thing to @Reco29. Same here; I’m a bit excited actually.
Two reasons:
First, when you do that, Cubase will scan ALL VST2 plugins, not just the small number of ones that aren’t available as VST3. Thus, on my old system, when Cubase 14 came out, I made the decision to cut the cord with the few plugins I still used regularly that didn’t have VST3 versions (most were from PSP, but there were a small number of others such as NI’s Absynth). Prior to that point, I’d already gone through the trouble of hiding all the VST2 plugins (not to mention PluginNameX, when there was a PluginNameX+1 available) from my plugin menus, just to make sure I didn’t accidentally select the old ones instead of the new ones due to naming similarity.
Second, there is something to be said for burning bridges. And I couldn’t be certain that a Cubase 15 (or 16 or …) would even still support VST2 plugins the way Cubase 14 does. With respect to the PSP MixPack, which, other than maybe Absynth) was one probably my key set of plugins that was still VST2-only, PSP had already replaced PSP MixPressor with PSP Impressor and PSP MixSaturator with PSP Saturator. I never really used the PSP MixSync and only used PSP MixGate a little (I don’t use gates much in general and have a number of other options), so the main missing plugins were MixTreble and MixBass. I already had a number of options for those, for example from Waves, Overloud, and, more recently, Arturia and UAD, so I would be covered for new projects and normal remixes (i.e. as opposed to the type I just did to regenerate stems through a different mastering chain). I do hope PSP will update these plugins at some point, but, if not, it’s not a big deal. It does suck, though, that NI dropped Absynth so long ago and never got to a VST3 version. Then again, I’ve got SO many options for synths that there’s just one less synth to add to my option overload. And, for most remix projects where I used Absynth, I’d have at least frozen audio that I could use for a remix if I really wanted that sound. (That was true in a case on last year’s Christmas EP.) An even more common case on that front was all the projects I used Steinberg’s Virtual Guitarist and VG-EE on. (I didn’t even attempt to carry those forward on my new system, though they actually did still run under the new Cakewalk SONAR on my old system.)
I also didn’t install jBridge on my new system. Anything I have old enough to need a 32-bit plugin was done in SONAR, and SONAR still has their BitBridge converter built-in to deal with 32-bit plugins. (I think the reason I got jBridge on my old system was for some specific plugin that didn’t work right with BitBridge but did with jBridge. But whatever that plugin was – maybe the E-MU Proteus VX? – hasn’t worked for me in eons. I also had a freeware bridge that let DirectX and DXi plugins work as VST2 plugins for a few plugins I only had in that form. But I haven’t used those plugins in ages, either.)
Ultimately, I’ve still probably got upwards of a thousand plugins, with multiple options for most functional needs. I accept there will be little glitches here and there from stuff I either didn’t think to move or intentionally decided not to move. I’ll either cross those bridges when I come to them or just accept that I’ve permanently burned them down and use a boat instead. 
I dunno. The only vst2 plugins I have installed are installed to either a c drive folder called “vst2Plugins” or “vst2pluginsIHateButDontZap” (to simplify).
I can set Cubendo to ignore either/both folder paths. Cubendo isn’t going to scan any of them if I don’t want.
If you …in your case…just simply have a whole bunch of vst2 plugins in a big general pile (that you didn’t purposely “aim” to a preferred yes/no folder path during install)….why?
That would drive me batty.
At any rate, clean from-scratch os installs every couple of years is one way I housekeep these types of things and I have seamless use of vst….vst2…and of course vst3.
To each his own on approaches.
This. The beauty (or otherwise) of VST2 is that you can create as many plugin folders as you want and distribute your plugins across them accordingly. Cubase will only scan the folders you actually add to the list in the Plugin Manager.