I think you might not understand how tiny 25H2 is. There’s almost nothing in it. It took about 1 minute to install on my system. The last Cumulative Update was 5 times larger than 25H2.
It may be called 25H2 but in terms of what it actually includes, it is a very very small update. Completely different from any of the previous feature releases that all had a ton of changes in them.
Same experience for me. Very fast update and does not seem to have changed any of my user preferences. First thing I did was uninstall copilot and co-pilot 365 right from the apps menu in settings.
Well, on my old system, “all over the place” (except that I’d create vendor-specific subdirectories) was generally the rule because I mostly just took what the vendor did by default, and some of those put them in Cakewalk’s VST subdirectory, some defaulted to Steinberg’s (even though I didn’t have Cubase at the time), and others would use a general VST directory I’d created (if there was no default) or would have their own default (it seems to me that Toontrack created one of those, and some plugins defaulted to that one, even though they weren’t from Toontrack). Not to mention that some were in a 32-bit plugins directory and others were in a 64-bit plugin directory, since, at the start of the 64-bit stuff, my own directory was just for VST plugins period, with no distinction. That started coming later when developers supplied both versions.
As for the new system, when I did let VST2 plugins be installed (really just for ones I used a lot for compatibility with old SONAR projects, or where the installation program didn’t provide the option to not install the VST2 versions), I mostly just took the defaults since I knew I wouldn’t be using them in new projects anyway.
But I guess that, on the new system, if I wanted to maintain a half-dozen-ish VST2 plugins, I could create a dedicated directory (as long as Cubase wouldn’t automatically include its own directory). Honestly, though, why? It’s like my old Volvo 240, which I drove for something like 22 years. But, in its last half or full decade of use, anytime something would break, it just got more and more expensive to maintain, and with longer waits for the shop to get parts. Ultimately, when I was on the verge of needing to replace my tires, I decided that, even though it was still a low mileage car (especially for that old of a Volvo), it was time to just cut the cord. I ended up with Subaru and couldn’t be happier.
The clean OS installs every few years would drive me batty – way too many preference-type things that wouldn’t come forward, along with way too many plugins (and other applications) to install. And, despite my 1,735 plugins by SONAR’s count (of course, most Waves plugins get counted 2 or 3 times due to mono/stereo/mono-stereo versions), and who knows how many sample libraries, I actually do use the majority of them, though obviously not on every project. Even ones I don’t use regularly (e.g. many of the electronica-oriented libraries NI KOMPLETE adds) and be something to experiment with when I’m looking for something different for a specific project. Sometimes a “new” toy (even if it’s one I’ve had around for years but just haven’t fully explored) can help get past an impasse.
But I definitely agree on the “to each his own” thing.
Thank you, I do. This is good to mention though. And it’s precisely WHY I feel confident I can use 25H2 as an “excuse” to start with a clean slate so soon after release, because fundamentally, it’s a small step from 24H2 and thus SAFE to do it, compared to other releases from Microsoft. Risk level is therefore very low.
In other words, if 25H2 were a “big” update, I would be holding tight to 24H2 for at least another 4+ months to observe the fallout from developers first, and I wouldn’t be touching 25H2 with a ten foot pole until I was sure it was safe.
Of course, I’m prepared for the rollout of more AI crap this year, and I’ll be watching closely to disable anything like that. Microsoft is Microsoft after all. But otherwise, I’m pretty confident Microsoft hasn’t broken our DAWs, drivers, and plugins so far this time!
Yup, agreed “to each his own” but for me, what you point out is one of the reasons why I do it every few years. If I don’t clear out the cobwebs from time to time, my projects tend to get messy. Maybe you have more discipline than I do, or maybe you’re more focused, but in my situation, things are a bit too crazy on my DAWs right now. Too much “stuff” and I’m coming to think it’s not healthy for me, personally.
And add to that this past year I added too many plugins, and it’s no surprise to me that my projects this year have been kind of all over the place, unfocused, and it’s showing in my quality and creativity too TBH.
And like I mentioned before about executive function, I now also find myself overloaded with options, and it’s distracting, and sometimes frustrating. That’s just me.
So in my case, the issues are related, and this 25H2 is the perfect excuse to do a clean sweep and really take a good look at my app and plugin library to streamline my systems so I can focus. At least that’s the idea. We’ll see if I’m successful. Sometimes it lasts for a while, and frankly it tends to fall apart every couple of years, especially around Black Friday time.
In fact, I’m ashamed to say that there are a few plugins and libraries that I bought last Black Friday that I haven’t really used yet. That’s kind of sad! I need to be more mindful about things like that!
But yes I totally agree about everyone having their own best way to do things!
Because you said MixTreble2 in its vst2 form can’t be found and/or used.
But it can.
1700 plugins in random places seems to be your comfort zone from what you describe.
The tradeoffs between doing a complete clean reinstall with some thought as to where you would like to place things…..weighed against your two very long posts regarding the way things are now seem to indicate you’re ok with your existing status quo.
But, at least in my case, there aren’t really many “cobwebs”. Everything I installed on my new system (and stuff I’ll install from herein) was intentional. Any future plugin updates that don’t just replace the original ones (e.g. due to the version naming thing) will help with compatibility for remixes, and I’ll hide them in Plugin Manager so I don’t inadvertently use them in place of the newer versions.
Here’s a case in point on the reinstallation, though: When I went to do a quick remix the other day, I got error messages about some missing “.wir” files. I really had no idea what “wir” files were at first, but the names sounded like impulse responses (e.g. concert hall names), and I figured out they were the Waves impulse response files for their IR-L reverb, which Waves Central didn’t install with the entire plugin library (and I hadn’t realized I’d need to reinstall manually), so another slowdown. After that, I realized they probably also didn’t reinstall the samples for their CR8 sampler (that at least can be installed through Waves Central, but it’s not automatic by installing the sampler itself). And, of course, this stuff was on top of a fair portion of a week of migrating all my other software (not just plugins, but also Office, Adobe stuff, financial stuff, etc.), migrating data files, reconnecting email accounts to Outlook on the new system, and so on – all of this with its unique requirements for moving authorizations, data, and in some cases preferences and templates).
LOL. I just took a look back at my mid-November through end of year purchases from last year. Let’s just say I “did some damage”, but, with one key exception (Roland EARTH Piano, which was an emotional impulse buy at $50 due to my long years using Roland pianos on the hardware side – e.g. MKS-20 and MK-88, and even my current live keyboard, which is a Jupiter 50), I’ve definitely made good use of everything I added, especially the free year’s UAD Spark that came with their Topline Vocal Suite (which I haven’t used on a final recording to date, but use all the time for work mixes prior to reaching the actual mix stage).
I understand this, but I’ve made the decision not to carry VST2 plugins forward for any ongoing projects. If PSP comes out with a VST3 equivalent, I’ll almost certainly get it, but, if not, I’ve got plenty of options for the functionality, and most of the time when I’m doing remixes, I actually do want to start fresh with audio processor/effects plugins (and sometimes virtual instruments if I’ve made significant quality upgrades for a given function in between the original production and the remix).
But, with the exception of where various vendors’ installers put VST2 plugins (and that’s really only about 3 or 4 places at most), and only those when I either couldn’t uncheck the option to install the VST2 plugin or chose to install it for a specific reason), nothing is random. The vast majority of this stuff is VST3 plugins, and those always go in one fixed place (or subdirectories of that one fixed place). I always separate sample libraries from the plugins, and those are on a specific drive in intentionally-named directories. (In fact, because I moved the sample libraries drive over from my old system, I could avoid reinstalling many of those libraries, though some of the software installations force installing those instead of just reconnecting them. Even in those cases, though, I just installed them the same places I’d had for them on the old system.)
I actually spent a few weeks planning all my reinstalls and migrations for the new system, precisely so I would be satisfied with my post-migration status quo while also minimizing rude surprises. But all that is mandatory when moving to new hardware. My problem with reinstalling on the same system is that it would require almost as much planning and time as moving to a new PC, but without the benefits of moving to a new PC (in my case, massive performance benefits since my old system was 11 years old except for the SSDs that replaced the original hard disks and a video card upgrade).
I hear you 
Good thing is you’re aware of it, and that’s the first step.. awareness….
I think it’s a good thing you’re doing and TBH I’m thinking of doing something similar if I build a new Windows machine and I’ll definitely do it if I buy a MAc Studio Ultra, I”m on the fence ATM deciding which direction to go with.
But I agree having 1000 of plugins can bring ‘Choice overload’ .
Good luck with the install and keep us posted.
M
Just a friendly question. How can you ever develop a sound/original style if you have so many plugins? When people come to you for work and they are doing so on account of your reputation for consistency, why does it make sense to have a thousand plugins?
It’s not targeted to folks who already have a good vendor driver that they went out, discovered, downloaded, and installed for their USB Audio Class 2 (UAC2) interface. Instead, it’s for:
Pete
It’s 2x the work. On-board audio is completely different from USB Audio Class 2. The data transfer mechanisms are not at all the same.
We asked for a UAC2 driver with ASIO interface, supporting both implicit and explicit feedback (something our current in-box driver does not do), all audio endpoints on the device, etc.
We have ideas for on-board audio, but nothing firm yet.
The nearly complete (functionally) Yamaha-authored, Qualcomm-funded, and Microsoft-managed driver source is also fully available under a permissive MIT license, which is nearly unheard of in the driver community. We hope this will also encourage others, especially when combined with the new ASIO license changes, to learn from and invest more in ASIO for low-latency audio.
Pete
The mistake wasn’t Jürgen’s, it was ours (Microsoft’s)
Some of the MIDI bits escaped the pen and got into 25h2. Not sure how, but we recently did a ton of branch changes, so I suspect a PR went into the wrong location. Now, the bits aren’t enabled by default, so unless you plug in a MIDI 2.0 UMP device, they won’t get in your way. If you do plug in a UMP device (like the Komplete Kontrol in MIDI 2.0 mode, or an Iridium/Quantum in MIDI 2.0 mode, etc.) just reboot and it will get reassigned to the correct (older) driver.
The MIDI bits in that release are a couple months old. But importantly, they aren’t wired through to the MIDI 1.0 APIs, so you won’t see those devices in WinRT MIDI 1.0 or WinMM MIDI 1.0. They also don’t have the final device names, so if used, would break just about every DJ app/device out there. (Apps like Rekordbox don’t let the user pick a MIDI input, they discover known devices by name)
Sorry for the confusion there. I asked Jürgen to pin a comment from me in the video so others will know. There’s a ton of interest in this, more than I thought, as I found out this week
As to the benefits, it’s much more than just MIDI 2.0.
And for apps using the new SDK, they also get timestamped messages, ability to send/receive multiple messages at a time in a block, virtual MIDI device app-to-app MIDI support, and more.
We’re fixing a couple last-minute (really, they came up just as we were ok’ing the release) bugs discovered by partners. Both are critical to fix before we enable this for everyone. Those bugs mean we won’t hit our November release date, so will be early next year instead.
Pete
Microsoft
Indeed it doesn’t make sense to have a thousand plugins for many people, from the perspective of someone starting out today, in 2025, but unfortunately that’s what happens over the course of decades doing this. Some of us have been around a LONG time, and over that time, many, many tools are purchased for various reasons.
For example, if I work with a client with plugins A, B, and C, I’ll usually end up buying A, B, and C. And if another client needs me to use plugins X, Y, and Z, then I’ll likely have those too. And so forth. It adds up over many years, and you collect the whole alphabet, even though you may only use a small subset of those on your own personal art. Same with DAWs. I have licenses for nearly every DAW on the market. Not because I use them all today, but because over time, I needed them for different projects. Some of those tools have also faded, stagnated, gone into decline, or been bought out by lousy developers, etc… It adds up there too.
There are many other reasons too… for example, some developers go out of business or get bought out by larger companies and are no longer maintained on the platform you use. Here’s a small example: I used filter plugins from Camel Audio for years, but lo and behold Apple bought them out in 2015, discontinuing Windows support.… those plugins on Windows may still work for a several years after, of course, but I’m not about to stop needing those kinds of filter plugins, so I buy filter plugins from OTHER developers. And so on… it adds up.
Another reason is searching for the “next sound” as technology evolves, some new developers come onto the scene with innovations, or better algorithms, leapfrogging their competitors, etc… and so over time you accumulate many of those too, for good or bad.
Another reason is how developers often “bundle” their plugins into larger and larger collections and over years you end up upgrading to these bundles rather than just buying one plugin at a time. Anyone who is a Waves Mercury bundle owner most likely didn’t start out as a Waves Mercury owner… that has 200 or so plugins right there today. And so forth. I started with my first Waves plugin back in the 90’s. That’s over 30 years ago. Yikes. 
And of course another reason is simply buying plugins during sales events like Black Friday. This is not necessarily a good reason to buy plugins IMO, unless you were really waiting for a good sale on a plugin you needed, but it IS a fact that people buy things on Black Friday, and it’s maybe more a commentary on society and marketing and consumerism, etc., than anything else, but it’s not uncommon – good or bad – for many of us to buy plugins we thought we wanted/needed on Black Friday when maybe we really didn’t need to.
Anyway, lots of reasons, everyone is different, but mainly over time you accumulate plugins, tools, gadgets, outboard gear, cables, accessories, doo-dahs, goodies, crazy stuff, fun stuff, dumb stuff, etc., and it’s inevitable that it happens to anyone who has been doing this a really long time for sure. Just like with anything else. A guitarist playing professionally for 30 years will likely have a LOT of guitars, pedals, accessories, etc.. It can happen more quickly for some people.
Now I do believe you are right that it CAN prevent you from developing a “signature” sound or style. BUT I don’t think that’s actually the main problem of having so many plugins for most people… a signature sound comes from you as an artist, something you cultivate and refine over years… the tools are secondary IMO. BUT if you consciously or subconsciously use all those plugins as an EXCUSE or allow them to be a DISTRACTION to your artistic development, then sure, it can be an impediment to developing your style. Everyone is different in that regard though.
Personally I think one of the biggest problems of having so many plugins is “executive function overload” which is what happens in my case, after all these years. I write better music when I have fewer options TBH. That’s just me. I know other people that feel differently.
Anyway, there’s no “right” way or “wrong” way to do this. After all, we’re all on our own creative journeys. But I do believe some (or many!) people will benefit by streamlining their plugin libraries, and after all these years, I find myself having to do that every few years to get back to a “clean slate” (or clean-ish state) as best as I can. I need to practice more self-awareness of this fact in my case. I have no problem admitting it. I’m realistic too, that part of my own artistic process is that I tend to go through cycles of minimization and then over-complexity, cycles that swing back and forth every few years. Is it a good thing? Sometimes, yes, as it challenges me. Sometimes NO, especially when it gets overloaded like it is now for me. But again, it’s just me. Everyone is unique.
Hence in my case, I feel this is a good time to clean house. 25H2 is a “minor” update in terms of DAW impact from what I can see. Perfect excuse to wipe and reinstall from scratch with intention, self-awareness, and creative focus on what I need to make music for the next big project.
So happy about this, Pete! Thank you for your continued efforts in this regard! Bravo! 
This and all you do with pro audio in general at Microsoft is one of the reasons I decided to focus back on Windows for now for pro audio, instead of Apple or Linux. I frankly LOVE what you have been doing in the community overall. Seriously. Please keep up the good work.
BTW, in the inevitable feature creep of AI features into Windows, may I suggest you please keep an eye on that so that pro audio folks like us can easily disable any AI features that will impact performance? Just a suggestion. 
I don’t want to see all your good work get undermined by overly aggressive AI developers at Microsoft.
I dunno. I’m in midi by 1984…bought my first full win daw (saw plus) in 96.
I pretty much at all times, have had fewer than 50 3rd party plugins around & installed…including vsti.
That said, my studio is historically for me only…so there’s that too.
You, sir, are amazing. I don’t know how you do it. That’s some impressive discipline.
Fair enough. I have been working with clients for a long time, so my situation is obviously different than yours.
But STILL, fewer than 50 3rd party plugins is monk-level self discipline.
I like the response @uarte made on this, and I’d echo some of what he said with respect to changes over the years. But here are my thoughts from my personal perspective.
First, with respect to “signature sound”, I am primarily a songwriter, singer, and piano player. To the degree I have a signature sound, the key common denominator will be my voice, which can be one of those “love it or hate it” type things, with a secondary aspect being my piano-playing style, which tends to be influenced by Elton John and various gospel-flavored styles. My songwriting can actually be all over the place stylistically, sometimes even within a single album (and I’m up to six full albums of original songs plus another full album of Christmas carol covers and somewhere north of 50 singles).
I’ve also been at this a long time, starting a Tascam Model 38 reel-to-reel (in 1984, if I remember correctly), then going to that along with a Korg SQD-1 (if I’m remembering the model number correctly), then Texture running on DOS, then Passport Designs MasterTracks Pro, alongside an ADAT for the audio side, then Cakewalk Pro Audio (around 2000) and SONAR, and now Cubase (initially starting with 9.5, but only making it my main DAW at 10.5). (A few others briefly in between, too.)
At one point when I was just MTPro as a MIDI sequencer and all keyboards and MIDI modules with the ADAT, I had a fully-populated Mackie 32*8 mixer – on channel vocals, and the rest audio outputs from MIDI gear. I’ve always wanted to get a full band sound, sometimes even more than just a typical band (e.g. orchestral elements) from whatever I had. So, for example, in the hardware days, I might have a dedicated drum module (initially TR-808 then a few different Alesis MIDI modules), a dedicated piano (Roland MKS-20 or MK-88), some modules focusing on synth sounds, plus some that were meant for more imitative sounds (e.g at one one point I was doing “guitars” with the Roland U-110 and/or U-220).
But I started switching to software-based instruments around the time Nemesys GigaSampler came along. It was the first piano that worked better for me than the MKS-20. I’ve gone through a few generations on virtual drums, but I mostly use Superior Drummer and/or EZDrummer these days, with loads of SDX and EZX expansions to suit any style I might be working with at the moment. On bass, I’ve used a bunch over the years, including Spectrasonics Trilogy then Trilian, but I mostly use IK’s MODO BASS 2 these days. Pianos are another area where I’ve gone through loads of possibilities as products improved over the years. While GigaSampler was my start on virtual pianos, I went through various NI pianos (starting with their Akoustic Piano – these days I also use all of them from the KOMPLETE Standard package plus some others for whatever is right for the project), Galaxy Steinway, the Garritan Steinway, Arturia’s Piano V, and, in the last year or so I’ve started using IK’s PianoVerse MAX as my main go to for acoustic pianos (I especially like their NY Grand, which happens to be a Steinway, too). These instruments just keep getting better as time goes on, though my main acoustic piano is almost always one that emulates a Steinway, with any others I use being primarily for flavors for individual projects.
Then there are guitars, electric and acoustic, strummed, picked, and otherwise played. This has probably been one of my biggest areas of adding pieces over the years, with some of those I use quite a lot today including those from Acoustic Samples, MusicLab, NI, and UJAM. And on the amp simulation front, I’ve also got lots of options, with the ones I use the most at present being NI’s Guitar Rig and the relatively new UADx guitar amps (I especially like Woodrow, which I’ve used on my latest recordings). But I do a lot of auditioning of options when I’m “trying to find the sound”, with the idea that I’ll know it when I hear it. Not being a guitar player myself, it’s not like I have personal experience in setting up amps and pedalboards to get a signature sound. I’m just looking for what will sound best in the context of any specific recording. My latest album mostly leans toward country rock, with a few other flavors mixed in, so it is fairly heavily (virtual) guitar-oriented, almost always with a core of drums, bass, piano, guitars, and either organ synth or both.
As for synths, I really like having lots of flavors available to me. I don’t actually use synths all that heavily in most of my mainstream work, but I’ll often use them as flavors, and playing around with different flavors (I’ve got the entire Arturia V Collection along with some synths from AAS an NI) can be inspiring. And, occasionally, I do more synth-oriented recordings, especially for creative cover songs (e.g. my sort of trailer-style covers of ColdPlay’s “Fix You” and CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising”). But they can also be textures in some of my more mainstream recordings, such as for power ballads, too.
Then there are orchestral bits, brass sections, and ethnic flavors…
As for the audio processors and effects, I’ve also gone through phases on this stuff, and it tends to be about workflow at any given time. My methods have changed over time, hopefully in the services of better results. For example. last year I did a remix of my 2008 Christmas EP, adding a few additional tracks, partly because I really loved the songs from that EP but was cringing at my production quality from 26 years back (both the original version of That Time of Year and the revamp, That Time of Year Rewrapped are on the various streaming sites should anyone be curious to compare). At that time of that original, I probably had some DSP-FX plugins, whatever was in SONAR at the time, plus a few other third-party plugins. I think I had the Waves Renaissance pack of the time, probably PSP MixPack, and Autotune, but possibly not much more. I know on the remixes I heavily used both Waves plugins, some specific UADx plugins, as well as some PSP plugins, and I did a lot of experimenting to try to optimize the sound I was getting on these mixes. It’s not like you’d see the results as being a different recording artist (no less a different songwriter) from the original EP, but the results were a significant improvement on the audio quality front.
Keep in mind, too, when you talk about the Waves Diamond bundle (which I have), they call it 86 plugins, but it may well add up to three times that number due to the stereo, mono, and mono-stereo variations. If all those plugins had those variants, that would already put you a quarter of the way to 1,000 plugins, and that’s not even counting some of the other variations such as Doubler 2 and Doubler 4. Arturia V Collection has 45 instruments. Many of the MusicLab virtual guitars have multiple versions, too, such as RealStrat Elite Standard and Elite, both with normal, 2 mono , and 2 stereo variants, for a total of 6 plugins for just that one instrument.
Then there are the ones that come with some other product that I either haven’t used to date (e.g. Groove Agent SE from Cubase), or maybe have only used on some unusual projects (e.g. NI Battery and Reaktor, both of which came with KOMPLETE).
Ultimately, at any given time, I tend to have a few go to plugins for each category I use frequently, but, even there, for something like guitars, it might be one Tele, one Les Paul, a strummed acoustic (or a couple of them for different flavors), a picked acoustic, etc. And I’m sure you know from your guitar player friends that one type of guitar is never enough. Nor is two or three or … 
Thank you for these precisions.
Certainly there is poor chance that Cubase 15 /windows take midi 2 in its scope, may be next version ??? Great tool but dark communication/communicators.
Could this ultimate MS date be respected…
I’m not sure what you mean by that.
We’re quality-driven, not date-driven. I’ve wanted us to be able to release earlier, but not if it’s going to break the setup for some percentage of the community. These last two bugs were found at the 11th hour by Roland and Yamaha, and so we’re fixing them before we respin to go back into the release pipeline.
One was related to SysEx performance, but primarily with USB 2/3 MIDI devices (which is now fixed)
The other was related to an obscure call we didn’t know music apps were making. It’s an old enough and obscure enough call that there weren’t tests for this specific case. Turns out, some apps were using that to identify the device they should connect to.
As for which version of Cubase will support MIDI 2: That’s up to Steinberg. They’re a great partner here and have been testing our preview releases, providing special builds of Cubase we could use to demo at the NAMM show/SuperBooth/Music China etc.
Pete
Microsoft
It is very difficult to have information on directions Steinberg is tracing for next versions. That’s all I was meaning.
Great, I have been working with MS since MS DOS 1.0 with int21. I have a kind of knowledge on this company. Please keep good work on your side.
So perfect, thanks again.
Do you have any knowledge of what are building some smaller companies as Morningstar FX and IConnectivity concerning midi 2 ?
I fear that my dedicated equipments from them will have to deal with features requiring higher power than their actual hardware can handle.