CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++vst
robby987
robby987

Reputation: 827

Building VST host in cross platform application

I'm planning to implement a VST host for a cross-platform application I'm developing.

Which version of VST should I prefer, VST-2 or VST-3? It seems that VST-2 is depreciated but most other host applications still use that rather than 3.

Are there any examples which will build on Linux (Ubuntu) that have got a host built in and are licensed BSD or similar? I've got no issue with JUCE except after a day of trying that, there are too many build issues on Linux for the VST host example.

The application is written in C++.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 751

Answers (1)

Nik Reiman
Nik Reiman

Reputation: 40390

Definitely VST2.x. I would not call the VST2 standard "deprecated", so much as VST3 is "DOA". ;) Almost all commercial sequencers support VST2, hardly any (except for Steinberg's Cubase, of course) support VST3. As far as plugins go, almost all plugin manufacturers support VST2, but much fewer ship a VST3 plugin.

The reasons why very few plugins/hosts made the jump to VST3 are among the following:

  • There are very no real technical advantages to the VST3 API compared to the tools offered by the VST2 API
  • The VST3 API is significantly larger and harder to understand than VST2
  • VST3 is not backwards-compatible to VST2; it's basically a completely different plugin standard

As for a Linux-compatible VST2 example, check out MrsWatson, which is licensed under BSD (full disclaimer: I'm the author and maintainer of this project).

Upvotes: 1

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