How to migrate from AU to VST with settings

[Prime Mover]

For a long time now, I've wanted to migrate from AU to VST as my primary. But when I select VST, all my old AU plugins don't load and I lose my settings if I manually swap them out. Am I correct in assuming that the plugin settings do not carry from one architecture to another, including presets. If so, what's the smoothest way to transition, and is it worth the trouble?

Secondly, is it better to use VST2 or VST3 as primary?

[mikehalloran]

VST/VST2 has been depreciated by Steinberg beginning 2018 and completed by 2022. Many engines including NI/Kontakt/Komplete no longer support it and it’s “no longer available for new business”.

VST3 is the present and future.

[Killahurts]

I have been working on this as well. As far as I know, there is no way to do what you want with the settings, other than to save them as presets, load the VST 3 version, and then load the preset. The plugin types don't appear to be interchangeable.

When my SSL UC1 controller finally worked with DP, it was only with the VST3 version of their plugins. The problem is, I have old projects that used the AU versions, that would not come up if I turned AU off. DP will not automatically switch that plugin to VST3, it simply comes up missing. So what I do is, for just the affected SSL plugs and a couple others, I have the AU version and the VST3 version available at the same time. When instantiating those, instead of using the flip-down, I double-click on the insert to get the full plugin menu. There, I can see which version I'm instantiating which, going forward will always be VST3.

With 570 plugins to manage in several different formats, I've decided to continue using AU as primary in DP, simply because I can't see why I would go to all that trouble, and loose a tremendous amount of past work. I can manually put everything I need to be VST3, like SSL, Melodyne and a few others with much less time and headache.

For the second question, I would choose either AU or VST3 as primary, because VST2 has no advantage over AU, AFAIK.

[HCMarkus]

VST3 for ARA and plugins requiring VST Sidechain. All else AU for me.

[monkey man]

My ignorant-but-prudent attitude to all this stuff is to stick with AU 'cause AFAICT it's been backwards-compatible with all earlier incarnations.

VST3? Not so much. Jump on VST3 now and what'll happen when VST4 and beyond come out?

[Michael Canavan]

Mostly the fun is like this, most plugins these days save their own presets, mostly these are platform independent. To switch to VST you would open a project, save all the plugins in the projects settings as presets, then switch to VST3 and open the preset.

I switched to VST2 mainly about 5 years ago, what this meant for me is that when I switched to Apple Silicon most projects just did not work at all. There was/is no Rosetta for VST, plus as Mike pointed out Steinberg is aggressively forcing VST3, so no VST2 native versions of NI and other plugin manufacturers, they do not translate over so you need to do the same thing as you do with AU and save presets.

In general this is my feelings about it, VST will always be a bit problematic because it's run by a DAW developer who have a vested interest in it. VST3 took over 15 years to be a format, and people still mostly prefer VST2, because Steinberg made it difficult to host and code for. Even with DP11 here, VST3 is by far the format with the most evaluation failures, so when using VST in general you're mixing 2 and 3. AU of course has only one platform it works for, and as we know doesn't work well with ARA, or MIDI out from instrument plugins.

All of this is why CLAP came about, I hate that I'm older and it will likely take 15 off years to really take off, but it's independent of any interested party unlike AU and VST.

As it stands if you do go to VST from AU you will have to save presets in your plugins, and you will likely need to do this again in some future update to Mac OS that breaks the VST2 format and you need to port to VST3 for the plugins that right now do not pass VST3 evaluation. Right now on the Air here 73 VST3 plugins do not pass evaluation. 4 AU's do not pass, and I have 75 more AU's than VST3's.

In general unless you really really need to work with Windows DP users I think it's smart to stick to AU, using VST3 for things like Melodyne, Reason Rack, and other MIDI out plugins. VST2 is going away and AU is imminently more stable on Mac OS than VST3. Even working with Windows DP users, I'm not certain it's all roses as far as porting between Mac and PC?

[monkey man]

Preach Brother Michael.

[bayswater]

Are the any VST3 functions for which there are no offline/routing/etc workarounds when using AU?

[Michael Canavan]

Are the any VST3 functions for which there are no offline/routing/etc workarounds when using AU?

Yes, ARA seems to work only with VST3 at least with Melodyne. Then there's MIDI out from virtual instruments and dedicated VST MIDI FX plugins. like BlueArp https://omg-instruments.com/wp/?page_id=46
you'll notice the AU works in Logic Pro only. The reasons are simple, MIDI FX plugin capability with AU is limited to maybe 400 out of 5000 plugins, it wasn't part of the spec originally that I know of? so developers like MOTU never added it in, or more succinctly it's already part of VST 2 let alone 3 spec to publish MIDI out (which shows up with BlueArp as an input source in any MIDI In capable tracks ), and the big AU DAWs besides Logic like Live, Studio One and DP all can also use VST2 and 3.

So currently to use all the great MIDI FX in the Reason Rack plugin, to get a kick track in a virtual instrument (like MPC or Maschine or Atlas or Reaktor etc.) to send MIDI out to another virtual instrument (like Battery, Damage, Opus etc.), the sender must be a VSTi.

Another example of why CLAP would be better is that the migration from VST2 to VST3 must be done the same way that AU to VST must be done, by saving presets then instantiating the new format. With the exception of Cubase/Nuendo, if the plugin developer coded it, Cubase will replace missing VST2 plugins with the VST3 version saving patches and sample libraries etc. A nice idea I guess, but only the developer of VST is capable and not many people adopted it, NI did apparently.

[mikehalloran]

Are the any VST3 functions for which there are no offline/routing/etc workarounds when using AU?

A few but they work only in Logic Pro. I do so little work in LPx that I never pay attention to which does what.