FabFilter

I was wondering if FabFilter will be implementing any automatic VST2 to VST3 migration ability within your plugins in the future? I ask because of Steinberg's recent push to depreciate/discontinue VST2.

It would be great if FabFilter could implement this same ability as some other developers already have (like ValhallaDSP, AAS, Waves and Sonic Academy.)

Whereby, projects saved with VST2 versions of plugins will automatically substitute correctly for their VST3 equivalents, whenever those VST2 versions are unavailable to the host DAW.

Note: I have been informed by Image-Line that FL Studio's automatic VST2 to VST3 substitution can only do this when certain internal plugin IDs match between both versions (VST2 and VST3) of the plugin, otherwise this type of automatic substitution doesn't occur.

PLEASE do implement this feature! As of today, Native Instruments Maschine only loads VST3s while using an M1 Mac. and ALL of my previous Fabfilter settings won't auto-migrate to VST3s. It's making a huge problem for me.

Any plans to add this feature?

Agreed. I believe this should have been sorted out many years ago. Not just by Fabfilter, but many other plugin developers also.

Unfortunately, from what I have learned via customer feedback from other developers (note: Fabfilter have thus far remained completely silent over this issue), is that many developers may have inadvertently locked themselves out of being able to support 'Automatic Migration', by virtue of having used differently formatted 'internal plugin names/syntax' between their VST2 and eqiuivalent VST3 formats. Perhaps, this is why Fabfilter haven't responded regarding the issue, if this was also the case for them?

In FL Studio (for example), when a plugins' VST2 and VST3 formats have correctly matched internal plugin IDs, they can be combined together. Then, if the VST2 version is removed from that device, the DAW will substitute any VST2 instances within existing projects for their VST3 equivalents. Seamless, and hassle-free for the user.

I will share the following feedback here, that I received from Valhalla DSP Tech Support, as I had contacted them and asked if they could explain how they managed to successfully support VST/VST3 Automatic Migration, so that other developers could do likewise:

Quote: "As far as automatic migration, I think that the Valhalla plugins benefitted from migrating to VST3 fairly late (in late 2020, to be precise). I use the Juce framework for my plugins, which a lot of plugin companies do, so porting to VST3 mostly involved hooking up to the latest VST3 SDK, downloading the latest Juce SDK, and enabling the VST3 build option. Which seems simple, but there are a few problems with this:

- The VST3 SDK is constantly changing. Which is weird, as VST3 is supposed to be a “standard.”
- Juce had their own VST2 implementation for several years, which had an incorrect VST Plugin ID generation (the bytes were out of order). So, if a Juce developer was building a VST2 and VST3, even if they supposedly shared the same ID, the DAW may not recognize it as the same ID. Juce has now pulled their VST2 implementation, so more recent builds might address this.
- VST3 plugin support is a shifting entity in DAWs. VST2s tend to work the same across all DAWs, but it is a crapshoot about whether or not the VST3s will behave the same across DAWs.

So, my guess for what is going on with other developers is that

- they name their VST3 builds something different, which is either intentional or accidental
- the VST Plugin ID has different formatting between VST2 and VST3, which is probably accidental.

I’m not sure how to fix the VST Plugin ID issue. I only have one plugin that was affected by this, a build of VintageVerb from 2018 or so. The latest VintageVerb builds match the older VintageVerb builds as far as VST Plugin ID, and the VST2 and VST3 plugin IDs match each other now.

Hopefully this is useful info!" -Valhalla DSP Tech Support.

Oh! I just wanted to also add that, whenever Fabfilter do decide to also support the 'CLAP' audio format, That I for one, will certainly be using that format going forwards, rather than using VST2/VST3.

Hopefully, 'CLAP' can help avoid such format incompatibility issues occurring in the future, such as have been experienced with Steinberg's proprietary, and in my opinion, soon-to-be "legacy formats" 'VST 1/2/3'.

Please say that Fabfilter are at least considering supporting the alternative open source 'CLAP' audio plugin standard for a future update?

Thank you.