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ArpeggiatorPlugin VST3 recognized as Aufio FX instead of MIDI FX

Audio Plugins
#1

Hi everyone,

I’m new to JUCE 6 so please forgive the dumb question. I’ve built the ArpeggiatorPlugin as a VST3 plugin (last version of JUCE 6) on Windows (VS2019). Everything went fine. I’ve double checked that inisde Projucer “MIDI Effect Plugin” is active.

I’ve tried to load the plugin both in Reaper 6.18 and In Bitwig 3.3.1. Both can load the plugin but apprently they use it as an Audio Plugin. No MIDI runs through it, and if I place it before a synth I can’t get any note out of it.

Here below I show a picture of the plugin loaded in Bitwig. As you can see in the right sidebar the plugin is recognized as an Audio FX (waveform icon).

Is it due to Reaper and Bitwig not being able to use VST3 MIDI FX?

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image1919×979 154 KB

Thanks for your support!

#2

VST3 plugins are not MIDI devices, they support neither MIDI input nor output. Here’s some information. It’s up to hosts to translate the VST3 event types to output MIDI but it’s not widely supported.

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#3

Is Steinberg discouraging MIDI plugins? Or it’s just a matter of time to get MIDI support in VST3?
Having to use legacy VST is a pity. I even don’t know if downloading the legacy STK is still possible…

#4

It’s not possible to release a VST2 plugin if you don’t already have a signed agreement (at least closed source - there’s a clean room re-implementation out there under the GPL license, check out Ardour’s sources).

VST3 does not support MIDI directly and I doubt it ever will. It’s the position of the VST3 developers that it’s the role of hosts to translate from MIDI to the VST3 event types, and translate VST3 event types back to MIDI if they want. This is baked into how VST3s receive and send events, it would be a nontrivial and potential compatibility breaking change if they allowed plugins to receive MIDI messages directly.

There’s some ambiguity in what exactly it means for a VST3 plugin to be an “audio” or “midi” plugin, and it’s up to hosts to resolve that. I’m not sure why Reaper/Bitwig aren’t registering the arpeggiator example as a MIDI plugin when compiled as a VST3, but I know that MIDI output is extremely unreliable for VST3 plugins in general. I know some folks have gotten it to work, so it’s worth diving through the forum posts and trying with different hosts (try Cubase Elements along with pluginval and the VST3 SDK validator as sanity checks).

Other places to look are the KVR forum and sdk.steinberg.net

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