How to enable a VST3 plug-in only for a specific host

Audio Plugins
1

Is there any way for a VST3 plug-in to be loaded into only a specific DAW/host?

I tried the following solution but the plug-in crashes. A null AudioProcessor is not handled by the wrappers:
PluginProcessor.cpp

// This creates new instances of the plugin..
AudioProcessor* JUCE_CALLTYPE createPluginFilter()
{
    PluginHostType hostType;
    
    if ( hostType.is[myHostOfChoice]() )
        return new MyPluginProcessor();
    else
        return nullptr;
}
1 Like
2

No. There’s currently no API from Steinberg or an extension like that but that’s a good idea.

1 Like
3

Instead of returning a nullptr, could you simply return a dummy processor. The dummy processor’s editor could show a message saying “not supported in this DAW”?

2 Likes
4

Or allow constructing the original audio processor, but just skip initializing the parameters and the GUI, as well as bypass the audio processing.

5

Another idea, return a version of your processor, that returns false for any channel layout. A clever host would never offer that processor for selection, since it doesn’t fit on any track.

bool isBusesLayoutSupported (const BusesLayout& layouts)
{
    if ( hostType.is[myHostOfChoice]() == false)
        return false;

    // ...
3 Likes
6

that returns false for any channel layout

that’s an interesting approach. I’ll try that and report back.

7

I tried that but unfortunately it doesn’t block the plug-in to be loaded in any host. I doesn’t even block the processing.

Thanks for sharing your idea though!

1 Like
8

Thanks for trying. Well, I didn’t expect it to block from loading, since it needs to load to do the negotiation, and eventually realising, that no channel format will fit.

I know from ProTools, that on a stereo track it only shows plugins for selection, that would allow a stereo in. So I was hoping you could generalise that behaviour, knowing, that there will always at least one host, that doesn’t play along that idea…

9

RISK ALERT, but, what if you make the plug-in deliberately crash on the unsupported hosts? The majority of DAWs nowadays does the scanning in a separate process to prevent a crashing plug-in from crashing the entire host, so… if the plug-in crashes in all the hosts apart from the one where you want it, it will only be successfully scanned and shown in those you desire.