Installing JUCE Plugins in Hosts

Audio Plugins
1

I recently changed my Windows PC and am trying to get my JUCE plugins going again. I had been making legacy VST plugins and testing them in Audacity and Ableton. The “installation” procedure was easy: copy the .dll file to a given folder.

With my new environment, including the latest version of JUCE, I am making VST3 and AAX plugins. I no longer have the legacy VST tools. I have tried the same installation process and neither Audacity nor Ableton recognizes my plugins.

Help!

2

Maybe this will help?

https://steinbergmedia.github.io/vst3_dev_portal/pages/Technical+Documentation/Locations+Format/Plugin+Locations.html#on-windows-platform

Are you moving the shared library or the entire .vst3 bundle?

3

Thanks!

I am just moving the .dll file. Should I move something else?

4

Depending on how you built your old plugins, your newly set up system might not for example have the correct runtime DLLs installed to run them.

Since you seem to have a new development system set up already, couldn’t you rebuild those old plugins as VST3?

5

Problem solved! I copied the wrong file. I dug down through a few more folders and found the .vst3 file. Both Audacity and Ableton were happy with it. I will rebuild the rest of my plugins as VST3.

Thanks for your help!

6

fwiw, single file VST3 plugins have been deprecated since 2018.

https://steinbergmedia.github.io/vst3_dev_portal/pages/Technical+Documentation/Locations+Format/Plugin+Format.html#for-the-windows-platform

7

I think I’ve got it now. I move the .vst folder (not just the file) produced by JUCE to my VST folder (\program files\common files\VST) and both Audacity and Ableton recognize the plugin.

Thanks again!