MIDI-to-MIDI using VST3: Inconsistent on various DAWs?

General JUCE discussion
1

Hi all,

Hoping to get a general discussion going about this. I’m somewhat new to this and don’t have a lot of “insider” knowledge.

I’m interested in developing VST3 plug-ins with MIDI input and MIDI output. I’ve been successful so far creating VST3 plug-ins that work in Ableton Live 10.

In order to get things running in Ableton, I specifically had to check the “MIDI Input” and “MIDI Output” boxes under “Plugin Characteristics” in Projucer. Checking “MIDI Effect Plugin” causes the program to not open in Ableton . Also, the routing involved in getting a MIDI VST3 to work in Ableton is a little convoluted (need to create a track for MIDI input and route the output of the plugin to a different track).

I’ve yet to test my plugins in other DAWs, and I’m wondering how inconsistent performance is across them. It seems that most major DAWs are VST3 capable (now that Ableton finally caught up!), but are all the major DAWs able to handle MIDI-to-MIDI with VST3? Do other DAWs require “hacks” to get them to work like in Ableton? At this point, do MIDI-to-MIDI plugins need to be tailored to specific DAWs? Are the JUCE team and DAW developers planning to make things easier/more consistent?

2

Absolutely, yes. They are all different, all inconsistent. Unfortunately, MIDI producing plugins are the bastard children of the plugin world. In fact, as far as Steinberg is concerned, VST3 plugins are not supposed to produce MIDI, and the fact that VST2 could do it was an unintentional thing they don’t support. Many threads here on this if you start searching for VST + MIDI.