Modern software has become an integral part of the process of writing or editing music. Typically, DAWs only provide support for certain types of plugins. For example, the most famous one invented by the German company Steinberg – Virtual Studio Technology (VST) and its newer version – VST3. Plugins with the appropriate encoding can be found in many DAWs and are used, for example, in Cubase, Ableton Live, BandLab, Pro Tools or Studio One. The VST format includes most of the plugins and works great on all operating systems – Windows, Mac OS and Linux. If a virtual music studio uses these plugins, then its attractiveness to potential buyers and users is greatly increased.
The most efficient use of the VST3 plug-in is the Cubas software, which is created by the same company Steinberg. In fact, this German company pioneered the music market using Virtual Studio Technology. Since then, three versions have been improved. Today the market leader is VST3, which today is an almost ideal product. It is very difficult to list all DAWs that support VST3 and their versions as there are so many of them. Let’s dwell on the advantages of VST3 that will be of interest to users.
With the help of these plugins, the efficiency of the CPU usage is increased. Plugin processing algorithms are disabled if no signal is received at the input. Thus, in a large project with many tracks, each of them will load the processor only when it sounds. The saving of resources is obvious, they are not wasted. This is especially true for equipment that cannot boast of a high resource and capabilities. This, in turn, means that you can use your DAW on a wider range of equipment, which will save money at the time of purchase or minimize the cost of an upgrade.
VST3 plugins can have multiple inputs and outputs. This is used for both multi-channel (surround) audio processing. It is worth noting that many hosts and plugins using VST3 also allow you to connect multiple channels, but support for this functionality is provided by the host itself (DAW). The plug-in bus outputs can be re-wired as desired in real time.
Plugin parameters can be automated with high precision. VST3 has the ability to build a resizable UI. The plugin supports VSTXML – a protocol for remote control. It has audio inputs for VST instruments. Now the plug-in can be both an effect and an instrument at the same time (i.e. accept both MIDI messages and audio samples as input). The third version has a lot of MIDI inputs and outputs.
