There’s hope that those that have yet to transition to VST3 will do so in light of Steinberg’s announcement. So what does this mean if you rely on VST2 plug-ins for your workflow? I think that most popular plug-ins by major developers shouldn’t really present an issue. Within 24 months, all of Steinberg’s hosts and plug-ins will support VST3 only. Meanwhile, Cubase and the company’s other host applications continued to offer support for VST2 plug-ins, and Steinberg also continued to compile VST2 versions of some of its own plug-ins like HALion, for example. To my knowledge, Steinberg hasn’t given out VST2 licenses to new developers since at least 2018. But some developers have been slow to adopt the new platform, even though the VST2 SDK (software development kit) hasn’t been updated in a long time.

Which shouldn’t come as a surprise, as VST3 has been around since 2008 – an eternity in the world of software.

It’s long been known that Steinberg was moving towards supporting VST3 only. Steinberg announced yesterday that it plans to phase out support for VST2 plug-ins over the next 24 months, marking the final step in the transition to VST3. If you’re still using VST2 plug-ins in Cubase, Nuendo, Dorico or Wavelab, it’ll soon be time to switch to VST3 for good.

Steinberg nuendo live 2