VST2wrapper fails to compile

Hello everyone! I’m trying to have my VST3 plugin visible in VST 2.x only hosts such as OBS Studio, but the SDK does not ship with the necessary code for this to work. Online I could find only attempts at reverse engineering the SDK from plugins, with various degrees of success, some barely compiling, others being unsure if they actually reverse engineered things. Is there any way to get the VST2wrapper code to compile?

  • The VST2 Wrapper is included in the SDK only for people already providing/developing VST2 plug-ins and having already signed a VST2 license agreement with Steinberg.
  • Now the VST2 license is not any more available, reverse engineering WAS NOT and IS NOT allowed for VST2.
  • This is not possible for a new developer to create a VST2 plug-in.
  • Concentrate your effort on VST3

Concentrate your effort on VST3

The VST3 plugin is already done, so there’s nothing left to do here. However there are basically no VST3.x hosts in my target demographic, which makes VST2 (or an alternative less restrictive API) the only option. In case it is important for your answer, the target demographic is audio post production for video producers. This is the list of software that I’m targetting, in order of popularity:

  • Adobe Premiere Pro (VST3 partially supported and is mostly broken, VST2 supported perfectly)
  • DaVinci Resolve (No VST3 support, only VST2)
  • Adobe Audition (See Adobe Premiere Pro)
  • Sony? Vegas Pro (Only VST2 from testing)

From my standpoint, even considering VST3 is a complete mistake. Steinberg has made very little effort to move old VST2 hosts to VST3, which led to an abyssmal adoption rate. And in the open source area, the unnecessary addition to the GPL are likely causing projects to steer clear - nobody wants to be an advertising board for a single API. I think I will rather invest into an alternative API, perhaps even directly interfacing with the extension APIs that each tool provides - Adobe’s toolset is supposed to be very versatile.

Now the VST2 license is not any more available, reverse engineering WAS NOT and IS NOT allowed for VST2.

Reverse Engineering is a matter of laws in the country of the person doing it, but that is not what I implied or said. While it is certainly within my ability to do so, it would not help me at all. I was merely stating that there are a ton of projects out there, for various languages, which all implement VST2 in a somewhat fragmented state.

If you have a license for VST2, you should be able to build it with an older SDK version. If you don’t have a license then yeah, nothing you can do legally.