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History of VST Plugins

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William Mennard
History of VST Plugins

Amateurs and professionals use Virtual Studio Technology (VST) plugins to enhance their audio projects. Plugins are small pieces of software that work inside other programs. Plug it into something else to use it.


VST Plugins: What Are They?

VST plugins are designed for use with digital audio workstation (DAW) applications that can be used at home and in professional studio environments to make music.

Different types of VST plugins have different purposes even though they are designed to work with DAW applications. A VST instrument plugin lets you add a variety of virtual instruments to an audio recording without having a physical version, and a VST effects plugin lets you alter sounds.

You can create a more compelling final product by using different types of VST plugins.


VST types

There are three types of VST plugins:


VST Instruments

The VST instruments are the ones that can generate sounds by themselves, either through sample playback or algorithmic processing. A sample playback instrument is a pre-recorded sound from drums, piano, and others that can be triggered, while an algorithmic instrument is modeled after and synthesized with the PC's processor. Compared to the other kind of vst plugins, each has different advantages and disadvantages.

Instruments such as synths, drum machines, drum synths, and pianos, brass instruments, and stringed instruments are examples.


VST Effects

Unlike VST Instruments (VSTi), this plugin manipulates audio signals. Instead of generating sounds, they transform them into something desirable. A wide variety of effects are available, including EQs, guitar amp simulators, limiters, choruses, reverbs, and distortions. 


VST MIDI Effects

Transpose or arpeggiate MIDI messages (for instance) and route the MIDI data to VST instruments. This is a great tool for perfecting sequenced MIDI performances through practical adjustments.


Here is a brief history of VST plugins 

Steinberg created the VST (Virtual Studio Technology) standard in 1996. In 1999, VST 2.0 was released. Plug-ins could now get MIDI data through a new feature. The VSTi format was created as a result.

VST has been upgraded a few times over the years, with VST3 being the most recent update. VST3 has a lot more features than VST2.

Being an open standard, VST has a wide range of possibilities. Steinberg and other companies are always developing new virtual effects processors and virtual instruments. 

Steinberg announced in 2013 that it would no longer support the VST2 Plug-in format. There are no new features available for VST2, but the format still works.


Evolution of VSTs in the 2000s

A number of improvements have been made to the user interface, framework development, and performance capabilities of VSTs over the past 20 years. We have seen an explosion of user access as well as raw power coming from these plugins as computers and phones have become so powerful over this time period. In-the-box setups are used by many of the top mixing engineers who mixed our favorite records on analog hardware. My goal is to discuss the reasons for this technology, as well as what it might look like in the future. Here we take a deeper look at the topic.


Developing frameworks

New ideas and concepts were added to VST plugins as they became more popular. JUCE is a free and open source VST framework that offers ways to get started with VST development. Code frameworks like JUCE, based on a code split with Tracktion, are essential for a developer community to be strong and to generate new ideas.


Performance Capabilities

Over the past decade or two, computers have become more powerful. In the past couple years, the M1 chip has made processing even more abundant. As engineers can use a wide variety of plugins, even quite large ones, this is a dreamland for them.






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