Just remember that as the VST2 spec slowly fades away, program change will go with it...

Hi Bill,

I am on Mac OS, so I don't know much about VST. But why would a newer audio plug-in standard not provide a full Midi implementation anymore?

@Kai said:

[...] why would a newer audio plug-in standard not provide a full Midi implementation anymore?

Long story short: The company who is defining the standard (Steinberg, in this case) decided to drop this MIDI command, for one reason or the other. Much like Apple/Logic decided to cut corners in their Audio Units format here and there.

... not much a 3rd-party manufacturer like VSL can do about it.

Kai,

If you use REAPER as your DAW, you can use this: www.reaticulate.com

Makes it unbelievably easy!

- Sam

Thanks so much for the info, Dietz! I wasn't aware fo this. Funny decision by Steinberg, taking into account that any cheap keyboard/software managed to implement standard Midi functions for 40 years and there is lot of hardware (master keyboards, ...) out there that sends program change messages.

Sam, thanks for pointing me to this. This looks awesome! But my main DAW is Logic.

@Kai said:

[...] standard Midi functions for 40 years [...]

... uh! ... make that 35 years, please - otherwise I'm feeling even older than I am. 8-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI: "The MIDI 1.0 Detailed Specification was published at the MMA's second meeting at the 1985 Summer NAMM show."

Its a complicated topic, but Steinberg no longer passes raw midi messages into VST3 plugins.  Not only PC message, but no other raw midi either.  

Supposedly a plugin can publish a so called "program list" to the host DAW and then the host DAW can choose to have something like PC messages within midi tracks, which it will know for VST3 to use the program api to select from the published program list.  

Oops, Dietz you are right as always 😊. It just somehow feels like it has been there forever.

I vaguely remembered this: "The specification originates in a paper published by Dave Smith and Chet Wood then of Sequential Circuits at the October 1981 Audio Engineering Society conference", but surely it took time for it to reach the market.

Dewdman, thanks for the info! This sounds like they want to establish an improved program change standard within VST3. Yet, it would surely be handy if it would be downward compatible.

The jist of it is that Steinberg does not consider midi to be part of VST.  period.  According to Arne @ Steinberg, VST is an audio api, not midi.

Now it happens that audio includes instruments, which historically have received midi in order to produce sound.  but with VST3 they are trying to remove midi completely from VST3.  Instead VST3 has its own way of specifying things like notes and what sound to use...which has nothing to do with midi at all, though in some cases it may seem similar.  but programmatically, raw midi is not passed to a VST3 plugin, rather these other VST3 abstractions are.

There are a few things that Steinberg didn't think through all the way in terms of how it would effect people practically speaking, that have been using midi messaging to accomplish certain kinds of things...such as sending key switches...or PC messages....or using CC messages as keyswitches, etc..  These uses of the raw midi protocol have been useful in the past under VST2 and other standards, but in some cases they have become problematic under VST3 if the VST3 way of programming these things didn't also capture those use cases.

In any case, originally people freaked out about no PC message, but Steinberg replied repeatedly that it can all be done with Program lists, but that plugin makers would need to modify their plugins to use those instead of looking for raw PC messages.

CC switches are also not a good idea to use with VST3 plugins.  They will work, but can be problematic if you have a chord of notes on the same timestamp with different articulations per note, using CC switches instead of noteOn keyswitches...  That scenario breaks down with the VST3 approach and unable to directly send raw CC messages in to the plugin.  The VST3 way to handle that sort of thing is with NoteExpressions (programmatically), but about the only DAW that uses NoteExpressions is Cubase and even their own ExpressionMaps are not using NoteExpressions to handle cc articulation switches, even though they should be...which means the chord problem I mentioned can happen.

This can be a deep topic.

In any case, its basically on plugin makers to adhere to VST3 program list in order to fully support using PC messages in the track to signal articulation changes.

Hello Dewdman, 

thanks for this comprehensive explanation, really appreciated.

I had no idea that this is such a tricky issue and even controllers are no alternative.

I have a few more questions: 

I was searching the forum, and if I understand a previous thread correctly so far both VI pro and the Synchron Player are VST2 only. Is this still correct (somehow VI pro lists VST3 support on the VSL homepage)? So if Steinberg's statement is correct, once these are ported to VST3 there might be a way for VSL to implement "program change messages" Steinberg's new way, so that one can still e.g. send these Midi messages to Cubase and they will then somehow be transferred to VI pro or the Synchron Player as VST3 proprietary non-Midi events?

Synchron Player and Vienna Ensemble are both  available as VST3.

VST3 has been around for a number of years, and adoption has been slow to non-existent. Why? Because neither plugin developers nor DAW/Notation developers think it's of any value. Only Steinberg thinks it's of value. But they own it, so can do what they want.

Oh I see, thanks so much for clarifying this, Bill! Now I get your previous remark - I had no idea that this is such a minefield.

Sounds like Steinberg re-invented the wheel, but for some reason people still prefer the old-fashioned, round version 😃 ...

@Bill said:

Just remember that as the VST2 spec slowly fades away, program change will go with it...

That's FUD. MIDI is the spec and program change is still part of the spec.

Steinberg is not in charge of the industry. Are we consumers or sheep? Complain about their shoddy implementation of MIDI in VST3!

It's much more than PC as others have said. Get rid of MIDI and you lose:

• MIDI scripting
• Interapplication MIDI
• MIDI files
• etc

This nonsense about VST3 expression being the center of the universe is just that, nonsense from Steinberg.