If you have both VST and AU versions of a plugin on a mac, which should you ideally use? Are there plus or minus points of either? Plus, if you have AUs up and running, is it better to use AUs where possible for subsequent plugins, or does mixing and matching not matter on iota?
Cheers.
(ps tried searching this but “AU” is too short a search term…
I have read somewhere Audio Units are a dying breed because VST is currently also becoming the factory standard on the Mac.
I have no idea what cons and pro’s there are for AU’s specific VS VST cons and pro’s.
If VST is becoming a standard, that does not have to mean VST have more benefits.
Personally i think VST’s are becoming a standard because plugin developers gain more revenue and have to waste less time on porting their plugin to another platform.
I use both just because some pluggins are not in VST format but only in AU.
I never discoverd any difference.
But I think some people will disagree…
Why else would there be an expensive program that is called VST to AU wrapper from isotope?
And I also read somewhere that AU’s are much more stable…
anyway I have never managed to make a VST crash in Renoise 
I think Vv is right and soon the “standart” will be VST.
AudioUnits are used by Apple applications such as GarageBand, Soundtrack Pro, Logic Express, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro and most 3rd party audio software developed for Mac OS X.
As far as I know, there is no VST support in Logic. Am I wrong?
Well, no.
A port is a port.
There are more Windows developers, with little to zero knowledge in OS X or Linux programming. The only reason VST is a standard is due to a large number of windows centric developers who start their work on that platform, then work backwards from there. Most of them giving up before any other platform gets any support.
There are several “AudioUnit Only” plug-ins for the same reason, in the opposite direction. LADSPA too.
You are correct. Logic only supports Audio Units. VST support was dropped with Logic 7, I think, around the time when Apple purchased Logic/eMagic and dropped PC support.
Robb
Question here …can you use the au plugins that come with apple logic ( es 2,ultrabeat …
can you use them in renoise ?
It depends if the plugin developer and Logic developer have an agreement that the plugin is solely designed for Logic, then they won’t work in any other host. These plugins are either designed by Logic developers or are usually expensive AU plugins by third party developers for which the developers charge a fraction of the original price. You can call them OEM plugins.
Short answer is no, Logic AUs do not show up in renoise, and I can find no reference to them being made available for third party DAWS.
Reviving this topic because it’s one of the first showing up on google (and I would have loved finding this answer faster when looking up, just figured it out myself).
When using VST, you can CMD+Z changes done in that VST while it’s not always possible with the AU version, where all changes happening in the AU don’t seems to be tracked