Can’t you just write your own tracker program that is built to your own specification?
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I’m actively using dozens of VST3s in Reason 11 right now. VST3 in Reason 11 is a reality. No idea about the specific issues you’re hitting, but VST3 absolutely works. I’m literally using it.
@EnergyCrush You miss something, Reason 11 currently doesn’t support VST3:
The Rack plugin is a VST3 plugin. And you can use VST3’s in Renoise, when you use a wrapper:
I’ve used this wrapper with Renoise 3.2 on my windows 10 maschine. Works fine with some smaller quirks. Its a workaround, till Renoise support it natively.
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No vst 3 in reason my friend,I smell bullshit.
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I use it myself and can assure that vst3 is not supported by reason 11 itself.
You are confusing something
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If I made it my job to write a tracker program and then support my customers using it, absolutely.
But better yet, as I mentioned, would be to open source Renoise so any active developer could add onto the existing platform, as well as any other additions that have been wanted. People keep mentioning Renoise Dev doesn’t make enough money to support it properly, and the devs have indicated themselves they’ve moved in to other projects primarily. Seems pretty reasonable.
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See https://forum.renoise.com/search?q=vst3%20category%3A11 and
https://forum.renoise.com/t/never-a-better-time-than-now-to-add-vst3-support/58030/2?u=taktik
please.
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Why not make it a hobby? You’ll be your own boss. You can decide what goes in into your program and how much time you want to spend coding on it. You can decide how much time you want to spend on maybe a forum you’ve set up (or github) reply (or ignore) your customers asking/demanding for updates/features that you can accept/reject.
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taktik, I greatly appreciate all your time and effort and everything that you’ve done to help and respond to questions. You’ve been awesome on the forums, and immensely dedicated to Renoise and users needs.
There’s been one single choice for VST-based trackers for years now for writing music, and hundreds of songs marking my history with Renoise.
But as functional synths and effects have grown, as Steinberg has long-past deprecated the VST2 standard, and as I’ve had time to test several dozen plug-ins that have both VST2 and VST3 versions across full versions of most majors DAWS while additionally running into VST performance limitations in Renoise while producing music, it’s become incredibly painful.
VSTs in a tracker, I feel, has been the specific power and legacy of Renoise, in part because there are plenty of other trackers that do much of the other pieces (though admittedly I’ve never felt most of them have done it nearly so cleanly).
While I’ve started to feel the pull of contention in responses to my posts, the root and only point I was making, and wanted to, is that after 15+ years, I just … I’m burnt waiting. I really don’t expect anything to change, and really, I’m not angry at Renoise or the devs at all … I only wish open-sourcing it or elevating that core element could have happened. I can understand why it didn’t, I’m not beyond logic about this, I’m just … done.
Thanks taktik, for everything.
Lol …
It’s an honest possibility. The last year has seen a transition to a job where I develop remotely full-time, which has allowed me to marry my wife in Mexico and live in both places simultaneously, two weeks at a time in each, in Mexico with her, then back here with my two children.
It means refamilirizing myself with C++ most like, as I’m sure the performance is needed. I don’t mind asynchronous multi-threaded programming, or learning new APIs. Possibly the loss of actually writing music to develop a program allowing VST3 tracker-based music would be worth the time and effort given where I’m at.
All things in time. All things in time.
All the best, EnergyCrush, with Reason and everything. Hope you will someday find (og make) a tracker with VST3 support.
Here’s the fact. Reason 11 doesn’t support VST3.
Screenshot from the Reason 11 operation manual:
You can read it at page 370.
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You’re absolutely right, and I am absolutely wrong on that front - I was certain I had specified my VST3 path. I keep all of my VST2 dlls in a custom folder, and everything very organized. After seeing a couple responses to this, I dug more online, and went back and validated those settings, and yes, it turns out I was flat out wrong about VST3 support already being there in Reason. Some of the plug-ins I installed I thought I had installed only as VST3, but either I missed a setting, or they installed the VST2 versions under the covers and I didn’t know they were there. Regardless, you’re absolutely right, VST3 is not there in Reason yet.
Guess it’s a race at this point. Working primarily in Windows, but like cross-compatibility. Ableton no VST3. BitWig still has weird random issues. Samplitude and other Magix DAWs (Music Maker, Sequoia, etc.) have problems with many VST3s that other DAWs don’t (like Dmitry Sches Thorn), even when just reloading them or resetting patches. I’m not certain that applies to the new ACID and subsequent VST3 implementation yet, haven’t had time to load and validate everything since they added, but they’re owned by Magix now too. MuLab, Mixcraft, Tracktion, Stagecraft, Multitrack Studio, Digital Performer, NTrack, Audition, Audio Mulch, Cantibile, and many others either also have problems with VST3 or don’t support it. Maschine still isn’t full featured and also no VST3 support. Pro Tools … yeah.
There are several DAWs that do work well with VST3 … but first, aren’t trackers, and second, have other limitations that make portability or usability painful. Steinberg Sequel doesn’t support 64-bit, Cubase still requires a dongle. Reaper is well-loved by many, but is complicated to setup for efficient workflows, and it shows all plugins at once, of all types and bitness, making it a bit of a navigational nightmare. FL Studio has made an incredible number of advancements, but I haven’t been able to get into the workflow … beings it supports video, though, it has serious potential when I’m making music for movies or video. Studio One has also been incredibly functional, but again the workflow feels … weird, like when adding different effects processors.
Reason has been the only other DAW that has felt relatively clean and in-tune compared to the otherwise very different workflow of Renoise. I’m kicking myself now for mistaking the VST3 implementation, but pound for pound am finding it a reasonably performant alternative, and they’re certainly actively moving the code base and functionality along on a consistent basis.
Maybe I want too much? I don’t know. Maybe the new i9 mobile laptop will provide the performance I need to keep rolling wherever, especially traveling back and forth to Mexico to spend time with either my wife or children between everything else.
Either way … yeah, it’s been a lot of searching, testing, waiting, bashing along, trying to get to a solid portable completely electronic VST instrument and effect based system. I thought the track freeze add-on for Renoise would help that some, but it’s wonky and unreliable for as frequently as I need to unfreeze and mod tracks.
Someday man … someday. Someday.
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Yes, a lot DAWs have problems with VST3. Even inside Cubase. Funny enough, because Steinberg is the inventor of the VST format.
VST3 also lacks a lot functions which are possible/available in VST2. Like e.g. MIDI input/triggering for effect VSTs. It’s frustrating (for me as a VST developer) while working on a new VST plugin, but you can’t realize the feature you ever wanted to implement because of limitations of the VST3 format. VST3 also still is very buggy. This can be a problem for new VST companies who were founded after October 2018. Because of the new licence agreement for VST developers. After October 2018 founded companies are forced by these agreements to develop only VST3 , because VST2 licences were dropped by steinberg since Oct 2018 for new developers who missed to sign the licence agreement before that date. So new companies are forced to develop buggy shitty VST3 plugins…
…and i think this is also the case, why the Reason VST rack is just available in VST3 because the (ex) Propellerheads missed to sign this agreement. The Europa VST is VST2, but it was released before Oct 2018…
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I remember reading a recently about the license transition, yeah - I can appreciate the frustration, especially given the challenges of implementation with VST3 that are frequently mentioned. That makes sense about the Reason VST rack as well.
I haven’t run into the MIDI input/triggering issues specifically yet, I’m curious … I use and much love iZotope’s Stutter Edit from BT, which has a VST3 version, and is a MIDI triggered FX processor (I had to go and look to be sure I wasn’t managing to talk out of my @$$ again …). Since DDMF’s Metaplugin hosts and makes MIDI available to VST3s (and I believe Blue Cat’s tool as well), I’m wondering if there is some work around these companies have implemented themselves to work around that limitation or something else. I haven’t done any VST2 or VST3 programming yet (though I’m highly interested in getting started, I think with a VST3 host, so if you have any pointers or links that might be a good place to get started, I’d be highly interested … most of my programming is in Python or C# these days, but I’m not bothered about jumping back into C++ or another language if there’s something newer and still performant enough for such work … looking around, seems like the GUI language landscape for something like a DAW or plugins has shifted quite a bit, will have to dig more on that front as well).
It’s good info, thanks 
Ah - I missed that Ableton has actually now added VST3 support as of the v10 release:
https://www.ableton.com/en/live/
Plug-in Support
New in Live 10.1:
- Introduced support for VST3.
- All plugin settings now appear in a dedicated “Plug-Ins” tab in the Preferences.
- Introduced system folders for VST3 plug-in scanning. Also added a button to the “Plug-Ins” Preferences tab to enable and disable system folders.
- Introduced sidechain support for all plug-in architectures, and added a sidechain view to the left of the X/Y control in the plug-in device view.
- Additional audio input and output buses from VST3 plug-ins can be used from track “Audio To” and “Audio From” routing choosers, as with VST2 and AU plug-ins.
- For VST3 plug-ins with less than 65 parameters, the parameters are now auto-assigned after instantiation. Also, when copying a VST3 plug-in or loading a Set with VST3 plug-ins, the parameter assignment (and value) is retained. Furthermore, VST3 parameter automation is now available.
- VST3 plug-ins are now scanned via a separate background process. Plug-ins that crash during the scanning process no longer cause Live to crash. In addition, Live will not wait during startup for the plug-in scan to finish, which means having a large number of installed plug-ins will not slow down Live anymore (this is only implemented for VST3 for now). The background scanning can be disabled with the debug option “-DisableBackgroundPluginScanner”.
Yeah, it really is making traction, and challenging as it sounds, it’s for a good reason.
Mickey
Renoise = 68€
Reason 11 = 349€
“Arms race” in music producing is a bit hard to understand for me , what makes good music is not VST3 support or 80GB sounbanks recorded with 1billion dollar microphones but work and creativity.
As long as i’m having fun and enthusiasm making music I dont care about being able to using the latest technologies.
I read the same complaints on the Native Instruments forum about the lack of VST3 support with Maschine, come on guys you all have gears and software that we never dared to dream about 20 years ago.
The permanent “we want more” tire me out…
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I have both, Renoise and Reason 11. I always upgraded to the latest Reason version (now 11). But you’re right. As i wrote, i’ve both, but i spend more time with Renoise than Reason. Because working with renoise makes a lot more fun. Maybe this also has to do with my past: i grew up in the 1990s with Amiga computers and music trackers like Protracker, Octamed, Oktalyzer, etc.
And you had to be very creative because of the technical limitations of that time. I’m always amazed again when i listen to the early 1990s jungle music. There were a lot of famous jungle tunes made on Amigas and i’m still impressed what an amazing sound they got out of these small computers with some samples and their creativity.
It crashes Renoise every time my vst folder is scanned. No idea what I’m doing wrong.
Same here, recording your voice or something else with a digitizer was like black magic for me. We may sound like nostalgic people but Im’ not, I just feel that sometimes we acts like spoiled childs.
In 2019 we have everything we need to make any type of music anywhere.
Yes but i’m more impressed by guys like Rob Hubbard or Martin Galway on C64 ( with even much more limitations than on the amiga )
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I totally get it, and I really feel your ultimate point is spot on - all of this is about making music. I think your comments at their root digs at a deeper point though, which is really about how much software really helps us vs. hinders us. I am still greatly fond of the memories and power of using an Alesis QS6.1 with an MMT-8 and feeling amazed at the ability to put together a reasonably full song with no software whatsoever. It’s weirdly challenging to still find hardware like that now - decent, functional, reasonably-priced sequencers, non-restricted workstations or synths with multi-timbral support. I actually have an Alesis Andromeda and Squarp Pyramid, both amazing in their own right, which I thought would give me a similar and powerful experience … nope. Just not the same … with options comes complexity and functional challenges in the creative process.
I make electronic music. I grew up in very small rural towns with 3 radio stations: a top 100 station, a county station, and a hard rock station. I didn’t know what electronic music was until 6th grade and the teacher’s son brought music in from a “big city”. InfoSoc, Kraftwerk, and Depeche Mode grabbed me like an alien spaceship beaming up a hillbilly out of the woods … it’s some of the only music that’s ever made sense to me (immensely so at the time). If I could just pick up a guitar to make everything that’s in my head, I’d never experience any of these issues at all … but my creative demon flies very differently.
Much like how VR and AR seek to expose us to new worlds, yet face continual uphill battles with ergonomics and comfortable user experiences (for many reasons), I constantly find the same with so many of the tools we use when writing electronic music. The force of constant OS upgrades and version changes to our software and creation process … the changes to the infrastructure (DAW, protocols, hardware, etc.) … these things regularly force us to adapt new workflows while introducing new problem. I feel like it’s greater when you write electronic music from scratch, constantly seeking new and interesting ways to make sounds and rhythms, especially without a cohesive set of standards for MIDI implementation and plug-in foundation. Things NI’s NKS is one of the most promising solutions I’ve ever seen … yet it does come laced with it’s own issues, like anything else.
The greatest challenge I face regularly writing and mastering electronic music (often done in part on the fly because of the sheer dynamic range of frequencies and FX variation during the creative process) is raw processing power and the performance of the tools I’m using. Changes in tempo, changes in keys, changes in synced delays and LFOs … all of this needs close to or immediate response to maintain the same immersive creative experience that you might find if you were working with that single guitar … and that means performance in your tools, and things that aren’t getting in your way. It means feel comfortable and in control hammering out your current workspace to accomplish what your trying to do, with all your tweakable controls very close and right there.
I often think of Orbital … I’m not sure I’ve ever heard another group (maybe Apparat or wisp, maybe) who can pull of such diverse but incredibly cohesive frequency explorations in the electronic space … but it’s where they live, and they’ve had the money and tools to explore those solutions and make them happen … not without challenges of their own no doubt, but they’ve done it time and again.
It’s a search, it’s a battle. In some ways I’m sure it will never be completely resolved … but when I can write all my stuff without performance issues, it will be an incredibly awesome space. It’s close … my toolset is mostly happiness that allows very flexible creativity searches … but yeah, I’d like this part solved, lol.
Mickey