VST Home
Welcome to the world of VST 3
This part of the Steinberg Developer Resource is a portal dedicated to developers of VST 3 plug-ins and VST 3 hosts. Almost everything you need for developing VST 3 plug-ins is explained in the sections below.
What is VST?
Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is an audio plug-in software interface that facilitates the integration of software synthesizers and effects in digital audio workstations (DAW).
Main benefits of VST 3
Here, you can find a non-exhaustive list of VST 3 benefits.
What is the VST 3 SDK?
The VST 3 SDK (Virtual Studio Technology Software Development Kit) is a collection of software development tools included in one package. This allows plug-in developers to create plug-ins in VST 3 format and host developers to load VST 3 plug-ins into a DAW or audio editor.
VST 3 licensing
- Steinberg VST usage guidelines
- What are the licensing options
- Which files fall under which license?
- Developer use cases (FAQs)
Getting Started
- VST 3 Links — Important links you will need for working with VST 3
- How to setup up my system for VST 3 — In order to build VST 3 plug-ins, you need the source code of the VST 3 (API: interface definition), an IDE/compiler, cmake and a VST 3 host application.
- Preparation on Windows — Generated VST 3 Microsoft Visual Studio Projects using the cmake files included in the SDK will create by default symbolic links for each built plug-in in the official VST 3 folder, in order to allow this on Windows you have to adapt the Group Policy of Windows. See Here!
Tutorials
- Building the examples included in the SDK
- Using cmake for building VST 3 plug-ins
- Generate a new plug-in with the Project Generator App
- Code your first plug-in
- Use VSTGUI to design a User Interface
- Advanced VST 3 techniques
- How to use the silence flags
- Guideline for replacing a VST 2 plug-in by a VST 3 plug-in
- Strings Conversion Helper
- Creating a cmake plug-in project from scratch
- Creating a plug-in with VST 3 SDK as an external project
- Switching to another VSTGUI submodule or branch
VST 3 Forum
Visit Steinberg's VST Developer Forum in order to get help with development, to submit bug reports, to request new features and to connect to other VST 3 developers:
Technical Documentation
Browse the VST 3 SDK's technical documentation. The full VST 3 API reference is only available in the VST 3 Package that you can download or find online here.
Miscellaneous
Copyrights and Glossary