VST Plug-ins

VST 2.4 vs. VST 3
VST 2.4 is no longer supported by Steinberg, but the new VST 3 API is still not supported in all VST hosts.

Ableton Live Plugin Blacklisting
I spent a long time being confused about a plugin that didn't show up in Ableton Live. It turns out that if the plugin crashes at some point, it becomes blacklisted and won't show up again. The solution was to hold Alt/Option while clicking Rescan in Preferences, which ignores the blacklist.

Ableton Live: 64-bit vs. 32-bit
When installing Ableton Live, you choose between the 64-bit and the 32-bit version. The only obvious benefit of the 64-bit version is being able to use more than 4GB memory. 32-bit VST plugins won't work in Ableton Live 64-bit and vice versa, so when creating a new plugin, it's probably best to create both versions.

Development Tools
I have documented a couple of different approaches to writing VST plugins.


 * Creating Windows VST 2.4 Plugin using Visual Studio 2015
 * Creating Windows VST 2.4 Plugin using MinGW
 * Creating Mac OS VST 2.4 Plugin

Other tools:
 * WDL / IPlug by Oli Larkin. Wrappers for many plugin types based on the same core code. Compiling a VST 2.4 plugin with Visual Studio worked out of the box.
 * SynthEdit is a graphical programming language that outputs a VST plugin.

Kiloton Freeware VST Survival Kit
These are all free VST instruments and effects that no self-respecting laptop git should do without:


 * Daichi Synth1; virtual analogue synthesizer
 * E-Phonic Drumatic 3; virtual analogue drum machine
 * Andreas Ersson LazySnake; electric piano
 * Green Oak Crystal hybrid synthesizer; does pretty much all you would want
 * Kjaerhus Classic Series (EQ, filter, delay, etc.)
 * Digitalfishphones mastering and dynamics processing
 * ConcreteFX freebies; check out Rock, LowBit, Delayer and TapeDelay