VST vs VSTi Plugins: The Difference

Even if you are new to the world of digital audio workstations (DAW) you’ll have probably already come across VST vs VSTi’s. As a music producer, it’s important to understand and know the difference between the two.

When you first open your DAW you’ll have a range of stock instruments and audio effects to choose from, however, these can be limiting in terms of quality. A VST plugin allows you to integrate third-party audio effects and instruments into your DAW, which can be used to

• Expand your sound palette with additional instruments and effects
• Save time with pre-configured effect chains and presets
• Bring a more professional and creative flair to your music.

Almost all music producers use VST plugins today.

As technology has progressed, VSTs have become better at emulating hardware devices and are arguably used more often. In our home studios, we solely use VST and VSTi plugins.

Compared to a hardware device, the cost of such plugins is significantly cheaper and their almost equal level of quality makes them an obvious choice.

In this article, we’ll discuss the difference between VST & VSTi plugins and explain why it’s important to know.

VST vs VSTi – What’s The Difference? (TL:DR;)

VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology. VST plugins are audio effects used to process an audio signal (like reverb, delay etc.)

VSTi stands for Virtual Studio Technology instruments. VSTi plugins are software instruments that use MIDI data to generate sound (like a synth or sampler).

In short, VST covers everything, while VSTi is only for virtual instruments.

VST: Virtual Studio Technology

VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology. It’s an audio plugin software interface that allows you to integrate virtual audio effects and instruments from a third-party software application into your DAW.

Before the invention of VST, professional studios were equipped with hardware audio units, which were costly for independent producers. Through the use of digital signal processing, VST plugins can reproduce these hardware audio units in software form. Nowadays, both amateur and professional producers use VST plugins as an essential part of their setup.

Today, many music software companies produce countless VST effects plugins, such as reverbs and delays, that use virtual studio technology to ‘plug in’ their products into your DAW. The great thing about this is that it gives your DAW new capabilities, which can give your music a more professional quality.

VSTi: Virtual Studio Technology instrument.

VSTi (Virtual studio technology instrument) uses the same technology as VST plugins to integrate third-party plugins into your DAW, however rather than processing audio, VSTi plugins generate audio.

VSTi plugins input notes as MIDI data and can output that data as audio, giving us virtual instruments. Like VST plugins, many VSTi plugins are software emulations of hardware synths, drum machines, and samplers.

For example, the music software company Arturia has produced many software recreations of famous hardware synthesizers such as the Sequential Prophet-V and the Roland Jupiter 8.

The advancements in VSTi brought latency down to under 10 milliseconds for the first time, meaning you could connect your MIDI keyboard to your computer and use these virtual instruments in a playable way, without having to worry about connectivity issues. This renovated the process of music creation substantially and virtual instruments are now a staple of any studio.

What’s The Difference Between VST, VST2 & VST3 Plugins?

VST, VST2, and VST3 are all versions of Steinberg’s Virtual Studio Technology but with important differences and improvements between each.

VSTs were first on the scene in 1996 and were developed by the music technology company Steinberg, who also make the digital audio workstation, Cubase.

VST allowed you to integrate software versions of hardware audio processors into your digital audio workstation, giving it new audio processing capabilities, providing different compression tools, EQ, reverb and more!

With the turn of 1999 came VST 2.0, which bought us the invention of VSTi plugins (or VST instrument plugins controlled using MIDI).

This upgraded the ability of the original VST effects plugins format, allowing plugins to receive MIDI data and generate audio, which introduced virtual instruments to the world.

Although VST3 has been around since 2008, there is still some confusion about the differences between each software. What’s more, with Steinberg officially no longer supporting VST2, and many developers releasing VST3-only versions of their plugins, lots of music producers wonder if they should still be using VST2 software at all? Here, we will clear that up for you.

VST

As mentioned before, VST is the first instance of Virtual Studio technology. Although it was revolutionary and changed music production at the time, it does have some drawbacks.

Some of the limitations of VST were that they couldn’t process audio data in 64-bit format, only worked by processing audio and were unable to take an input, and were not very economical when it came to CPU usage.

VST2: introduction of VSTi

VST2 added the ability to input MIDI data and then output the data as audio. Again this took the world of digital music creation to the next level through the introduction of virtual instruments.

One limitation of VST2 however, was the fact that you could only have one mid input/output at the same time. Another was that due to the nature of MIDI controller information, articulation data meant for one note would also affect any simultaneous notes on the same track. This meant that if you wanted to apply a controller message, such as pitch bend, to just one note within a chord, this would not be possible and the modulation would be applied to all notes in the chord.

VST3: 64-bit & many improvements

VST3 improved upon VST and VST2 in numerous ways.

As well as being able to process audio data in 64-bit, VST3 also made CPU usage more efficient by only applying processing to plugins when their inputs are receiving an audio signal, rather than constantly processing plugins and affecting CPU performance.

It also allowed for adaptive inputs/outputs rather than a fixed amount. Whereas before you had to run multiple instances of a plugin for stereo and surround processing, VST3 can adapt to the channel figuration it’s inserted on.

For example, if you insert a plugin onto a stereo channel it will automatically adapt to stereo mode, or switch to 6 channels when inserted onto a 5.1 channel.

VST3 also included the capability for audio inputs on instrument tracks. Let’s say you have a synth plugin with a vocoder effect and you want to modulate a separate audio track with that effect. By adding audio inputs to VST instruments, VST3 allows you to route an audio signal to the input of a VST3 instrument and use it for modulation, allowing you to modulate your audio track with the synths vocoder effect.

To tackle the limitations of MIDI controller events, VST3 has a dedicated event handling bus allowing you to go beyond the functionalities of traditional simple MIDI messages. This lets you apply modulation information for individual note events, even in polyphonic arrangements, so applying controller messages like pitch bend to one note in a chord is now possible thanks to VST3.

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