I never said we wouldn't do VST3. We adopt technology when it makes sense to do so and actually benefits our application and larger user base. Until literally this year there were no plugins exclusively in VST3 format that made it worth the significant development resources to invest in. And there was nothing that we needed VST3 for to implement it. The prochannel is all VST2 extensions for example.
 
What made it worthwhile for us to do finally in X3 were 2 factors:
 
1. The ARA implementation was more natural to do based off VST3. Although Celemony had a VST2 implementation their VST3 layer was better tested and I didn't want to do a huge new implementation based off an older standard. Also I was refactoring large areas of our VST engine for this and it was a good time to make such a change. 
2. A few big plugin vendors such as Waves have stopped maintaining their VST2 releases (due to resource constraints not due to limitations of VST2)
 
My original perceptions about VST3 are still valid after having developed this. While its a more modern API there is virtually nothing that couldn't be achieved by some simple extensions to VST2.  I don't fault Steinberg for wanting cleaner API (most developers are hate old designs) but it could have been handled in a more transparent and backwards compatible way than they did it. VST3's object model seems over-engineered to me. I didn't have much trouble getting it but I think many developers will have a hard time with the excessive abstraction in the API's. This and the completely lack of backwards compatibility are the main reasons for its slow adoption. One good thing in VST3 is that the basics like sidechaining are part of the spec so there is slightly less creative interpretation among vendors. 
 
Anyway we have it now and a good side effect of doing it was that I cleaned up a lot of the VST2 and general plugin code as well so it benefits all users. I have written a blog post on X3 VST enhancements that will come out soon. 
 

More good news...keep talking!

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
I never said we wouldn't do VST3. We adopt technology when it makes sense to do so and actually benefits our application and larger user base. Until literally this year there were no plugins exclusively in VST3 format that made it worth the significant development resources to invest in. And there was nothing that we needed VST3 for to implement it. The prochannel is all VST2 extensions for example.
 
What made it worthwhile for us to do finally in X3 were 2 factors:
 
1. The ARA implementation was more natural to do based off VST3. Although Celemony had a VST2 implementation their VST3 layer was better tested and I didn't want to do a huge new implementation based off an older standard. Also I was refactoring large areas of our VST engine for this and it was a good time to make such a change. 
2. A few big plugin vendors such as Waves have stopped maintaining their VST2 releases (due to resource constraints not due to limitations of VST2)
 
My original perceptions about VST3 are still valid after having developed this. While its a more modern API there is virtually nothing that couldn't be achieved by some simple extensions to VST2.  I don't fault Steinberg for wanting cleaner API (most developers are hate old designs) but it could have been handled in a more transparent and backwards compatible way than they did it. VST3's object model seems over-engineered to me. I didn't have much trouble getting it but I think many developers will have a hard time with the excessive abstraction in the API's. This and the completely lack of backwards compatibility are the main reasons for its slow adoption. One good thing in VST3 is that the basics like sidechaining are part of the spec so there is slightly less creative interpretation among vendors. 
 
Anyway we have it now and a good side effect of doing it was that I cleaned up a lot of the VST2 and general plugin code as well so it benefits all users. I have written a blog post on X3 VST enhancements that will come out soon. 
 

wohoo! \o/

So Noel anymore secrets you want to share? hehehehe

Ill have to kill myself if I do that before the dealers come and torture me :)

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Ill have to kill myself if I do that before the dealers come and torture me :)

I wish they'd let you guys do your jobs as you see fit like the qualified professionals you are instead of this corporate micro-managing silliness. Here's hoping Gibson realizes that maybe... just MAYBE you guys know what the heck you're doing and how best to deal with the customer base you've been serving all these years.

Beepster

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Ill have to kill myself if I do that before the dealers come and torture me :)

I wish they'd let you guys do your jobs as you see fit like the qualified professionals you are instead of this corporate micro-managing silliness. Here's hoping Gibson realizes that maybe... just MAYBE you guys know what the heck you're doing and how best to deal with the customer base you've been serving all these years.

The dealer network is important.  If the supplier expects dealers to respect the embargo terms, then they have to respect that themselves.  It is a 2-way street.  Surely we can all wait until tomorrow.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Ill have to kill myself if I do that before the dealers come and torture me :)

can I have the mug?...... just saying.. :D

Beepster
(you could say FL and Ableton are way more modern but they aren't really for actually RECORDING audio). 

 
I would take a look at this video, beep, if you think ableton isn't hypermodern at audio recording...
http://youtu.be/GAuq00Ze-Gw

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
VST3's object model seems over-engineered to me. I didn't have much trouble getting it but I think many developers will have a hard time with the excessive abstraction in the API's. This and the completely lack of backwards compatibility are the main reasons for its slow adoption. 

 
i agree noel, the vst3 sdk is pretty over-engineered in todays environment, and there's a difference between building a model that is forward thinking and one that is just difficult to be difficult.  the abstraction layer is pretty painful, but it's not something that a couple of months of using won't take care of... like most sdk's the more you use it the easier it gets then it becomes all muscle memory.  all the database systems i used to develop were forward thinking but also easily maintained, using data to drive programming execution so that end users could modify the source with a couple of rows in an excel spreadsheet, for example.  vst3 looks like something quite different... it looks like something that is going to be drastically modified again when 4 comes along.  i think that's one of the reasons developers can be shy to implement it.