Ableton 9 64-bit version won’t scan for 32-bit VSTs
Hi! First thread for me at DJTT.
Well. Read the title.
Is there an update for this?
According to Ableton I need a 3rd party-plugin to use them, but WHY?
https://www.ableton.com/en/articles/use-32-bit-vst-plug-ins-live-64-bit-jbridge-mac/
32bit plugins are not compatible with the 64bit version. It’s stated on Ableton’s website.
Unless you are getting low memory errors from Live they recommend to use the 32bit version.
I am a software engineer, so I do understand 32-bit/64-bit differences.
I too wouldn’t mind knowing the limitations of providing the ability to pull in 32-bit plug-ins.
I don’t actually know the VST API standard. I would guess that they allow shared memory for plug-ins and the host application (Ableton)?
This might be a product management decision on their side to not support this, for stability and compatibility reasons.
EDIT: Ah, it looks like VST’s are pulled in much like dynamically linked libraries. This is different from having them pop up as their own executable and then using some inter-process communication (IPC) to get the data back and forth to the host (like using pipes or some other construct). They could implement a bit bridge to do this, but eh, it’s more stable and easier to request the plug-in vendors to port to 64-bit.