Old VST plug -ins. Read me Page 7. Please use only VST plug-ins built with VST SDK 2.4 or higher. Notes about using SoundCloud.

How to make VST plugins in Visual Studio Introduction Microsoft announced that it would offer Visual Studio Express free of charge forever. Though the Express version of Visual C++ (hereafter referred to as VC++) has some limitations, it’s still a great tool and it’s nice to see Microsoft taking some steps to support the developers writing software for their platform. This document will describe how to get VC++ installed and building VST plugins. It assumes that you have prior experience developing VST plugins, and are familiar with the structure and layout of the VST SDK. If you are trying to write VST’s in a language other than C++, than this guide is not for you. There are lots of other frameworks out there for developing VST plugins in other languages (such as,, and, just to name a few).

This tutorial will walk you through the process of installing and configuring the tools you’ll need to build your own VST plugins with Visual Studio, and creating a simple VST plugin with optional support for a VSTGUI frontend. This guide only covers building VST 2.x plugins, as the VST3 SDK is not very widely supported yet. Note that Steinberg’s website is a bit confusing and it is easy to accidentally download the wrong version of the SDK, so double-check to make sure that you have the 2.4 SDK. Download required packages •, which requires you to make a free. Bosch Shv55m03gb 79 Manual High School there. This guide uses the 2010 Express edition, as it was the latest version at time of writing. • • and (optional) Install Visual C++ If you already have a working installation of VC++, you can skip this step. Otherwise, download VC++ and install it.

The standard installation should be OK, but you can choose to perform a custom installation if you don’t want documentation or other stuff installed with it. Before installing VC++, you must remove any other versions of VC++ on your computer.

Next, download and install the Platform SDK, which will provide you with the standard header files and libraries you’ll need to build software. You may choose to install VC++ anywhere on your hard drive, but the default location is C: Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0. Creating your project Create a new project of type “Class Library”, which we’ll call YourProjectName. In the rest of this tutorial, whenever you see YourProjectName, replace that text with the actual name of your project. In Visual Studio 9, you’d make a new project with the wizard found at File ->New ->Project.

Select Visual C++ ->Win32 Console Application, and choose a directory for your project. When the wizard opens, press “Next” and select DLL as the Application Type. Also check the “Empty Project” box. If you prefer not to start with an empty project, then you can remove all of the files that VC++ creates for you, but keep the resource.h and YourProjectName.rc files, and remove any references to these files (such as YourProjectName.ico being listed in the resource file). Add Source Code to the Project If you already have source code for your plugin, simply add it to the project. Otherwise, you need to create the following files: • YourProjectName.cpp • YourProjectName.h • resource.h (Only needed if building a plugin GUI) • YourProjectName.rc (Only needed if building a plugin GUI) You will also need to add the files from the VST SDK, which includes everything under the vstsdk2.4/public.sdk/source/vst2.x and vstsdk2.4/pluginterfaces/vst2.x directories. I usually prefer to manually make groups for these directories and drag the files to the groups from Explorer, as dragging the entire “vstsdk2.4” directory to VS can cause it to choke when it tries to add a bunch of unused files to the project.

To start out with, the plugin’s entry point header file (YourProjectName.h) should look something like this. LIBRARY YOURPROJECTNAME EXPORTS VSTPluginMain main=VSTPluginMain Configure build settings Go to the project settings either by right clicking on the project in the solution explorer and then selecting “Properties”. #define IDB_BITMAP1 1 #define IDB_BITMAP2 2 Now you can use IDB_BITMAP1 (or any other name of your choosing) in your code when creating new CBitmap objects. I have heard some reports of vstgui.cpp not compiling properly due to the missing symbol png_set_expand_gray_1_2_4_to_8. Changing png_set_gray_1_2_4_to_8 to png_set_expand_gray_1_2_4_to_8 in vstgui.cpp seems to fix this issue. Final considerations VC++ ships with an optimizing compiler, but sometimes the compiler will choke on certain files and optimization must be disabled.