The company Steinberg, known for its production of equipment and software systems for the music industry, has recently made a significant announcement. They have decided to open the source code of tools related to the development of plugins VST 3 (Virtual Studio Technology) and the use of the ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) protocol. The VST SDK 3.8 release has been made available under the MIT license, and an open version of the ASIO SDK is also provided under the GPLv3 license. To promote the VST SDK as an open project, a dedicated website vstdev.org has been launched. This move supports work on Linux, Windows, and macOS platforms.
VST 3 technology enables the creation of cross-platform plug-ins that implement sound effects and virtual musical instruments. These plug-ins can be utilized in various platforms for music production and digital audio processing. VST is currently the most common plugin format for audio software and is supported in open source projects such as OBS Studio, Ardour, and Audacity. The VST SDK includes various components such as the VST 3 API implementation, a C++ class library for plugin development, bindings for supporting other plugin formats, examples, and a toolkit for using graphical interfaces in plugins called VSTGUI. The VST SDK 3.8 version is also notable for its experimental support for Wayland on the Linux platform.
The open source ASIO SDK includes an implementation of the ASIO protocol, which is used for applications to interact with sound cards. ASIO is primarily designed for professional audio recording and playback systems, offering low latency, stable quality, and high throughput. The protocol supports features like variable bit depth, sampling rates, multi-channel operations, and audio synchronization facilities.
Steinberg’s decision to change the licensing model and provide the ASIO SDK under the GPLv3 license is in collaboration with the developers of OBS Studio, an open video streaming system. Steinberg has acted as a technical sponsor for OBS Studio, and integrating ASIO support into OBS Studio will not only expand the protocol’s usage in music and audio processing but also in live broadcasting setups.