This is a tutorial on creating your first plugin, which is a gain slider. Join the Audio Programmer Community: Supp.

1. La Petite Excite - Free VST/AU plugin 'La Petite Excite' is a small exciter plugin and it can lead you into a brighter future when used wisely. For details, check out this tutorial from my good friend AMB or read the manual included in the download.
2. RandARP is a VST plugin arpeggiator with many randomization features, allowing incoming notes or chords to be manipulated in various rhythmic ways. All standard arpeggiator parameters like number of octaves, note length and note order are included, but the plugin also offers complete randomization of the velocity, gate, shift and swing parameters.

Welcome to our third-party developer support site. We’re pleased to offer other manufacturers the chance to develop VST- and ASIO-based software and hardware for Mac OS and Windows by offering those technologies along with the appropriate license.

Please note that there are licensing agreements coupled with the use of development tools which you have to agree. These agreements contain conditions and/or requirements which are mostly concerned with liability issues.

Please send the filled license agreement to the address that is given on the form, by mail or email it to info[SB]steinberg.de

Available Steinberg SDKs:

VST 3 Audio Plug-Ins SDK (Format: zip, 102.3 MB)

VST Module Architecture SDK (Format: zip, 0.35 MB)

ASIO SDK (Format: zip, 5.70 MB)

GameAudioConnect SDK (Format: zip, 8.70 MB)

Welcome! In this tutorial series we will be learning how to create audio plugins that run as VST, VST3, AU, RTAS, AAX or as a standalone application.

Audio plugins are programs that are loaded into a host software (such as Ableton Live, Logic or REAPER). They process Audio and/or MIDI data and can have a graphical user interface. Here are three examples (U-He Zebra, Sonalksis FreeG and D16 Decimort):

As you can see, the GUI usually contains some controls (the knob being the most common) that change how the plugin processes incoming data. A plugin has presets (in the screenshot they’re called Combo and Emulator) that store all knob positions and other values.

We’ll start with a simple distortion plugin. After that, we’ll create this subtractive synthesizer plugin step by step:

We will use C++ and the WDL-OL library. It is based on Cockos WDL (pronounced whittle). It basically does a lot of work for us, most importantly:

• Ready-made Xcode / Visual Studio Projects
• Create VST, AudioUnit, VST3 and RTAS formats from one codebase: Just choose the plugin format and click run!
• Create 32/64-Bit executables
• Make your plugin run as a standalone Win/Mac application
• Most GUI controls used in audio plugins

It also gives you most GUI controls used in audio plugins, and some commonly used audio algorithms like for example resampling. This forum thread has screenshots of a lot of plugins that were done using WDL.

The different plugin formats all do more or less the same, so normally there would be a lot of copy & paste in your code. As a programmer you want to stay DRY, so sooner or later you’d write an abstraction layer over the different formats. This work has already been done in the form of IPlug, which is a part of WDL. These are the annoying parts of audio plugin development, so we can now focus on the fun stuff, such as:

• How the plugin processes incoming Audio/MIDI
• What the plugin looks like
• How it integrates with the host (automation, presets, etc.)

Another good thing about WDL is its permissive license: You can use it freely for commercial applications. See the links above for details.

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How we will do this

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The chase is better than the catch.