Question

More and more devs are moving to support AUv3 on MacOS - Please consider supporting this plugin format!

Answer 1

You should always prefer VST3 / VST2 over Audio Units in Studio One. Audio Unit is the Logic / MainStage format. Other DAWs do support AU however many plug-in manufacturers only test their plug-ins in Logic. Only a few plug-in developers assure compatibility of their AU versions in Studio One. So the recommended format in Studio One is clearly VST3.

Answer 2

Sorry, but this just isn't correct. Audio Units is part of macOS Core Audio support, and is not specific to Logic X and/or MainStage.

Additionally, I was asking about AUv3 support (as distinct to Audio Units) which is common to both macOS and iOS.

Comments

Audio Unit is a plug-in architecture that needs to be supported by the host as well as the plug-in. If a plug-in isn't being tested in the desired environment, you can expect all sorts of issues. It does not matter if AU is part of macOS Core Audio.

So please, before you claim that my explanation is wrong, read up on the technical background.

Answer 3

I would like to emphasise the need for this, especially now with Apple Silicon.

AU and AU3 are not just part of Apple's own products, and an integral component of CoreAudio, but they have become part of a larger ecosystem of tools, including Davinci, Audacity, ... If Presonus is supporting AU, which it is since it's an option and it's marketed as such, then it should properly support it. These are not small developers, and they support AU and Studio One ...  NI (Kontakt), VSL (Synchron), OT (SINE), SF ... so I see no reason to say that it's not supported.

AU has some advantages over VST3 on MacOS, and the most important is CPU optimisation, on both at play and idle. AU3 is no longer beta according to Apple, at least for Logic Pro, and having. MIDI multi-port AU3 VEP supported in Studio One would be great.

I am disabling VST3 in my template to make sure I have no VST3 plugins, and then re-enabling it so that I can have the VEP VST3 plugin expose multiple MIDI ports. But this kind of workaround should not be required IMHO.