By
mosspa
Mon Aug 01, 2022 9:05 pm
With the help from Xlutop, I answered these questions myself. The way the wrapper works is that it scans the VST folder that is located in the usual location "Drive Letter:\Program Files\Common Files\VST 3". So, to make it work, just copy the the folder that contains the files extracted from vst3shell into one of the folders scanned that for VST2s. I found the easiest way to do this (if you have a lot of VST3s) is to rename the "VST 3" folder to something else and create a new (and empty) "VST 3" folder, and incrementally add vst3 programs to it. After each increment, run MPC and see if the files got wrapped.
What I have found is that the wrapper can be a bit temperamental, and if you just move all of your vst3 files to the new "VST 3" directory, it will generate an ambiguous error and eventually result in the "Program is no longer responding" error. If you are like me and have hundreds of vst3 files in your "VST 3" folder having to go through this somewhat laborious routine may make you more likely to choose only those vst3 programs you really want to have access to in MPC. In all, I have found vst3shell to work very well for most plugins I want to run in the MPC environment. Of course, this is not a cure for the problem of Akai's fundamental misunderstanding of the Windows marketplace where only a re-write of the MPC software to natively use vst3 files will be the real solution. However, if you don't need to use too many vst3s (and I'm guessing that probably pertains to the majority of the MPC Windows user base) it will work.
I hope that this will be obvious, but you will need to solve the problem of how your other DAW(s) or Hosters deal with the fact that only a subset of your vst3s are now located in the folder labeled "VST 3". For DAWs that let you define the addresses of your real "VST 3" folder, you just direct the program to the new folder you renamed from "VST 3". For DAWs that insist on scanning the "VST 3" folder in its usual location automatically, you may need to add the renamed folder location to the DAW's scan list and remember to delete the vst3 files that you copied over to the new "VST 3" directory (otherwise you may get file duplication errors).
I hope that I have explained this so that others who need to get use of their vst3 files can actually use vst3shell. If you have problems or need further assistance, give me a shout here (or PM me if this forum software allows it).
John 3