Are you 64 Bit or 32 Bit?

I don’t know of any plugin developers that would charge extra for the 64 bit version if you already have the 32 bit. The only plugins I know of that are 32 bit only are from devs that have gone off to do other things or are using flowstone, which means their plugins are buggy CPU hogs.

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Even thought I’d absolutely LOVE to sail into the sunset with you @AJ113, it’ll have to wait until after our vacation in Hawaii. Any of the plugins that I TRULY missed migrating to 64-bit, were eventually updated by the manufacturer and made available as a free update.

OK well maybe it’s time I visited this again. I am not precious about 32 bit, I just don’ t want my DAW freezing up when I’m trying to mix the next blockbuster…

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I’d say Waves, but it may or may not qualify for your conditions. I have some 32-bit Waves plugins which are just about the only 32-bit ones I use in Reaper. The only way for me to get their 64-bit plugin version of the same ones I have is to upgrade to a newer version of the plugins, at a cost. I got them on sale probably, right before they moved their plugins to 64-bit, and IIRC Waves was quite late to the party with 64-bit. I think my Waves plugins are version 7, and I may have a couple version 8, but I think it was version 9 you had to go to for 64-bit. It’s been a few years though, but that’s my recollection.

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If the version you have is 32 bit only, you will probably have to pay to upgrade to a 64 bit version. 64 bit plugins are a relatively new thing.

Posted in wrong thread.

@AJ113 Think this post is in the wrong thread, or do publishing sales depend on bit rate? ROFL

Feck. Sorry chaps.

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It’s okay, we all make mistakes. :upside_down:

Posted in right thread.

I bit the bullet and moved to 64-bit years ago (Mac). I was motivated by memory and performance when using sample libraries, particularly when I started using Steve Slate Drums, versus lagging 64-bit support on some plugins. I had to bid farewell to at least a couple of plugins at the time—the biggest loss was M-Tron Pro, but within a year or two the laggards finally shipped a 64-bit version. My friend and musical collaborator who is a freelance engineer/producer, running the much of the same plugins and the same DAW (but much older version) has continued in the 32-bit world (running Lion I think, possible Snow Leopard), so his threshold of pain is higher than mine (then again, I need to stay more current in the OS department, as I develop code).

But as others have pointed out, 32-bit code is spelled, “legacy”. If you’re getting by, great, it’s an appliance for you, have at it till the appliance falls apart. My buddy is only waiting till it’s convenient to upgrade his Mac Pro 2009 (same here, 8-core) to a trashcan Mac Pro, to upgrade everything. Unlike me, he doesn’t have much reason to upgrade incrementally.

I just shipped a plugin that is 64-bit only. It would have been trivial to ship with 32-bit support too. But the spec from the manufacturer was 64-bit from day 1, 32-bit support was never considered, just like Win XP was never considered. It doesn’t matter how trivial it is to implement, it means the manufacturer will have to, potentially, deal with customers with problems related to ancient computers and OS.

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This is very true. There seems to be a high correlation between people using older systems and how much support they require. That and PT 12. But I consider PT 12 to be legacy software as well.

I took the plunge and moved to 64-bit with Cubase 8. I’ve not seen any particular advantage. I’d hoped the additional RAM access would improve performance and reduce freezes, audio drop-outs, etc, but no such luck.

Now that I’ve upgraded to Cubase 9, there’s no going back - they no longer even offer a 32-bit version.

Mostly I’m happy, but I’m STILL looking for 64-bit replacements for two of my favorite plug-ins:

  1. Steinberg DoubleDelay (doesn’t work even with Jbridge. I have other usable delays, of course, but none that feel as intuitive to me as this one did. RIP)
  2. EpicVerb (still my favorite reverb. Still using it with Jbridge. But I’d phase it out, along with Jbridge, if I could find a 64-bit replacement I like as well.)

I bought this years ago and found it to be worth every penny!

Your 64 bit plugins will greatly appreciate your generosity, should you choose to go this round :wink:

Also, I believe that a 32-bit OS, at least Windows, is limited to 4GB usable memory. That means that even if you have 16GB RAM installed, you’re not going to be able to access more than 4GB of physical resources.

Boy, did I feel like a twit when I found this out. That, and the fact that the Cubase version I was using was 32 bit anyway. I’d upgraded my system to get to 64 bit, and found out I couldn’t use the extra 4GB of memory, which was needed for running more than one instance of EZ Drummer, or S-Gear. That prompted me to finally switch over to Reaper after years with Cubase. I don’t think you hear a whole lot of difference between 32 and 64 if you were using 32 properly, but it is a lot more convenient, and I’m not a plug hound.