Vienna Ensemble Pro - Version History

v8.1.907, July 15th, 2026

Fixed

• Crackling audio with live input at 1 buffer latency (regression in 8.1.897): real-time input could crackle on every marginal network round trip, e.g. when monitoring in Reaper with the transport stopped. The plugin now briefly waits for late server audio instead of dropping the block, and a related issue that could leave the plugin permanently silent after a single odd-sized audio block has also been resolved.
• Multiple outputs broken in Studio One (regression in 8.1.897): output channels beyond 1/2 could not be enabled and multi-output instrument presets were silenced in the VST3 plugin. Reverted the bus-role change that caused this.
• Distorted audio in Pro Tools at large hardware buffer sizes (e.g. 2048 samples) (regression in 8.1.897): audio returned from the server was gated and played at the wrong rate. The processing block size is now correctly limited to the server's block size.
• Audio engine toolbar toggle could display the wrong on/off state; it now reflects the settled engine state.
• Plugin scan can no longer be cancelled by stray keystrokes: the Cancel button in the plugin scan dialog no longer takes keyboard focus, so pressing Enter or Space during a scan won't abort it.
• Keyboard shortcuts in tooltips now display natively per platform: tips show ⌘/⌥ glyphs on macOS instead of "Ctrl"/"Alt", matching how native menus render shortcuts.
• Vienna Video Pro: settings window height corrected.
• macOS: "Duplicate Channel" created two copies instead of one.
• macOS: Apple Silicon update hint shown incorrectly — the hint suggesting an update for Apple Silicon now only appears when the installed component genuinely lacks a native arm64 build.
• macOS: crash while loading projects containing Kontakt 8 — a Kontakt timer could fire against a half-initialized instance during project load.

v8.1.897, July 16th 2026

New Features

• Channel sets can now carry their automation — save it with the set and restore it via the new Automation checkbox in the channel set browser.
• MIDI Activity Focus is now configurable — its own Preferences/General section, with channel-selection now optional so incoming MIDI can wake a disabled channel without jumping the view.
• New factory channel sets for Synchron Brass (Flow and Precision) — now four sets each, adding Muted (sordino trumpets/trombones) and Special (Wagner tubas, piccolo/bass trumpet, and more).
• The Vienna Video Player follows MMC — play, stop, pause and locate commands from your DAW now move the playhead and timeline.
• The recent projects list can be cleared via a new Clear Menu entry in File → Open Recent Project.

Improved

• Reworked Disable, Import Instances and Merge dialogs to look and behave like standard system dialogs, fixing the unusable Import Instances dialog.
• The server window now comes up in focus instead of appearing inactive.
• Recent projects with the same name are easier to tell apart — each identical name shows just enough of its path to be unique, with the full path as a tooltip.
• Claude Desktop and Claude Code are now separate entries in the MCP/API (Beta) preferences.
• More accurate audio thread scheduling on macOS — the server now schedules from the true timing of its audio cycle instead of a fixed estimate.
• You can now decline the switch to the local console over Remote Desktop (Windows) — it's now a Yes/No prompt with "Don't show this again" so you can keep working remotely.

Fixed for hosts and plug-ins

• Crackles when automating the plug-in in Pro Tools, in hosts that split the audio block at automation points.
• Immersive channel layouts were misread by the Audio Input and Event Input plug-ins (7.1 Proximity, 9.x.4/9.x.6, or Ambisonics).
• Logic reported the Vienna Ensemble Pro Audio Unit as unavailable in older projects — they now open correctly.
• In Logic, the "Connected Server Interfaces" list stayed empty, blocking Audio/Event Input routing (macOS, Audio Units).
• VE Pro keyboard shortcuts stopped working while a VST3 plug-in editor had focus (Windows) — shortcuts now reach VE Pro while in-plug-in typing still works.

Fixed for servers and connections

• No servers were found in Logic 12.3 (macOS) — a new helper installed with VE Pro now handles the search.
• A local server is now found even with no network connection.
• Reconnecting to a server that had moved could fail — VE Pro now runs a fresh search and finds it at its new address.
• A server could become unreachable after a network change — Mac servers now keep their advertised addresses up to date.

Fixed Installation (macOS)

• The AU3 plug-in could be missing from your hosts entirely — the installer now registers it explicitly.
• The helper apps no longer clutter the Vienna Ensemble Pro folder — both are now hidden.
• Leftover shared libraries from Vienna Ensemble Pro 5 are now removed on install.

Fixed for projects and instances

• Loading a project no longer freezes the app — the progress window stays responsive throughout.
• Instances saved as unsnapped came back as dead, unresponsive windows after loading a server project.
• Unsnapped instances did not come back hidden if you had saved them that way.
• An unsnapped server instance had the wrong window frame on macOS — no title bar plus a stray fullscreen button.
• Closed floating instrument editors reopened on the next load and stole the channel selection.
• Auto-saves and backups no longer clutter the project folder — they now go into a vep-backup folder next to the project.
• The "Open recent server projects" menu kept entries for files that no longer exist — they're now dropped, and the server no longer wipes instances on a failed load.
• The same project could appear twice in the recent projects menu — duplicates are now collapsed to a single entry.

Fixed in interface

• Channel and mixer strip tooltips went stale after renaming a channel or changing an instrument; mixer strips now show tooltips too.
• Empty boxes instead of checkmarks and arrows on Windows 10 and Windows Server — they used a font that only ships with Windows 11.

Fixed Vienna Video Player

• Audio stopped partway through a clip and stayed silent when the media's sample rate was lower than the project's.
• Waveforms could be drawn wrong, with misaligned peaks, and the bad drawing was cached.
• In Cubase, audio passing through the player was destroyed — the track was silenced and channels could bleed.

Upgrade notes

• On macOS, VE Pro now installs a login item ("Vienna Ensemble Pro Discovery") that lets plug-ins find servers; it's removed on uninstall.
• The AU3 plug-in and the discovery helper are registered per account — on a multi-user Mac, run the installer from each account that needs them.
• Existing auto-save and backup files stay where they are — only newly written ones go into the new vep-backup folder.
• The Vienna Video Player's waveform cache is cleared once during installation, so the first display of a file may take slightly longer.

v8.1.834, June 19th, 2026

Fixed

• Event Input Plugin was not sending any events
• Windows: Version number displayed wrong
• Video Pro Plug-in: Blackmagic devices were not working
• Video Pro Plug-in: Dragging in audio files from folders was broken

Improved:

• macOS: Hardware acceleration

v8.1.830, June 17th, 2026

NEW FEATURES

MCP Server

• New MCP server integration: VE Pro now ships an MCP server (a native MCP client/CLI bundled into the macOS and Windows installers) that lets AI assistants drive VE Pro. Enable it for Claude, ChatGPT Codex or Google's Antigravity from the new MCP / API section in Preferences.

Audio Input Plugin

• The Audio Input plugin now works reliably across hosts, without the awkward, host-specific workarounds it used to need. Rather than depending on the DAW delivering input audio exactly on time, the plugin now detects when input arrives late, free-runs to measure how much latency it needs, and raises its reported latency so the next playback is in sync — replacing the previous hand-tuned per-host latency handling. The current Audio Input Latency is shown in the plugin settings with a Reset button, and persists with the project.
• A new shared-memory transport makes the input plugins work in out-of-process / sandboxed hosts the old model couldn't serve — including Logic and the macOS AU hosting service.
• Audio Input slots are now variable-width (mono / stereo / surround / immersive) instead of fixed stereo pairs.

Automation

• New dockable Automation Browser replacing the legacy automation tabs: Flat / By-source / By-destination views, a collapsible source-picker accordion (learn / none / Parameter / MIDI), inline single-click source and destination pickers with learn-pulse feedback, shortened parameter paths, sortable and user-resizable columns, multi-token and quoted-phrase search, and a redesigned toolbar.
• Automation edits (add / remove / edit source and destination / clear) and engine learn-captures are now undoable / redoable.
• Automation Browser view state (mode, sort column, column widths, scroll) persists across restarts and project save / load.

Channels, Mixer and MIDI

• Reworked folder and channel enable / disable model. Disabling a folder is now a pure folder-level action that silences the folder's bus without rewriting each child's own enable state (the previous model fanned disable state up and down the tree). Children under a disabled folder are shown as effectively disabled — their plugins close, secondary controls grey, and the enable button dims to a faint variant — while keeping their individual enable state, so re-enabling the folder restores exactly what was active before. The folder enable button now toggles only the folder's own state on a plain click, with Shift+click as the new gesture to fan the change out to its direct children. Old sessions are migrated automatically (a folder whose children were all disabled becomes a disabled folder with its children left intact).
• Folder Disable is now an automatable parameter (registered alongside Volume / Mute / Solo) so DAWs can automate folder enable / disable, and it is the single source of truth behind the DAW-facing instance Disable parameter (replacing the old separate engine-level Disable).
• Force Enable action — enables channels gated by disabled parent folders in one undoable step (ungating ancestors, self-disabling siblings); available from the Channels menu, strip/mixer context menus, Ctrl+Alt+F, REST and OSC. The plain Enable item is hidden unless a channel is actually self-disabled.
• Inline channel renaming from the mixer strip (Shift+double-click; a preference inverts this; Tab / Shift+Tab navigation, Alt group-rename, undo, folder support).
• Hierarchical MIDI-input picker that nests channels under their port, sets port + channel in one undo step, and flags slots colliding with other strips on the same port/channel.
• Opt-in "Enable channels on MIDI activity" preference, off by default.
• Preference controlling which MIDI events count as activity for instance focus-switching (default note+cc; notes-only / CC-only / any), eliminating unwanted switching from note-offs and incidental CC streams.
• Per-channel progress feedback while enabling / disabling channels and folders.

Saving and Backups

• Reworked auto-save into a configurable backup system. Final state: auto-saves and on-save backups are kept in two independent, separately-counted rotations ([name].autosave-NN and [name].backup-NN) written next to the project file; keep-counts are configurable and a count of 0 disables on-save backups. The Saving preferences were regrouped accordingly.

Plugin Hosting and Compatibility

• Comprehensive speaker-arrangement / channel-configuration support aligned with VST3 SDK 3.8 — many new immersive / 3D layouts (9.x, 7.1.x, 7.0.3, 22.0 / 22.2, Atmos variants, Sony 360RA, bottom-layer formats), enumerated from one shared list across the new-project dialog, FX-insert probing, and the VST3 / AU / veplugin / integrated providers; with correct metering and stability at very high channel counts.
• Automatic VST2 → VST3 migration: when a saved VST2 plugin can't be loaded (e.g. uninstalled), VE Pro migrates it to its declared VST3 successor on load and passes the saved state through as a proper FXB stream (verified with Kontakt 8).

Crash / Hang Reporting

• New Help → Submit Hang Report item for manually submitting crash/hang .dmp / .txt files to support, with the event ID copied to the clipboard on success.

Vienna Video Pro

• Large UI redesign across the timeline browser, track controls, transport, fullscreen, markers / regions / streamers, import / export / settings / shortcuts dialogs, video pool, color picker, audio meter, timecode overlay and icons — including track volume up to +12 dB, snap-to-timeline-start, and a confirmation dialog when removing a timeline.

IMPROVEMENTS

Performance

• macOS realtime scheduling now relies on server workgroups (replacing the hand-tuned time-constraint policy).
• Channel-set presets now use a single app-scoped cache / watcher shared across instances (with a startup "Loading channel set library…" splash), fixing hangs when browsing Channel Sets and lag in embedded file dialogs.

UI / UX

• macOS-style title bars on dock, tool and main windows.
• Tall popup / context menus now pan (scroll) vertically so items past the screen edge stay reachable, instead of being clamped.
• Audited and filled in missing tooltips / status tips across the host, MIR and Server UIs.
• Browser filter now supports double-quoted phrases for exact matches.
• App-level shortcuts (undo / save / etc.) now work while a browser search field has focus.
• Swapped the enable / disable channel shortcuts (Cmd/Ctrl+E enables, +Shift disables).
• Plugin / project loading no longer stalls the UI: the modal progress dialog now renders natively instead of pumping the Qt event loop (which previously risked hangs and crashes, especially on macOS).
• Server interface plug-in NOT-CONNECTED screen reworked: the headline now names the host you tried to reach with a one-sentence, case-specific reason beneath it; it distinguishes a server closed cleanly from an unexpected drop, keeps showing the last-known host after a drop, with RETRY / ALL buttons, tailors the message for localhost vs. remote, and vertically centers the status / host / reason / connect-button stack (with a larger server label).
• Server interface plug-in server browser: added a server-discovery help popover; the CONNECT button is disabled until a valid IPv4 address is entered; and settings / error dialogs render inside the plugin window instead of as native OS popups.
• Audio / Event Input connect screen polish: denser, more readable server-interface list; in-window error dialogs; a "?" help popover explaining why no interface is listed; ASSIGN disabled until a valid interface is selected; a clearer "Use for automation" checkbox; and a red / green header tint.
• ASIO startup hardened for picky RME drivers (progressive open fallback; JUCE GUI initialised so drivers receive a valid window handle, fixing empty sample-rate / latency dropdowns).
• The plugin browser now has a toggle button to show/hide presets, so searching for plugins specifically becomes easier

BUG FIXES

Plugin Hosting

• AU channel mapping for surround / immersive layouts is no longer scrambled; broader AU layout recognition; AU3 reports correct per-bus I/O, applies the output channel-map and uses block-relative SysEx timing.
• AU3 reports the correct version (8.1.0) to Logic's Plugin Manager and reads server I/O counts via a shared app-group container.
• The VST2 wrapper now correctly offers a Quadro 4-channel configuration.
• VST3 plugins retain their identity (id / name / manufacturer) and unload reliably.
• Missing-plugin slots now keep their saved state across save / load for all plugin types (not just VST2).
• Undoing a move / replace FX-plugin operation no longer pairs signal-blockers with the wrong channels.

Integrated (Vienna Suite Pro) Plugins

• Fixed a crash when automating an integrated plugin's Disable parameter (the handler now runs off the realtime audio thread; receiver context added to receiverless signal/slot connections).
• The integrated-plugin Bypass is now synced with the host FxPlugin Bypass, and "Bypass" no longer appears twice as an automatable parameter (the engine now soft-bypasses through the plugin).
• Integrated plugins are no longer missing from the FX-insert menu on immersive / 3D buses (e.g. 7.1.6); the integrated provider now draws from the shared channel-configuration list.

Channels, Automation and Routing

• Channels copied from a disabled instance into an enabled one now become active instead of showing greyed-out players.
• Enabling a channel that was duplicated while disabled now refreshes its strips, and its VST3 slot is no longer stuck in bypass.
• Duplicating channels (and pasting / loading channel sets) places the new channels right after the selection, selects them all, makes the correct one current, and restores the selection on undo (including folders).
• Opening a channel's instrument GUI via the edit button now makes that channel current and selected.
• The missing-patches warning ring clears immediately when the instrument is replaced.
• Fixed automation targeting disabled channels / plugins: re-enable hooks are no longer duplicated or burned, the destination parameter name is preserved across disable / save / reload, unresolved entries are skipped in network parameter info, and per-plugin disabled state stays aligned with its ID across regeneration.

Stability / Crashes

• Fixed a crash from casting a channel to the wrong channel type.
• Fixed a crash when the iLok is removed during application shutdown.
• Fixed a crash when pressing OK on the missing-plugins dialog.
• macOS: fix to prevent the connected DAW being killed when the VE Pro server unexpectedly quits
• Preserved the PACE conductor across client reconnections after a crash (fixes spurious "peer limit" failures) and fixed an addPeer / removePeer data race.
• Restored macOS 10.14 compatibility on the crash-reporting path.

Project Load and Window State

• Cancelling the "Save Changes" prompt when loading a server project now actually aborts the load.
• Loading a server project no longer flashes and then clobbers the saved dock / window layout.
• Standalone windows restore geometry, dock layout, maximized state and splitter ratio across restarts.
• A maximized window is restored as maximized on macOS standalone reload.
• The INSTRUMENT dock restores the current channel's instrument after load.
• Multi-instance server loads show the correct current instance (fixes wrong-instance / invisible-instance GUI issues with Kontakt and similar plugins).
• Floating instrument-window position / visibility is restored and all windows open at save time are reopened; Video Pro window position persists.
• Fixed the UI becoming click-unresponsive after loading a server project.
• Fixed the mixer occasionally appearing empty (no channel strips) after loading a project.

General UI

• Removed a duplicate "Preferences…" entry and stray empty menu separators.
• Combo / selector buttons no longer stay visually pressed after their popup menu closes.
• Off-screen tool windows are clamped fully on-screen; the channel color picker opens with the cursor on the swatches.
• Double-clicking a knob near the right screen edge no longer immediately closes the value-edit popup.
• Widened Preferences spinboxes and fixed inverted min / max on the meter peak-hold setting.
• The CHANNEL SETS dock can no longer be shrunk to a sliver (minimum width raised to match AUTOMATION).
• Insert slots show a proper bypass icon instead of a power glyph.
• Menu icons render consistently, including the previously icon-less Save Project item.
• Consistent group spacing in the Preferences dialog across pages.
• Floating tool / dock windows show the resize cursor and allow edge drag-resize.
• Windows, high-DPI: fixed mispositioned popup menus, incorrect tooltip clamping, wrong plugin-window resize limits, and the integrated Equalizer's slider wrapping around, at non-100% display scaling (the screen work-area was being read in physical instead of logical pixels).

Presets

• Factory channel sets whose required Toolkit plugin isn't installed are now consistently hidden (installing one plugin no longer hides previously visible free-instrument sets).

Vienna Video Pro

• No longer sends stray stop / play MMC messages when relocating under MuseScore.
• Fixed a hang when closing a Video Pro window on Windows.
• Fixed a GUI crash when entering fullscreen.
• Fixed a GUI crash that caused the DeckLink output to show null frames.
• Corrected the AAX plugin id.
• Tagged the video plugin as a generator so Pro Tools keeps calling its audio thread continuously.
• The Cmd/Ctrl+S shortcut is no longer intercepted by the timeline split-region action.
• Video frames display reliably (the blit now loops until the frame is ready).

v8.0.585, 1 April 2026

Fixed

• Potentially very long connection times for some users
• Potential crashes when MIDI events were sent to VST3 plugins that were being disabled/removed (which can happen in many circumstances)
• Potential crash when saving VST3 plugin data (such as during project saving)
• macOS: Potential crash when locally connected master host crashes

v8.0.575, 26 March 2026

Added

• Warning dialog when disabling "Accept new connections"
• Video Pro: Edit positioning of Timecode in Settings
• Video Pro: Edit default marker color and position in Settings
• Video Pro: Can hide TimeCode/Markers/Streamers
• Video Pro: Can choose to export TimeCode/Markers/Streamers
• Video Pro: Can organize items in pools in folders
• Video Pro: Larger Radius for streamer hitpoint

Fixed

• Potential crashes on loading projects with Kontakt (and possibly other plugins) in them
• Disabling "Accept new connections" still advertising the server locally
• Crash when auto-save triggers during plugin scan (such as when scanning through the Preferences dialog)
• Random crashes when instances/channels/plugins got stopped/closed in various circumstances
• Selecting an expanded folder showing the entire folder with all of its contents in channels/mixer view, rather than just the actual folder itself
• Status/tool tips of insert strips showing incomplete information for plugins
• MIDI activity focus needing multiple events in quick succession to actually trigger, rather than just one
• Crash when loading factory channel sets with an old version of Synchron Player still installed
• macOS: Saving on quiting in standalone would prevent the application from actually quitting
• macOS: Installing Synchron Stage Reverb SO separately would override the integrated version
• macOS: Crash on quitting while a third party plugin is showing a modal dialog (such as a Kontakt "missing samples" dialog)
• macOS: Dragging a dock widget out of the main window to redock not working (it's still interrupted for third party instrument plugins, but workable)
• Windows: Potentially high Windows service CPU use due to ongoing server discovery
• Windows: Slow disappearance of removed servers
• Video Pro:: Crash when exporting 10 bit videos on macOS

Improved

• RAM usage during loading of server projects
• "Channel Sets" and "Automation" dock widgets now keep their width when resizing the main window
• More room for title text on channel strip (condensed font, better spacing)
• Minor GUI tweaks

v8.0.490, 12 February 2026

Fixed

• Various crash fixes, both reproducible and preventive
• Crash on receiving malformed OSC messages
• Waves plugins (VST and VST3) not validating successfully
• Potential crash when loading a VST3 plugin preset
• Potential crash when a VST3 plugin requests all parameters to update at once
• Potential crash during OSC server initialization
• Potential crash when updating mixer/channel strips
• Standalone running with only one audio thread, regardless of set preference
• Standalone not able to receive OSC messages
• Also show plugin manufacturer in plugin validation dialog
• Various VST3 plugins potentially not validating successfully
• macOS: Fixed Intel builds not producing usable crash reports
• Video Pro: MacOS 12 was displaying a black Video
• Video Pro: Follow playhead when Sync to Host is off
• Video Pro: Black flickering on some Windows machines

Improved

• Various small GUI improvements
• Ensure that a channel is selected after deleting channels, so keyboard navigation can continue
• Ensure channel set browser relinquishes keyboard focus after a drag/drop operation, so user can actually undo instantly using Ctrl/Cmd+Z
• Windows: Use modern native style, including dark mode support, if available
• macOS: Added backspace key as additional shortcut for deleting selected channels

Added

• Video Pro: Reset playhead setting so playhead jumps back to where you started playing
• Video Pro: Additional shortcuts (see manual)
• Video Pro: Import dialog for markers with different import modes
• Video Pro: Marker import now also reads the colors of the markers (Cubase default color map)
• Video Pro: Marker text color auto adapts now depending on brightness of marker
• Video Pro: Double click to fit object in view also added to markers and audio objects. Was previously only working for videos.

v8.0.442, 28 January 2026

Fixed:

• Update check was not working
• Windows: Potentially high CPU use from svchost.exe process

Added:

• Import of Cubase marker files (drag and drop the xml file)
• Drag and drop support for channel sets window

v8.0.430, 26 January 2026

Improved

• Updated application icons
• Video Pro: Refreshed audio meter design

Fixed

• Plug-in error dialog text formatting
• Potential crashes when launching, loading a Server Project, or quitting the application
• Deleting a plug-in user preset would not update the plug-in preset browser
• Channel sets can be saved to and loaded from disk again (in addition to the included browser)
• "Change Name…" (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+N) shortcut not responding
• Server "Find…" (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+F) would not bring up the search box when instances were listed vertically in the sidebar
• The entry for "Vienna Ensemble Pro Manual" (F1) did not link to the updated VE Pro 8 manual
• Local server: Changing the Server Name would replace "localhost" in the plug-in
• VST3: User presets would not appear correctly in host preset browsers (requires a full VST3 plug-in rescan)
• macOS: Removing instances would not correctly update the menu (prevents duplicate menu entries)
• macOS: The Preferences menu item would disappear after "Delete All Instances"
• Win: Menus transparency not rendering correctly

v 8.0.419 - 21 January 2026 (Initial release version)

Fixed

• Reliability of server advertisement/discovery
• Crashes when loading some projects
• Windows: Transport play/stop not working in Pro Tools
• macOS: Closing an effect plugin window could cause the entire application to close