People seem to have problems getting official VST to work. I had too. My other VST controllers require direct connection to synth. SE-02 controller works differently. You need to have two midi tracks and audio track. On first midi track you have controller. It receives all midi. Second midi track takes midi from VST and sends it to synth. You take audio to own track. It works. You can change values on synth and VST receives it. I got instructions when I asked what was problem. I expected I have to hook up to midi from VST like was done with stand alone software. It is bit more complicated but it works.
Another bit complicated thing is what this does to workflow. You can’t save your patches in VST. It is basically only controller you use for automation. You can load patches but can’t save them. Which means you have to use stand alone software for sound design and getting user bank from synth. You create patch on stand alone software and save it as patch. You can save them as file to default folder and load them from default folder. On VST you select patch, use that patch save your automations. Not the way I prefer but it works.
UI has couple weird choices. Stand alone works more as you expect but with VST I thought it was broken more than once. On VST left click turns switch up and right click turns it down. Second one is quite unintuitive. Stand alone isn’t perfect either. For some reason fine tunes center is at 1. You probably don’t notice that until you want to detune oscillators and wonder why it sounds weird. When you load patches it goes to one position. You just have to know this. VST doesn’t have this issue. Talking about fine tune. Detune has only five useful setting. That left click/right click thing is very useful turning fine tune know 1 to right or left. Fine tune issue is synth’s issue.
All that said I think VST/Stand alone package is worth the money if you have Roland SE-02. Synth’s size makes it hard to use. Some knobs are hard to turn. This is my fourth Roland Boutique. Others are original three synths. Only JU-06 is usable in this size. Having software editor and VST make it more usable. With software editor you can see the patches if you want to learn how they are made. I have used SE-02 with Max for Live and Cubase’s device panels, stand alone is my favorite way for sound designing. Max for Live is superior way working in DAW. VST works but I really wish you could save and load patches to and from project folder. That way your sounds would be inside projects and you didn’t need to copy/paste patch files if you want to save them into project.
Does this stop me wanting real Moog? No. But it makes me enjoy SE-02 more until I get one and might make me keep SE-02 in setup after I get one.