someone actually asked for an info dump

Do not, I repeat, do not infodump on someone today.

Hi, my brain is wired so that it obsesses over details, combs through data and sifts through documentation, over decades even, only some poor soul to give me attention, which promptly opens up the spigot.

Please be advised, you will know why VST2 instrument plugins can take audio input, but only because Native Instruments sort of "hacked it in" during the 2000s, even though it wasn't apart of the VST2 specification, which Steinberg obviously isn't a fan of, because even to this day Cubase won't recognise audio inputs from VST2 instruments in Cubase, but you can with VST 3 instrument plugins, and even though VST4 was at some point announced, it was presumably scrapped because plans for VST5 was leaked time after, but never actually came into fruition. Really though, vendors should be distributing CLAP plugins and contributing back to CLAP, because we could really use an open standard beyond Steinberg's proprietary SDK, but then people like Native Instruments, Arturia, etc would have to "port their plugins" over to CLAP, which shouldn't be too hard since it's sort of API compatible - though not really - but since they won't see instant returns they probably won't dedicate the billable hours... so anyways, I program Maxforlive devices nowadays - oh, wait. Butterfly...