KVR Audio

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:32 pm

I think the idea was they wanted to implement a lowest-common-denominator capable of transporting communication between the plugin and host, while also capable of abstractly implementing the very same communication whether with MIDI, OSC, or various other interfaces which may replace midi at some time in the future.

Unfortunately what they got was indeed lowest common denominator, while they also pretty effectively messed it up and rendered it incapable of transporting anything, MIDI, OSC or otherwise.

tony tony chopper · Post by **tony tony chopper** » Mon Jan 27, 2014 6:06 pm

All I know is when I load a synth into FLS and try to use the mod wheel it has no effect. Restrictive.

call it "restrictive", but in FL you don't -need- a mod wheel to access modulation. You want your mod wheel to do modulation? Fine, you just link your mod wheel.. to the modulation (& you save it as a template if it bothers you to do it each time). You want your mod wheel to do something else, or I don't know, a joystick to do modulation? You can do it too.

Pitch bend is NOT hardlinked either in FL, only you didn't notice it because it's pre-linked by default.

Meanwhile, if someone is able to link a pad controller, a joystick or whatever to your synth, without you to have to write support for them, it's because the sequencer did the abstraction -for you-.

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Tue Jan 28, 2014 12:34 am

tony tony chopper wrote:
All I know is when I load a synth into FLS and try to use the mod wheel it has no effect. Restrictive.
call it "restrictive", but in FL you don't -need- a mod wheel to access modulation. You want your mod wheel to do modulation? Fine, you just link your mod wheel.. to the modulation (& you save it as a template if it bothers you to do it each time). You want your mod wheel to do something else, or I don't know, a joystick to do modulation? You can do it too.

Pitch bend is NOT hardlinked either in FL, only you didn't notice it because it's pre-linked by default.

Meanwhile, if someone is able to link a pad controller, a joystick or whatever to your synth, without you to have to write support for them, it's because the sequencer did the abstraction -for you-.

I want the host to be completely agnostic about it, and pass the MIDI unmolested to the plug-ins. The plug-ins model SYNTHS. SYNTHS speak MIDI. Q.E.D.

tony tony chopper · Post by **tony tony chopper** » Tue Jan 28, 2014 12:52 am

AdmiralQuality wrote:I want the host to be completely agnostic about it

Sadly for you, you need hosts a lot more than they need you. And host makers may care more about what the users want (or what they themselves want) than what you want.

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Tue Jan 28, 2014 1:01 am

tony tony chopper wrote:
AdmiralQuality wrote:I want the host to be completely agnostic about it
Sadly for you, you need hosts a lot more than they need you. And host makers may care more about what the users want (or what they themselves want) than what you want.

Just like Steinberg. "f**k you, you need us. We're the only game in town. Now suck it!"

And I AM a user. That's why I build these products, I use them and actually PLAY them. You know, like a musician?

Tzarls · Post by **Tzarls** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 1:03 am

So, to summarize, it´s not worth supporting, but in the end you need to support it, right?

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 1:50 am

What gave you that idea? If you believe you'll make a significant number of sales so as to justify the investment that may have what appears to be an obvious solution.

You need to consider however the deferred consequences of this: by needlessly popularizing such a format say if the plugin in question receives no functional benefit from the format, you will merely be ensuring that this additional cost is no longer optional in the future.

It will not always make sense to divide the market by 50/50 if you can instead grab 90% of it using a single format.

Taking the extra 10% may in future have unforeseen costs in excess of that 10%.

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 9:17 pm

So... sorry to revive a very beaten horse... but I was just wondering if the recent release of Roland's SH emulations as VST 3 only instruments may, or may not, drive the development world to support it regardless of it's merits. I'm not a developer, and my only stake in this is as an end user. I'm currently fine with the way I can sidechain... does VST 3 offer anything else that's substantial?

Richard_Synapse · Post by **Richard_Synapse** » Thu Sep 25, 2014 5:46 pm

Yes, certainly possible, but it could go both ways. Either people ask for VST3 support in their favorite host, or they ask Roland for VST 2.x support.

Richard

discoDSP · Post by **discoDSP** » Thu Sep 25, 2014 6:06 pm

More likely Roland having to release VST 2.x. There is a huge legacy base that shouldn't go away anytime soon.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Fri Sep 26, 2014 5:08 am

Does the plugin include features provided by VST3 as core features?

If so, many of these features will never be supported in VST2 "officially" as it has been discontinued and is slated to cease to be distributed and licensed in the near future. This means it may be impossible to create a compatible version of the plugin using VST2.

Not just due to the features as part of the core of the plugin, either. In future if it is impossible to get a license for VST2 developers will have only two options. One will be not to release anything compatible with VST2. The other will be to implement the interface according to recent case-law which has deemed the core specification of an interface required for interoperability non-eligible for copyright protection.

wrl · Post by **wrl** » Fri Sep 26, 2014 11:42 am

@aciddose: Do you have a link to that case? Or are you referring to the Oracle/Google Java API case?

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Fri Sep 26, 2014 8:21 pm

The case-law I'm referring to is spread between several cases.

Yes, the Oracle/Google case was an important component, but a case by the EU has had far more significant impact internationally.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012 ... ise-ideas/

This case-law only opens the possibility for a defense in copyright infringement cases, it doesn't redefine the law. Individual states in the EU and around the world would need to make explicit changes to their law.

That will most certainly occur though, as case-law and law are now internationally out of sync.

Oracle/Google was concluded without making such a strong statement regarding eligibility. Instead, the result was to repeat the long established position in the United States that copyright eligibility is only provided for creative works.

An interface may be a creative work up to the point it is published and used in practice. At that point however the interface is no longer a creative work, but a "fact". "Facts" have always been ineligible for copyright protection. You can not write an article containing counts of the number of trees in a park and be granted copyright protection for those facts. Anyone is free to copy that information from your work and use it themselves, unmodified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Fri Sep 26, 2014 9:04 pm

Tl;dr

We have a way out. Components of the VST-SDK fall under copyright, but the parts we actually need to build VST2 plugins or hosts compatible with existing plugins or hosts do not.

There is no reason to think that discontinuing VST2 or refusing to distribute or license the official SDK will prevent most of the world from legally writing and distributing VST2 plugins.

wrl · Post by **wrl** » Mon Sep 29, 2014 11:51 am

There are some folks in the Linux audio community that have done a clean-room reverse of the pluginterfaces code in VST2.4 to produce a VST interface devoid of Steinberg copyright. It's not complete, of course, but works well enough for several Linux projects to host VSTs with.

The issue with a logical successor to VST2.4 would be, in my opinion, what it would add or clean up to have developers actually add support for it.

VST3: Is it worth supporting?