KVR Audio

iainduncan · Post by **iainduncan** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 3:35 pm

Hi folks, I'm trying to find some information on the technical differences between iPlug 2 and JUCE, especially for a non-plugin app. I'm working on music pedagogy tools, building prototypes in S7 Scheme hosted in Max/MSP, with the intention of building release versions in S7 + some C++ layer. My main worry about JUCE is that I trust Roli not at all given they seem acquisition driven (I earn my bread in technical merger acquisition consulting, so I know rather a lot about what goes on behind the scenes in acquired/acquiring companies) So I'm leaning to iPlug 2, *but* it seems like iPlug's focus is more plugins. If any experienced developers can weigh in on concrete differences or their subjective experiences with regard to developing a stand alone app that will need a gui, scheduler, midi/io, and would possibly be build for multiple targets, that would be awesome. Much appreciated.

FigBug · Post by **FigBug** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 4:45 pm

Roli no longer owns JUCE, if PACE is a better owner for JUCE is yet to be seen.

That said iPlug 2 is pretty new, has a lot less UI components than JUCE.

iainduncan · Post by **iainduncan** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 5:12 pm

oh wow, I'm out of date on that. thanks. That is cause for even more consternation, acquisitions are hard on teams whether buying or being bought. :-/

iainduncan · Post by **iainduncan** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 5:19 pm

Ugh, just read the announcement, with Jules still at Roli, and JUCE owned by PACE they are now fully in acquisition blender. I think I'll spend some time figuring out if iPlug with Dear imGUI will do what I want now. thanks for the heads up.

quikquak · Post by **quikquak** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 5:55 pm

+1 for Juce, I've been using it for a year or two now, and as a lone coder it really feels like a team of people are debugging the crap out of all the boiler-plate madness that Apple, Google, and Microsoft throw at plug-in development. I've not even seen a single hiccup since the buy-out. I don't think it's going to be spoiled because of it.

iainduncan · Post by **iainduncan** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 6:14 pm

Well, if there are buy-out issues you're unlikely to see it in code for quite a while. It's more likely to be something like license and license price changes, product focus changes, the results of team and culture changes down the road. Personally I will see how I make do on iPlug 2 now. As someone who sees the machinations of PE software company sales on a regular basis, I have no problem with using *products* made by private equity backed companies, but am not going to invest work building my own company on a framework on that basis. If I can achieve what I want on permissively licences frameworks with an acceptable amount of extra work, I'll go that route for the long term de-risking.

FigBug · Post by **FigBug** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 7:10 pm

Not sure I'd use a plugin framework for a standalone app. Most of their benefit comes from abstracting the various plugin formats, integrating your window with the host and various workarounds / hacks for each host.

How many platforms are you targeting? If all you need is a GUI and MIDI, then just get a cross platform MIDI library is fairly simple and pick the GUI library that best matches what you are trying to build.

iainduncan · Post by **iainduncan** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 7:14 pm

Thanks FigBug, that's sort of what I'm evaluating. I could also just use RTMidi or CoreMidi and DearImGUI or something. However, I'm also thinking of ensuring that the apps can be used truly standalone with very simple built in piano and bass sounds, so trying to sort out how much I want to be wedded to a framework.

cpr · Post by **cpr** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 7:19 pm

I've been using JUCE for 10+ years, both personally and professionally, and I use it for all of my projects, audio related or not. My familiarity with it makes coding so easy. As well being able to take my code from one platform to another by simply pulling the code on to that platform, generating the required dev tools project files, and building is icing on that cake! Obviously this easy cross-platformness breaks down a bit when targeting desktop/mobile, since you have to give consideration to the differences layout and possible things like file system, but still, once you have the flow down for this, it all becomes easy again.

quikquak · Post by **quikquak** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 8:34 pm

I’m also confident that the transition to Apple’s Arm wonder machine will be a lot easier with the Juce team taking care of it.

quikquak · Post by **quikquak** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 8:35 pm

[double post]

FigBug · Post by **FigBug** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 9:02 pm

iainduncan wrote: ↑Sat Jul 25, 2020 7:14 pm I'm also thinking of ensuring that the apps can be used truly standalone with very simple built in piano and bass sounds.

If you want to host VST2/VST3/AU, then I'd go with JUCE, and depending what you want to do, maybe even look at tracktion_engine. That gives you a huge number of options for synths and MIDI playback.

Otherwise you are going to need to write your own synth, and that's a pretty big job even for a simple synth.

iainduncan · Post by **iainduncan** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 9:15 pm

I appreciate all the feedback, but what I was hoping for here originally was comments on the actual architectural differences, the actual technical differences between the platforms. Anyone care to weigh in on that?

iainduncan · Post by **iainduncan** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 9:33 pm

For the build in sound source, it would just be a dead simple sampler. just enough for people to do ear training.

cpr · Post by **cpr** » Sat Jul 25, 2020 10:49 pm

I was going to suggest that you check with Oli Larkin, as he is the current author of iPlug2, and he is(has been) a JUCE user. But I see you have already engaged him on the iPlug2 forums..

architectural differences between iplug 2 and JUCE for standalones?