KVR Audio

WOK · Post by **WOK** » Thu Aug 02, 2018 9:55 am

syntonica · Post by **syntonica** » Sat Aug 04, 2018 6:00 pm

Psst.. Hey, buddy! Yeah, you. You got a VST 2 SDK?

Want one?

Looks like Steinberg is trying to stamp the older code out is all. Nothing unusual here--try finding some older Apple docs or SDKs.

Now that Apple is killing OpenGL, not sure what's next for my code base. I was just getting the hang of it, too!

Guess I'd better dig out my VST 3 docs and start learning...

S0lo · Post by **S0lo** » Sun Aug 05, 2018 12:08 am

syntonica wrote:Psst.. Hey, buddy! Yeah, you. You got a VST 2 SDK?

Want one?

Looks like Steinberg is trying to stamp the older code out is all. Nothing unusual here--try finding some older Apple docs or SDKs.

Now that Apple is killing OpenGL, not sure what's next for my code base. I was just getting the hang of it, too!

Guess I'd better dig out my VST 3 docs and start learning...

I have no idea what happened to "Backward compatibility". Such a waste of time, constantly learning new APIs for months, that end up doing almost the same thing, but usually slower and heavier on CPU.

No long term strategy. Poor planing. New engineers come and wipe out what the old ones have done in the name of "renovation". Reinventing the same wheel again and again, instead of building up on what has been done before. Change for the sake of change.

All respect to MIcrosoft. My 15 year old code still works because I use their core API. Not that they haven't done worse in other occasions, but at least some thing is done well.

IMHO

soulelle · Post by **soulelle** » Sun Aug 05, 2018 10:20 pm

S0lo wrote: I have no idea what happened to "Backward compatibility". Such a waste of time, constantly learning new APIs for months, that end up doing almost the same thing, but usually slower and heavier on CPU.

No long term strategy. Poor planing. New engineers come and wipe out what the old ones have done in the name of "renovation". Reinventing the same wheel again and again, instead of building up on what has been done before. Change for the sake of change.

All respect to MIcrosoft. My 15 year old code still works because I use their core API. Not that they haven't done worse in other occasions, but at least some thing is done well.

IMHO

Such a waste of time and money in the lack of intelligent human resources indeed, constantly learning someone else's code or architecture, that end up being inefficient when running on a brand-new device.

No short term tactics. Slow response to user demand and business needs. New engineers spend years to understand megabytes of existing code, with outdated architecture that the old ones have done in the name of "backward compatibility", instead of writing something that simply works in two weeks.

All respect to APple. I stayed in business for 15 years because my customers keep paying for updates/subscription plans to get the latest and greatest. Not that Apple haven't done worse in other occasions, but at least some thing is done well.

IMHO

S0lo · Post by **S0lo** » Sun Aug 05, 2018 11:10 pm

soulelle wrote:
S0lo wrote: I have no idea what happened to "Backward compatibility". Such a waste of time, constantly learning new APIs for months, that end up doing almost the same thing, but usually slower and heavier on CPU.

No long term strategy. Poor planing. New engineers come and wipe out what the old ones have done in the name of "renovation". Reinventing the same wheel again and again, instead of building up on what has been done before. Change for the sake of change.

All respect to MIcrosoft. My 15 year old code still works because I use their core API. Not that they haven't done worse in other occasions, but at least some thing is done well.

IMHO
Such a waste of time and money in the lack of intelligent human resources indeed, constantly learning someone else's code or architecture, that end up being inefficient when running on a brand-new device.

No short term tactics. Slow response to user demand and business needs. New engineers spend years to understand megabytes of existing code, with outdated architecture that the old ones have done in the name of "backward compatibility", instead of writing something that simply works in two weeks.

All respect to APple. I stayed in business for 15 years because my customers keep paying for updates/subscription plans to get the latest and greatest. Not that Apple haven't done worse in other occasions, but at least some thing is done well.

IMHO

Really good first post

IMHO

Aleksey Vaneev · Post by **Aleksey Vaneev** » Mon Aug 06, 2018 7:24 am

S0lo wrote:I have no idea what happened to "Backward compatibility". Such a waste of time, constantly learning new APIs for months, that end up doing almost the same thing, but usually slower and heavier on CPU.

"Hype" is all what businesses need. E.g. VST3. But even worse plague happens in web-technologies - so many things on top of other things, new languages constantly appear - not better languages, but "hypey" enough. And we blame God for dividing humans by language.

discoDSP · Post by **discoDSP** » Mon Aug 06, 2018 8:55 am

Isn't dropping VST2 support from Steinberg pointless for developers who already have a signed agreement?

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:07 am

Yeah but what about new developers? Looks like increasingly new plugins from new companies won't be developed in VST2

S0lo · Post by **S0lo** » Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:15 am

Aleksey Vaneev wrote:
S0lo wrote:I have no idea what happened to "Backward compatibility". Such a waste of time, constantly learning new APIs for months, that end up doing almost the same thing, but usually slower and heavier on CPU.
"Hype" is all what businesses need. E.g. VST3. But even worse plague happens in web-technologies - so many things on top of other things, new languages constantly appear - not better languages, but "hypey" enough. And we blame God for dividing humans by language.

I do agree. Can't help but smile in vain sometimes when some question like "Is C++ good to learn in 2018 ?" pops up in Quora

Aleksey Vaneev · Post by **Aleksey Vaneev** » Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:47 am

aMUSEd wrote:Yeah but what about new developers? Looks like increasingly new plugins from new companies won't be developed in VST2

Won't be developed to skip on Ableton Live userbase? Well, if business is not serious, maybe.
https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... 27844-VST3

duncanparsons · Post by **duncanparsons** » Mon Aug 20, 2018 11:42 am

The annoying thing, more than anything else, is that VST3 doesn't do all the things that VST2 does. It's not a superset of features, it removes a number of things that developers (and ultimately end-users) will expect to see - full-featured MIDI handling for a start.

Whilst noting the MS/Apple exchange above, changes of base APIs cause devs no end of irritation as it can mean months of deciphering, restructuring and coding all to stay in the same place, rather than devoting the time to adding features. Some things one doesn't mind so much - ditching RTAS in favour of AAX was welcome in as much as the build process became more simple. It took me a few goes to work out the least painful way of porting, but once there it's all worked out OK (on Mac at least - we've ended up dropping Win dev for AAX as the UI code wasn't sufficiently stable).

Moving all UI stuff to Cocoa took its toll, and there is the perpetual fear of an announcement that we're going to have to do it all again when they change their mind. However (as noted above) Windows system calls handle all the changes in underlying tech gracefully - things like DirectX and Silverlight may have had their day in the sun, but standard WinAPI still does everything a plugin coder needs 25+ years later..

syntonica · Post by **syntonica** » Tue Aug 21, 2018 10:02 pm

S0lo wrote:
syntonica wrote:Psst.. Hey, buddy! Yeah, you. You got a VST 2 SDK?

Want one?

Looks like Steinberg is trying to stamp the older code out is all. Nothing unusual here--try finding some older Apple docs or SDKs.

Now that Apple is killing OpenGL, not sure what's next for my code base. I was just getting the hang of it, too!

Guess I'd better dig out my VST 3 docs and start learning...
I have no idea what happened to "Backward compatibility". Such a waste of time, constantly learning new APIs for months, that end up doing almost the same thing, but usually slower and heavier on CPU.

No long term strategy. Poor planing. New engineers come and wipe out what the old ones have done in the name of "renovation". Reinventing the same wheel again and again, instead of building up on what has been done before. Change for the sake of change.

All respect to MIcrosoft. My 15 year old code still works because I use their core API. Not that they haven't done worse in other occasions, but at least some thing is done well.

IMHO

I was going to reply to this, but apparently something shiny came along.

Regarding APIs, especially graphics, just give me something like HTML5 and slowly extend/change it as needed. Then, I don't have to worry if the backend is OpenGL, Metal, GDI, GDI+ or Fortran, for that matter. As a developer, I can happily code away for any platform and know that that part of my code will be compatible.

Same with plugins. Despite some of the awful misinterpretations of the MIDI standard, at least it was a common standard. There should be a similar plugin consortium to hash out a common, usable, comprehensible API that everybody can follow and let who ever else worry about what's going on under the hood. How many man hours are wasted trying to make AU vs VST vs AAX vs LADSPA? I waste enough time on Mac vs Windows.

duncanparsons · Post by **duncanparsons** » Tue Aug 21, 2018 10:17 pm

There should be a similar plugin consortium to hash out a common, usable, comprehensible API that everybody can follow and let who ever else worry about what's going on under the hood. How many man hours are wasted trying to make AU vs VST vs AAX vs LADSPA? I waste enough time on Mac vs Windows.

Indeed. There were notions to do such a thing 10-12 years ago when VST3 was announced. I think in the end those involved chose to retain the will to live rather than pursue it, not least because no matter how good the API, there needed to be host devs willing to take it on, and plugin devs willing to code against it. Non-proprietary hosts have enough on their plate supporting the existing cacophony of 'standards,' and plugin devs don't want to spent yet more time on boiler-plate code surrounding their natty algorithm..

syntonica · Post by **syntonica** » Fri Aug 24, 2018 7:24 pm

duncanparsons wrote:
There should be a similar plugin consortium to hash out a common, usable, comprehensible API that everybody can follow and let who ever else worry about what's going on under the hood. How many man hours are wasted trying to make AU vs VST vs AAX vs LADSPA? I waste enough time on Mac vs Windows.
Indeed. There were notions to do such a thing 10-12 years ago when VST3 was announced. I think in the end those involved chose to retain the will to live rather than pursue it, not least because no matter how good the API, there needed to be host devs willing to take it on, and plugin devs willing to code against it. Non-proprietary hosts have enough on their plate supporting the existing cacophony of 'standards,' and plugin devs don't want to spent yet more time on boiler-plate code surrounding their natty algorithm..

Thus, my words usable and comprehensible. And hosts would migrate support to the new universal standard and phase out the old formats where possible.

In the end, there would be only three versions to worry about: Mac, PC, Linux. We already have something like it in Juce, but it suffers because it tries to be all things for all people.

SampleScience · Post by **SampleScience** » Thu Aug 30, 2018 2:57 am

Got my signed agreement from them in less than a week. They are fairly quick, especially considering the number of demands they might get as October is approaching really fast!

Selling VST2 after October 2018: Steinberg agreement