Catalina: Apple turns macOS into a closed platform; many audio-devs warned from the upgrade

[stratology]

Apple simply has to add VST to Logic.

Why?

VST is not a standard, it's a proprietary format owned by Steinberg.

Audio Units are a part of macOS. VST is a substitute for not having an audio plugin standard from Microsoft in their operating systems.

[Hanz Meyzer]

VST is world standard, AU is a niche standard. Instead that the world has to adapt to Apple, the opposite is true, Apple has to adapt to the world. Maybe AU now makes sense, if you want to target macos and ios at once as a developer, but there is no reason either than stupid ideas not to add VST3 support. VST is the defacto standard, not AU.

VST is not more proprietary than Apple's AU. It is even less proprietary, because Steinberg provides a crossplatform API for free, even including a nice GUI SDK for free.

Apple heads have strange feelings of pleasure if they do proprietary stuff. They always think in a very negative manner, like: OMG, if we support VST in Logic, developers will have even less reasons to support AU. IMHO this is nonsense approach. You could also try to think in a positive way: OMG, if we add VST3 to Logic, Logic might become much more attractive. Also we could contribute to VST, so adding weight to a standard, and improve it. Also we could add VST3 to iOS, because that is no problem for us at all, we are Apple.

[fmr]

VST is not a standard, it's a proprietary format owned by Steinberg.

Audio Units are a part of macOS. VST is a substitute for not having an audio plugin standard from Microsoft in their operating systems.

So, according to you, a format that is used by almost 100% of the audio software manufacturers (AFAIK, only Logic Pro and Pro Tools don't support it) is not a standard, but a format that is used by only a few applications in an OS that represents less than 10% of the market (maybe between 30% and 40% in the audio software market) is...

You are really funny You must definitely be on Apple's payroll.

[mgw38]

Apple simply has to add VST to Logic.

And Avid has to add VST to Pro Tools.

[Hanz Meyzer]

Avid is used by old men. Yes, adding VST would make it more attractive.

[mgw38]

That wasn't even an argument. It was just a fact.

[Hanz Meyzer]

Oh, hehe, sorry. Misunderstood. Yes, also Avid needs to add VST to Protools, so it becomes more attractive again. I never seen human being of the age 30 or lower using protools.

[mgw38]

Oh, hehe, sorry. Misunderstood. Yes, also Avid needs to add VST to Protools, so it becomes more attractive again. I never seen human being of the age 30 or lower using protools.

It remains extremely popular with audio engineers.

[Hink]

Oh, hehe, sorry. Misunderstood. Yes, also Avid needs to add VST to Protools, so it becomes more attractive again. I never seen human being of the age 30 or lower using protools.

I guess this thread is done...I warned a few pages ago that it was close to a lock

[Hink]

just ftr I woke up to multiple reports on comments since last night in this thread...again, members requesting it stay on topic...that is my impetus

[JCJR]

VST is not a standard, it's a proprietary format owned by Steinberg.

Audio Units are a part of macOS. VST is a substitute for not having an audio plugin standard from Microsoft in their operating systems.

I really don't care so much to argue relative merits or genuineness of plugin formats.

But you are wrong Microsoft had/has a quite viable standard plugin format. I haven't kept up with it but wouldn't be surprised to discover that it may even remain quite feasible to make 64 bit modern directx FX and dxi synths. If anyone still cared about them.

I am.not smart enough to explain why dx and dxi eventually lost out in the marketplace. Early on dx and dxi had bigger market support on winders than VST. Maybe vst was more cross platform or whatever, or easier to program, or somehow better, dunno.

Whatever the reason. vst kicked dx ass in the marketplace fair and square. Am not complaining just explaining. More hosts began to support vst and fewer supported dx, more plugins written in vst and fewer in dx.

Early on, all the major plugins were released both vst and dx, just as today released both for vst and au.

Am not nostalgic about that or even earlier obsolete plugin formats I wrote in long ago. They are all just different ways of skinning the cat. Maybe there is some perfect way to skin the cat or maybe not.

Only additional point-- When apple started doing the first coreaudio and au early OSX stuff. First time reading the coreaudio and au docs I said to self, "Self, this is crazy. They are writing a Mac version of COM (component object modeling) and basically copying about 90+ percent of directx, just barely filing off the serial numbers and even shamelessly appropriating a lot of the MS-invented terminology. Are they asking for another lawsuit or what?" A reason I took note was that I had never become a number 1 fan of the COM way of doing it and it was funny/frustrating to see apple copying it.

Which none of it matters except idle reminiscimg. I just wanted to correct the idea that MS never had a native plugin format. So far as I know MS still has a native plugin format but it just isn't used much by modern main-line audio DAWs because for whatever reason VST kicked dx butt in the marketplace fair and square.
.

[stratology]

But you are wrong Microsoft had/has a quite viable standard plugin format. I haven't kept up with it but wouldn't be surprised to discover that it may even remain quite feasible to make 64 bit modern directx FX and dxi synths. If anyone still cared about them.

I am.not smart enough to explain why dx and dxi eventually lost out in the marketplace. Early on dx and dxi had bigger market support on winders than VST.

Ha, someone actually understood what I was saying. Anyway, thanks, I was not aware of dxi. Never saw a dxi plug-in for a DAW, which may explain it.


The key point is: when a plug-in format is developed by the same company as the OS, integration between the OS and the plug-in format is both easier and more solid than when OS and the plug-in technology come from different companies. Common sense.

[stratology]

Apple heads have strange feelings of pleasure if they do proprietary stuff.

List of open source technologies that are part of macOS, iOS, etc.:
https://opensource.apple.com

[JCJR]

But you are wrong Microsoft had/has a quite viable standard plugin format. I haven't kept up with it but wouldn't be surprised to discover that it may even remain quite feasible to make 64 bit modern directx FX and dxi synths. If anyone still cared about them.

I am.not smart enough to explain why dx and dxi eventually lost out in the marketplace. Early on dx and dxi had bigger market support on winders than VST.

Ha, someone actually understood what I was saying. Anyway, thanks, I was not aware of dxi. Never saw a dxi plug-in for a DAW, which may explain it.


The key point is: when a plug-in format is developed by the same company as the OS, integration between the OS and the plug-in format is both easier and more solid than when OS and the plug-in technology come from different companies. Common sense.

Hi stratology. I have no wish to argue what is better or worse but do not understand how facts justify your theory about "easier and more solid when integrated in the OS". Admittedly it sounds like a nice theory.

If you never saw any DAW dx plugins then all I can conclude is that you may not have very long or wide experience with Winders midi/audio. Which is not savage criticism, just that for several years dx was more common than vst on winders. Somebody active on winders back then woulda noticed. Many developers liked the "concept" of dx better because it was integrated with the OS and they could use it without having to sign a licensing agreement as they did with Steinberg for VST. So it initially had that same advantage you claim for AU.

Multiple winders hosts continue to work with dx plugins if some old codger might still have dx plugins he might want to use. But that would mostly be 32 bit ghetto because dx daw plugins had fallen well out of fashion long before the mass 64bit transition.

I don't keep up but last time I looked a typical winders system remains chock-full of various audio and video dx plugins, except nowadays almost without exception they are "faceless" plugins accessed by applications and the end-user would never notice that the long list even exists, though the plugins do lots of real useful low-level stuff which applications might want to do.

I mean, maybe I'm all wrong, and am not trying to raise a stink, and maybe coreaudio and au is lots different nowadays, but early on it looked so derivative to me that maybe coreaudio might as well have been called "Mac DirectX" So if CoreAudio and AU was so strong because of your theory about OS integration, the same theory ought to demand that DX plugins would have dominated Winders daw market to this day! So one fact fits yer theory and another fact does not fit yer theory.

I'm sure there were perfectly good reasons that VST kicked DX butt in the marketplace, but I wrote maybe a dozen DX plugins and they were not particularly difficult to write. I wrote DX hosting in a few apps and so far as I could see, hosting a DX plugin seemed about equally CPU efficient, and about equally difficult to write code for, compared to VST. Am not bemoaning DX demise. There must have been good reasons but DX did not seem a "plainly obvious complete dog" compared to VST 2.x.

Going into alternate history never-never-land, maybe if MS had bought a fireball mover-and-shaker like Steinberg and thrown enough money at it to keep em fat and happy, and made Steinberg windows-only and DX-only, then maybe nowadays plugin developers would have to worry about writing DX, AU, and AAX, rather than VST, AU, and AAX? I'm making analogy to Apple and Logic here, to avoid any misunderstanding.

However, even if MS had wanted to do that it would have been impossible. MS was under heavy anti-trust, anti-monopoly scrutiny back then and if they had tried what Apple did with Logic, governments and irate public would have been down on them like a ton of bricks. So the alternate history couldn't have ever happened.

MS was under such strong scrutiny that Gates was bending over backward trying to help keep Mac from going down the crapper. Because he needed Apple to point to, to explain, "How can I be a monopoly so long as Apple exists?" Anyway maybe that propaganda would be about as specious as a robber baron like Andrew Carnegie arguing "How can I be a monopoly so long as John D Rockefeller exists?"

[Hanz Meyzer]

List of open source technologies that are part of macOS, iOS, etc.:
https://opensource.apple.com

This is mainly because Apple based their work on others' open sourced work (unix), so Apple has to open source their changes. Webkit was a nice project indeed. My point was about making it available crossplatform and multi-vendor, since Apple is not the center of the world. I am also pretty sure they try to opensource as few as possible and as outdated as possible.