VST3 in Delphi

[vasyan]

OT: Russian programmers more likely to say "говнокод". Bad code is a very polite translation. No offence.

Well, this is also an option, mostly young programmers uses. Those who are now around 50 years and older do not use the word "говнокод"

[vasyan]

I don't get the errors you get, in fact everything compiles cleanly. What version are you using?

Hi Eduur!
I mainly use Delphi XE8. But I also have the latest Delphi 10.3.
Checked your code on Delphi XE8. But now I'm busy, so I can check your plugins any time soon on Delphi 10.3.

On AnsiStrings/string. String is the default preferred way of working with strings in Delphi.

I am comparing with C source code (ftypes.h), where types are defined like this:

Code: Select all

    uchar   = AnsiChar;
    char8   = AnsiChar;
    puchar   = ^uchar;
    pchar8   = ^char8;
    char16 = WideChar;
    pchar16 = PWideChar;

In Delphi XE - string = WideString
in older Delphi versions - string = AnsiString
Often faced with the problem of inoperability of plugins due to this circumstance.

[vasyan]

I would also like to implement this work in Lazarus/FPC. But I still haven’t found the working code of the plugins on Lazarus, because there is a unrecoverable bug when trying to make GUI form visible.

[tor.helge.skei]

nice! after a lengthy 'affair' with c++, i'm getting back to my favourite programming language, and will certainly have a look at this! (i'm using fpc in linux, though)

[vasyan]

nice! after a lengthy 'affair' with c++, i'm getting back to my favourite programming language, and will certainly have a look at this! (i'm using fpc in linux, though)

Working in C++ and similar languages is in my opinion a peculiar fashion. I also dislike this tendency of C++ leadership in the audio programming world. After all, you must agree that Pascal is more beautiful than C++, it's like writing in Pascal is comparable to poetry, and in C++ you get prose.
The time has come to create serious cross-platform libraries for the Object Pascal (Delphi/Lazarus)!
I will promote this process in every way!

[krundt]

All my stuff found at SynthFont.com is written in Delphi, always the latest Rad Studio. I have this VST instrument VSTSynthFont I might like to make a VST3 version.

[krundt]

File missing: UVst3Utils
Kenneth

[krundt]

And where is the procedure AssignString?
Kenneth

[DJ Warmonger]

This year's world Delphi conference was cancelled. One of the Delphi developers is sick, and the other doesn't want to go alone.

(this joke is 10 years old, at least)

[Eduur]

And where is the procedure AssignString?
Kenneth

in uvst3utils. No idea how uvst3utils got missing, but i uploaded it again. If you're going to use this let me know and get in touch..

[krundt]

I compiled your sample. I replaced all your output to CodeSite with Delphi's DebugOutput to get the output into DBWin32.
*Reaper* finds and loads your plugin, as expected. *Cakewalk* from Bandlab as well. **Cubase** doesn't find your plugin (odd). I do not get any output in DBWin32 indicating that it is even testing it to see what it is. *Cantabile* finds it, loads it, but crashes when opening the editor (last two outputs are CEditController.CreateView and CPlugView.Attached). *Mixcraft(9)* finds it but crashes when trying to use it (last output is  CPlugView.Attached, CPlugView.OnSize and then Access Violation at 0000000011a1acc9: 48 8b 04 c8 48 63 4d 2c 8b 55 24 89).
So, I would say 50% luck so far?
Any ideas?
(If you feel like it you can contact med directly at kenneth at synthfont dot com)
Kenneth
 

[krundt]

Correction: for Cubase I had the file in the wrong folder. Adding the folder to Cubase's list of VST folders DID help just a bit. Cubase now sees the file but doesn't like it at all. It calls these two functions while analyzing (that is, after asking Cubase to update all VSTs): CPluginFactory.CountClasses and CPluginFactory.GetClassInfo:0. That's it. The file is not further inspected or accepted.
I have four other VST3 instruments registered by Cubase, so I know it must work.

[Eduur]

Hmm. that's a bit disappointing. But I think this is normal when writing wrapper code for several Hosts. Anyone interested in diving deeper?
(Or just wait for some genius to come up with a simple plugin open source platform, supported by all major DAWs...)

[vasyan]

Hmm. that's a bit disappointing. But I think this is normal when writing wrapper code for several Hosts. Anyone interested in diving deeper?
(Or just wait for some genius to come up with a simple plugin open source platform, supported by all major DAWs...)

I'm thought about implementing a stable VST framework for Delphi, and this thought came - to port from C++ the IPlug2 framework. However, it is very huge work, which is not real without an infusion of finance, as according to approximate subjections can take half a year or even a year.

[syntonica]

I tried Free Pascal with VST 2, but it just wasn't fast enough in the end. No matter how much optimization I tried, it was always about 50% slower, on average, compared to the C++ code.

That said, I took whatever VST 2 SDK code I could find and stripped it down to a single file, going over it line by line with the original C++. My final code base is about 2/3 number of lines of code as C++, is much neater and tighter, and if I finished the Windows side of things, it would be much simpler to improve and maintain the single code base and cross-compile. I'll continue to futz with it, but until optimization is improved in the compiler, I don't think it's really useable, except if you are creating a cross-platform interface to contain hand-assembly or C processing routines for the heavy lifting.