If you are considering iPlug2 vs. JUCE

[Fender19]

I know there are iPlug fans here but I can't take it any longer. The developer of iPlug2 (Oli Larkin) can't take even a hint of criticism and will BAN you if you suggest something is wrong or confusing in his work. He has no trouble replying to YOU with a snotty, condescending tone but don't you dare express any frustration with HIM or iPlug.

It appears Oli spends the majority of his time playing with iPlug graphics (the "fun stuff") while putting critical, core AUDIO (the purpose of AUDIO plugins) issues on the back burner. IPlug plugins still don't work right in some major DAWs like Studio One, VST3, etc., but instead of testing and addressing issues like that Oli worked on new web graphics.

I've donated to Oli several times going back to iPlug1 and now thoroughly regret it. I should have, instead, invested in JUCE instead of wasting so much time fighting iPlug. I know JUCE has issues too but from what I've seen it is extremely well documented and, AFAIK, they fix bugs ASAP. The cost of JUCE, IMO, would have paid for itself several times over by now.

You may be Oli's friend and/or totally disagree with me. That's fine. Maybe this post will get shut down here too, IDK, but this is my 3+ year experience with Oli that I had to share for those not yet deep in iPlug2. It works if you're willing to spend the time digging and fixing things yourself. I'd rather spend my time building new plugins, not fixing the tool.

[rafa1981]

Thanks for the warning, but what else was to expect from a MIT/BSD one man project? Support?

[rafa1981]

I mean JUCE produces revenue and has people hired to work on support, of course it's going to react faster to support tickets than a single man with who knows what interests at some point in time.

I would only blame him if he made false claims, but AFAIK until not so long ago the Readme of iPlug said that it wasn't production ready, which in my world means: risky business to seriously invest as a company.

Free software is not as free as it seems.

[Youlean]

It's the chicken and the egg thing. If everyone paid the $50/month for a license for IPlug, maybe the support would be like the JUCE has.

The good thing is that there is JUCE available where you can have that.

[lkjb]

We only have your word for what exactly happened but the fact that you bring a personal attack to a public forum raises at least to me the question whether there might have been a justified reason for the banning. I wouldn't call your used language here very diplomatic either.

But, as Youlean mentioned, lucky you, there's still JUCE which you can use. Be aware that the JUCE team also has a priority list which might not correspond with your requirements, though.

[TB-ProAudio]

... but AFAIK until not so long ago the Readme of iPlug said that it wasn't production ready, which in my world means: risky business to seriously invest as a company.

Even if JUCE or any other SDK would claim to be "production ready" I would take it with caution.
It could be true for a simple AGain example...

If you want to dig into this business you need to be ready to dive really deep.

Free software is not as free as it seems.

... and even if you pay you may not get the support you expect ...

[urosh]

AFAIK until not so long ago the Readme of iPlug said that it wasn't production ready

It still says so:
"NOTE: We don't yet consider iPlug2 to be "production ready" since the we (the main devs) didn't ship our products with it yet, but it's nearly there. Read more here". Don't know if Oli is rude or something, but complains about lib it self are unwarranted imho.

[mazbox]

Hey @fender19 It’s clear that it’s causing you a lot of stress so maybe it’s best to migrate to JUCE, if only to preserve your sanity. You’ll get the support of a mid-sized profitable company who can afford to employ some of the best audio plugin developers.

If you want to be free from the tyranny (and fees) of JUCE, then iPlug is there for you! But if you expect any one-person open source project to stop what they’re doing and attend to your specific needs, it would be unfair to pay them anything less than the minimum wage(!!)

Disclaimer: I am also an iPlug user, contributor and supporter - I know how hard maintaining something like iplug is with all the moving targets of plugin API’s, OSes and DAWs. It’s a minefield!

I really don’t envy Oli’s mammoth task of managing that, and I support him in a small way because he’s been doing such an admirable job of it all, and giving it away for free(!) A man of the people! Not only has he got all that to do, but also manage a massive amount of support requests. I’m pretty sure it’s a labour of love for him.

I’m supporting him to keep him doing what he’s doing, not to get him to do what I want him to do. It’s pretty simple. If I find a bug, *I’ll* fix it, that’s how open source works, that’s what makes open source so amazing in my view. If that’s not for you, there are alternatives!!

Side note: Oli’s work on the webview UI stuff is really ahead of the curve, web uis will be everywhere in audio software in a couple of years I’d wager.

Again, please don’t stress yourself out, do yourself a favour, jump ship!

[mystran]

We only have your word for what exactly happened but the fact that you bring a personal attack to a public forum raises at least to me the question whether there might have been a justified reason for the banning. I wouldn't call your used language here very diplomatic either.

I'm completely indifferent about iPlug or it's developer, but as far as I can tell the OP hasn't posted a single message on this forum where they weren't complaining about one thing or another.

[syntonica]

Even if a bug fix is beyond your current set of skills, pointing out an issue and where it may lie, with politesse, should not be.

[John Crosby VT]

It works if you're willing to spend the time digging and fixing things yourself.

It works also for me, though I am not able to dig and fix things myself. I am a very bad programmer and only learning C++, but the awesome collection of Iplug2 examples enabled me to build over 25 usable plugins. I spend some time copy&pasting, but most of my time is spent on improving my algorithms - I am digging pure math and very little programming stuff - thanks to Oli and his friends.

[Markus Krause]

Oli Larkin is doing fantastic work with iPlug2.
He is very professional and knows what he is talking about.
IPlug2 has many useful innovations and fixes many shortcomings of other frameworks.
Unlike other frameworks it has a fair licensing model.
I consider using iPlug2 in the future, because I do not want to depend on Roli or Steinberg.

Markus Krause from Tone2 Audio
Developer of Gladiator, Electra, Icarus, Vanguard, ...

[Music Engineer]

Oli Larkin is doing fantastic work with iPlug2.
He is very professional and knows what he is talking about.
IPlug2 has many useful innovations and fixes many shortcomings of other frameworks.

that's good to hear! can you elaborate, what sepcifically these shortcomings are that iPlug2 fixes?

Unlike other frameworks it has a fair licensing model.
I consider using iPlug2 in the future, because I do not want to depend on Roli or Steinberg.

i actually consider juce's licensing model totally fair as well, but granted, iPlug2 is more liberal. what irks me most about juce these days are the bloated binaries. even the simplemost "gain" plugin produces a 5mb+ binary (ok, yes, with (juce-generic) gui - but still). that amount of overhead in the binary footprint is just ridiculous, if all you want is to make a small filter or gain plugin (yeah - noone really makes gain plugins except for API usage examples, but you get the point). it becomes more reasonable, once your actual plugin becomes a more complex one. in fact, that was one of the motivations for me to lump all my plugins into a single all-in-one shell plugin (besides convenience of project management) - so i pay the overhead only once and for all instead of once for each plugin. when i started using juce in the mid 00s, the footprint was a couple of 100kb, if i remember correctly - and last time i checked, that's where iPlug2 is today as well.

..soo yeah...i sort of have an eye on iPlug2 for the future as well, but i have already written so much code that depends on juce, that the task of porting it all seems too daunting at the moment. ideally, one day in the far future, i'd like to have some sort of "meta-framework" that lets me select at compile-time whether i want to compile against juce or Iplug2 (or maybe other frameworks as well). maybe such a thing can be built in the c++ spirit of zero-cost-abstractions? i don't know. maybe not. ...but maybe low-cost

generally, to the OP, with that kind liberal licensing and being maintained only by a single person, i would not expect much support anyway and rather take it as an "as-is" offer that i may take as basis for my own further development. if i would find bugs and can figure them out myself, i would do that - and then probably file a bug-report *with* the info how to fix it. ...or maybe issue a pull-request or something

[letopo]

I am making a somewhat complex plug but at the same time it is an interesting concept, I had to learn many things about C++, STDF and read, to my surprise, several scientific publications along the way, I am grateful that there is IPlug2 and its benevolent license model, personally I have determined that when I publish it, of each sale I will share an important percentage with Oli, the DSP works perfectly without GUI since the algorithm and the modeling is very polished, in short I am happy with the sound quality and the CPU consumption is very low.
I tested it on Win, Mac (Intel and Sillicon), I have some interface issues that I hope will be resolved soon.
(If this is not fixed soon, sadly, I begin to migrate to JUCE)
Hopefully Oli will accept criticism, don't take it personally, understand the frustration and fix the issues with the graphics backends and other issues.
Hopefully all developers using IPlug2 make the same decision.

[DNAdisaster]

Sorry to hear you had a poor interaction with him (especially given that you donated), and that might usefully inform other's decisions regarding which framework to work with. I would reiterate not to take it personally, and that IPlug is ultimately his project. It's a cool thing that exists, and a decent alternative to commercial frameworks, but I can understand the frustration when you invest time and money into a project and encounter friction like what you described. I'll say that my interactions with Oli have been nothing but pleasant, but I've never dealt with bringing up bugs, and that's just my limited experience.

I hear you, but also wanted to stand up for Oli a bit given that he's produced a significantly useful project.