About CLAP

[EvilDragon]

It is and can be both.

[Teksonik]

Only if DAWs support the new format. Unless you have some dependency on the current VST format which would defeat the whole purpose as I understood it.

What does it mean to the end user? Do we get better, faster, more reliable plugins that are not dictated by Steinberg in any way?

If so then I support the efforts. If not well then have fun.......

[Urs]

Do we get better, faster, more reliable plugins

Yes, we're sure of it.

(I think some of the concepts in CLAP will ultimately be adopted by other formats because people will very soon be requesting these options wherever CLAP is not supported. Because I'm sure CLAP will set an example of what's possible. And people who support CLAP will already be there. The idea is to get ahead of developments, not wait forever until someone with low interest in the plug-in business reluctantly adds a muchly needed feature to a plug-in format)

[Compyfox]

I am still confused about CLAP, however...

...Steve Duda.... He has stuck with VST2 because some of his apps (Cthulhu and Nerve) need it for its MIDI capabilities.

Thank you for that painful reminder. While Plugin Boutique's SCALER2 apparently comes in VST3, I prefer the VST2 version. And it's days are now numbered.

It's no an issue for me. We support CLAP because we can replace VST2 in our automated testing toolchain, preparing for the day when derivative work of VST2 can no longer be published anymore.

We also would like to explore the option to deploying either a CLAP-to-VST3 adapter or a CLAP-to-VST2 adapter so that we don't need to remove all our downloads containing VST2 anymore, should we wish to upgrade to the lastest VST3 SDK with its rather unsettling license terms, or vice-versa, should we not.

If you're going that route... I'm definitely interested (VST2 > CLAP-to-VST3 adapter).

...if I understood you right in this case... (as in... offering "legacy" support for U-HE, and all others benefiting from "our VST2 plugins stay alive a while longer").


We're still at the beginning of all this mess after all

[Urs]

Well, if Steinberg's announcement was an attempt to slow down CLAP development by pouring people into our forum, it has not succeeded (I'm not remotely involved in CLAP development atm)

Anyhow, I can not promise any workarounds to keep VST2 alive. It's possible, but it isn't part of my planning process, nor do I feel like I want to reduce their load of support cases for whatever business decisions they make.

Our priorities are with us, our users, our code base our future support for multiple formats. We can lay some groundwork, but we can't take over responsibility for everything. We can't wait to see what others are gonna do with it, and I'd be really delighted if CLAP could become that glue that fixes some of those problems.

[Teksonik]

Do we get better, faster, more reliable plugins

Yes, we're sure of it.

(I think some of the concepts in CLAP will ultimately be adopted by other formats because people will very soon be requesting these options wherever CLAP is not supported. Because I'm sure CLAP will set an example of what's possible. And people who support CLAP will already be there. The idea is to get ahead of developments, not wait forever until someone with low interest in the plug-in business reluctantly adds a muchly needed feature to a plug-in format)

Ok cool that's all I need to hear.

Again good luck and if you need anyone to do any testing I'd be more than willing to help. If not then I'll be rooting for your success from the sidelines.

[audiojunkie]

Well, if Steinberg's announcement was an attempt to slow down CLAP development by pouring people into our forum, it has not succeeded (I'm not remotely involved in CLAP development atm)

Anyhow, I can not promise any workarounds to keep VST2 alive. It's possible, but it isn't part of my planning process, nor do I feel like I want to reduce their load of support cases for whatever business decisions they make.

Our priorities are with us, our users, our code base our future support for multiple formats. We can lay some groundwork, but we can't take over responsibility for everything. We can't wait to see what others are gonna do with it, and I'd be really delighted if CLAP could become that glue that fixes some of those problems.

Which announcement are you referring to? I'm guessing you are referring to something other than the annoucement to kill VST2, because that announcement wouldn't suddenly be an attempt to slow down CLAP, since CLAP didn't exist at that time.

[audiojunkie]

Do we get better, faster, more reliable plugins

Yes, we're sure of it.

(I think some of the concepts in CLAP will ultimately be adopted by other formats because people will very soon be requesting these options wherever CLAP is not supported. Because I'm sure CLAP will set an example of what's possible. And people who support CLAP will already be there. The idea is to get ahead of developments, not wait forever until someone with low interest in the plug-in business reluctantly adds a muchly needed feature to a plug-in format)

Ok cool that's all I need to hear.

Again good luck and if you need anyone to do any testing I'd be more than willing to help. If not then I'll be rooting for your success from the sidelines.

Likely, an end user won't notice any difference at all between a plug-in designed for CLAP and a plug-in designed for CLAP but using a VST3 wrapper built in. For the developer, however, the ability to write once and deploy everywhere means a lot of saved time.

[Dewdman42]

I still will welcome the day that DAW's build native CLAP hosting into them, to avoid VST wrappers. VST2 wrapped plugins have a limited lifespan due to licensing problems forced by Steinberg. VST3 wrapped plugins have fundamental midi design flaws that can be problematic in certain cases. Using VST wrappers can at least help us get through the chicken or the egg period but it will much more ideal if there is wide adoption by plugin developers using CLAP such that hosts will be motivated to support native CLAP hosting and just say bye bye to bothering with anything related to VST at all other then to support Cubase. Then Cubase users alone can deal with the midi design flaws of VST3 and everyone else can use pure CLAP.

[dawhead]

It's probably also worth emphasizing that in general plugin developers don't develope separate plugins for every API they support. Rather they develop their plugin against one API, whether that's some internal API, some toolkit (eg. Juce, iPlug) specific API, or some actual plugin API. Whatever other formats they support are then typically wrapped around that internal format. So if you're using some plugins that support multiple APIs, there's a very high chance that there's already some sort of wrappers involved.

The other nice side-effect of this sort of approach is that when bugs get fixed in the "plugin toolkit wrapper" (e.g. JUCE), all plugins using it suddenly get better. Earlier versions of JUCE, for example, had some important bugs when used on Linux, but after JUCE was fixed (just once), every plugin using JUCE in this way benefitted.

[shaboogen]

Question from a layman end user.

Obviously, in abstract I want things to be as easy for developers as possible, but as an end user the main point for me that sounds appealing is Polyphonic Modulation.

As a Bitwig user, it sounds like my host is going to support this no matter what, but presumably if people start wrapping their CLAP plugins to formats like VST3 that don't currently support this, they will lose that benefit right?

Basically, while CLAP adoption is limited and plugin developers make choices that result in the widest possible market share for them (essentially wrapping to some kind of VST format), will we lose (or more accurately through insufficient incentive for developers, not see them take advantage of) some of the more out there / powerful features that the platform provides?

Apologies if this has been answered and I've just misunderstood how any of this has worked.

[AnX]

As a total non coding lay person, I still have no idea what the clap actually is, but from reading here, it just seems like a pyramid scheme of wrappers...

I kinda get what you're saying here, but this is the opposite of a pyramid scheme. No one's asking for money here. Urs isn't the head honcho collecting the big bucks from all the other suckers (excuse me, developers) he brings into the CLAP fold.

I didn't mean that type of scheme....wrong words...maybe Russian doll fits better...

[syntonica]

As a total non coding lay person, I still have no idea what the clap actually is, but from reading here, it just seems like a pyramid scheme of wrappers...

I kinda get what you're saying here, but this is the opposite of a pyramid scheme. No one's asking for money here. Urs isn't the head honcho collecting the big bucks from all the other suckers (excuse me, developers) he brings into the CLAP fold.

I didn't mean that type of scheme....wrong words...maybe Russian doll fits better...

It's wrappers all the way down!

Wrappers do add some extra jump instruction, but the compiler can optimize many of them away. Regardless, the extra instructions are not even a blip on the CPU meter.

[AnX]

If I try and explain, and feel free to correct my guess work....

A vst is code, words/maths/instructions, written in a language....let's say c++ for example....

Is clap a new language? Can all current vsts be compiled as clap 'as is' or are they wrapped in clap?

That's what my tiny brain is trying to understand, what clap actually is....

Of course, when ppl in the know explain, it goes over my head because its not a language I'm fluent in.

So there you have it...hopefully

[Super Piano Hater 64]

If I try and explain, and feel free to correct my guess work....

A vst is code, words/maths/instructions, written in a language....let's say c++ for example....

Is clap a new language? Can all current vsts be compiled as clap 'as is' or are they wrapped in clap?

That's what my tiny brain is trying to understand, what clap actually is....

Of course, when ppl in the know explain, it goes over my head because its not a language I'm fluent in.

So there you have it...hopefully

It’s not a new language. It’s a new interface.

When you use a GUI, you know that certain knobs will always be in certain places, and that they control certain behaviors in the software. The same concept exists in code. When a host talks to a plugin, it expects certain sequences of instructions to have certain names. VST defines some rules about what names invoke what kinds of behaviors. CLAP defines a different set of rules.

Programming languages are a related but separate concept. They actually aren’t relevant anymore once the host and plugin are talking to each other.

This probably sounds a little abstract, because it is. I can try coming up with successively worse analogies if you like. One of them might eventually help.