About CLAP

[EvilDragon]

How much effort will it take for them to develop for the CLAP format? Are there any special programming skills they will need to gain or a learning curve or ?

Way less effort than supporting VST3 properly. If they are already coding VST2/3, they already have the necessary skills (C/C++).

[Echoes in the Attic]

I just hope nobody expects Ableton to be on board just yet. Negotiations with companies that size simply don’t go easy. We have to hope for initiatives from the inside once word goes out

And of course we hope that users will start bugging them.

So I take it NI will be on-board super quick. LOL

[Teksonik]

How much effort will it take for them to develop for the CLAP format? Are there any special programming skills they will need to gain or a learning curve or ?

Way less effort than supporting VST3 properly. If they are already coding VST2/3, they already have the necessary skills (C/C++).

So it's just a matter of dedicating man hours to CLAP versions. Is it a few lines of code to convert or a major rewrite?

Will there be enough of a financial incentive or pressure from the user base for small developers to jump on board at the beginning is the question.

I can think of one small developer who is near and dear to both of us who seem to have their hands more than full at the moment. I just worry if there will be time for CLAP support in the near future and how much that time will set back other projects.

Oh well hopefully one day all plugins will have a CLAP version and all DAWs will support them.

[EvilDragon]

"All" DAWs likely never happening (Logic, Cubendo, PT are extremely unlikely to support CLAP).

I think Synapse folk will be just fine (pretty sure you're talking about them) at their own pace.. In fact I would be surprised if Urs didn't already approach Richard about this all. I'm pretty sure they don't really want to depend or be impacted by Steinberg whims either.

[koalaboy]

Reason and Ableton (alongside Bitwig, but they're already leading the charge) are the obvious choices, as they provide much more flexibility within their environment for the user to build and experiment. Maybe if Ableton aren't interested, Cycling74 may be

I would never expect Steinberg products to take it onboard, until CLAP demonstrates benefits that (a) are wanted by users and plugins provide and (b) Steinberg can't quickly hack into VST3/4. It's a shame, as they make a lot of great products, but much like Propellerheads holding on to their own proprietary ecosystem, it's a different world we live in now.

Music is so much more about modularity and collaboration these days, and it's only going to increase in that way. Ableton have been leading that charge for a long time, and they played a huge part (along with Reason and FLStudio) in bring music production to many more people. CLAP can further that goal, and much in the great way Bitwig are carrying the torch, help bring a more platform-agnostic approach to music and remove the corporate 'hold'.

Looking at my list of plugins, if I saw Arturia and NI on-board, so much of my commercial libraries would already work.
I'd like to see Melda and Spitfire Audio as well, but they're both very opinionated as developers, it seems.
(The big orchestral library makers, East/West, Orchestral Tools, Cinesamples, etc. would also be great to have on board, as they then extend the influence greatly, and often these days have their own players - I'm sure that having one less license to worry about and not being 'tied' to Steinberg would be of interest to them)

For indie devs, who already know C/C++, I wouldn't think it's that much of a change - although I haven't looked closely and am not familiar with VST3 - but again, removing a licensing condition is a huge 'win'.

I wlaso wonder if plugin 'makers' like Bluecat Plug'n'script and synthedit would be good to encourage as they often suffer that the plugins that are generated still need licenses - this would remove that overhead.

[Teksonik]

I think Synapse folk will be just fine (pretty sure you're talking about them) at their own pace.

If I had wanted to name the developer I would have.....

"All" DAWs likely never happening (Logic, Cubendo, PT are extremely unlikely to support CLAP)

So users of those DAWs will never care one bit about CLAP. There's a slice of the market gone....

[rncbc]

hi there,

currently hacking my way trough clap and indulging into my own offspring qtractor...

as a matter of fact I'm facing some strange issues, possibly my own infantile mistakes--to my defense, I've started the clap business just a couple of days ago, so don't sue me just yet--and on the example clap-plugins, for instance clap-synth seems to never recognize a note-off; note-ons are piling up alright and hanging forever :S...

so, is there a more specific forum to this kind of questions, specially dedicated to the (rare) host developers, or am I left alone pissing in the dark ?

tia.
cheers

ps. summer vacations are nig, what a better time to deal with a brand new plugin spec, yay?

[zvenx]

.......
So users of those DAWs will never care one bit about CLAP. There's a slice of the market gone....

Not necessarily true.
Some of us will lament how much time used to develop tools that we could use was spent instead developing and supporting yet another format.

rsp

[rncbc]

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

so, is there a more specific forum to this kind of questions, specially dedicated to the (rare) host developers, or am I left alone pissing in the dark ?

just started a discussion (https://github.com/free-audio/clap/discussions/92), thanks to Robbert:

cheers

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

.......
So users of those DAWs will never care one bit about CLAP. There's a slice of the market gone....

Not necessarily true.
Some of us will lament how much time used to develop tools that we could use was spent instead developing and supporting yet another format.

rsp

CLAP may actually help increase VST3 adoption AND help developers spend more time developing and less time supporting various formats than they currently do. As I understand it, a plugin could be developed in CLAP then compiled to spit out in CLAP, AU, VST2, VST3, and LVX via extensions or wrappers or whatnot.

So one of the major benefits to switching development to CLAP is that you can get other formats for free, which benefits everyone. At least, that's what I understood from prior discussion. Not sure how mature that all is at this stage and I'm no developer.

Urs or baconpaul or someone else more familiar should jump in and correct me if I'm wrong. I hate to spread misinformation, but I recall that being discussed as a benefit to CLAP beyond just the new format.

[zvenx]

It was indeed as I recalled too, but I am waiting to see if that is what happens and how well it does happen.
rsp

[Urs]

A lot of the questions asked here will be answered on Wednesday, along with a small presentation of what the advantages of CLAP are.

To clarify, I have not spoken to everyone we think might adopt CLAP. I have only pinged people and companies I have actually talked to in person, on tradeshows etc. My gist was that I first wanted to have something to show for. So the point of time where we can really start drumming up CLAP support is in a few days, with CLAP 1.0 being final (as of yesterday) and with us putting out beta version. It looks like one host not mentioned yet and one plug-in will also support CLAP officially within a week.

So yeah, a core group of people, most of them came to us on their own accord, has worked on this for pretty much a year:

https://github.com/free-audio/clap/blob ... ibutors.md

You'll notice people from large companies there who took it on privately to work with us, hence no official company name. On top of that are *countless* contributions / requests /discussions with / from other people who did not necessarily worked hands on. (Pity, one name is missing that would give you a clue about the magnitude of things we're talking here)

As for more hosts and stuff, there's more going on than just CLAP. There are more efforts to standardise technologies, which I am not involved in. But Bitwig are, and thus they had the chance to actually talk to some other host developers who are very excited about CLAP. I was not there when they talked, but I do recognise when things seem serious.

[baconpaul]

.......
So users of those DAWs will never care one bit about CLAP. There's a slice of the market gone....

Not necessarily true.
Some of us will lament how much time used to develop tools that we could use was spent instead developing and supporting yet another format.

rsp

CLAP may actually help increase VST3 adoption AND help developers spend more time developing and less time supporting various formats than they currently do. As I understand it, a plugin could be developed in CLAP then compiled to spit out in CLAP, AU, VST2, VST3, and LVX via extensions or wrappers or whatnot.

So one of the major benefits to switching development to CLAP is that you can get other formats for free, which benefits everyone. At least, that's what I understood from prior discussion. Not sure how mature that all is at this stage and I'm no developer.

Urs or baconpaul or someone else more familiar should jump in and correct me if I'm wrong. I hate to spread misinformation, but I recall that being discussed as a benefit to CLAP beyond just the new format.

Well the API is certainly designed so it can be contained in an outer other-format wrapper, but those wrappers aren't ready today. The hosting API is compact and sensible though and so 'forwarding wrappers' are indeed going to be a solution which folks are starting to work on. The big frameworks supporting CLAP can also help.

But of course, those wrappers give you the fidelity of the wrapping api. Things like polyphonic non destructive parameter modulation aren't possible in a wrapper format which doesn't support that concept. So there will be real user-facing benefits to CLAP plugins, we think (and we are already seeing those in BWS for the synths we have made use them, like the work U-He and Surge have done on polymod and the U-He thread pool usage).

I think the shoe really dropped for me when I stopped thinking of it as a new plugin API, and started thinking about it as an extensible Host<->Plugin collaboration API. Once Surge started telling Bitwig when voices were done, we were able to do a lot....

[Urs]

CLAP may actually help increase VST3 adoption AND help developers spend more time developing and less time supporting various formats than they currently do. As I understand it, a plugin could be developed in CLAP then compiled to spit out in CLAP, AU, VST2, VST3, and LVX via extensions or wrappers or whatnot.

This is the time for a Venn diagram.

If you compare the licenses that are available for the different kinds of formats, and the platforms they support, and if you have any insight in the technological intricacies of these formats, you'll notice that adapting/wrapping plug-ins from A to B to C is not trivial. In a properly set up Venn Digram showing "who can be adapted to whom for legal, technical and formal reasons", CLAP would take the center spot.

By that I mean creating a commercial or open source adapter which wraps some Plug-In from company X to run as Y in a host from company Z.

And this is also why XKCD 927 does not apply. Because most of the "standards" are actually platforms. Apple's Lightning cable is a platform - it closes in. USB-A/B/C are standards, they interoperate. So the rabbit I'm pulling out of the hat is that CLAP can become a standard whereas most other formats are simply means of platforming. And this is why we are in this mess in the first place. You'll see...

[Teksonik]

.......
So users of those DAWs will never care one bit about CLAP. There's a slice of the market gone....

Not necessarily true.
Some of us will lament how much time used to develop tools that we could use was spent instead developing and supporting yet another format.
rsp

Ok I think I get what you're saying. Kind of like how I lament the development time lost supporting Mac M1 because I don't or won't ever own one ?