CLAP: The New Audio Plug-in Standard (by U-he, Bitwig and others)

[baconpaul]

I guess there is the voice stacking but I’m not huge into unison sounds anyways.

do clap plugins work with bitwig's voice stacking?

Surge xt does. It’s great! And you can modulate almost any voice parameter by stack

[baconpaul]

Color me amused. There haven't been any major shake-ups in plug-in formats for a decade or so, and shortly after I release a utility to help people review their plug-in collection - we get a new format. Of course what would amuse me even more is to release official support for it the very same day: done.

For those who haven't already run across it elsewhere, PlugInfo is a lightweight macOS that quickly finds all your installed plug-ins and reveals information about their version, what native architectures are supported, what type they are, who published them, etc. You can even export details in case you're the type to manage a spreadsheet, filter and sort to your heart's content, and quickly select them in Finder to dispose of overzealous installations of types you don't use:



It's available both as a free download from my ThinkerSnacks site, and from the App Store for those who would like the auto-update mechanism or just a way to say thanks if they find it useful.

Cool!

So one of the things we did with clap was make a set of information available without creating a plugin instance. You do need to load the dll but you don’t have to create the plugin to get things like plugin count (since claps can contain multiple plugins) features and more. If you are interested in this there’s a few examples but the most direct is probably https://GitHub.com/surge-synthesizer/clap-info

Thanks for adding clap to your tool!

[apoclypse]

And oh yeah, Native Instruments are another surprising omission from the interested list at the moment.

They're still too busy making their portfolio VST3, first...

They are also working on their own framework SoundStacks. Don't know what their plans are there but its made by the creator of the JUCE framework. Maybe it will give them more versatility in the future to support new formats.

[apoclypse]

Color me amused. There haven't been any major shake-ups in plug-in formats for a decade or so, and shortly after I release a utility to help people review their plug-in collection - we get a new format. Of course what would amuse me even more is to release official support for it the very same day: done.

For those who haven't already run across it elsewhere, PlugInfo is a lightweight macOS that quickly finds all your installed plug-ins and reveals information about their version, what native architectures are supported, what type they are, who published them, etc. You can even export details in case you're the type to manage a spreadsheet, filter and sort to your heart's content, and quickly select them in Finder to dispose of overzealous installations of types you don't use:



It's available both as a free download from my ThinkerSnacks site, and from the App Store for those who would like the auto-update mechanism or just a way to say thanks if they find it useful.

I just migrated from my old Mac to my new one and could have used something like this to see get a list of all my plugins. Had no idea this existed.

[EvilDragon]

They are also working on their own framework SoundStacks. Don't know what their plans are there but its made by the creator of the JUCE framework. Maybe it will give them more versatility in the future to support new formats.

That's not exactly a framework. You can consider it continuation of SOUL, basically.

And this is not NI directly working on that, it's just Jules and Cesare AFAIK. Or to explain it better: SoundStacks is a separate entity within Soundwide, just like NI, iZo and PluginAlliance are.

[EnGee]

Reading the list of the first supporters makes me wonder: where the hell is Ableton in this? Let's hope they're not sleeping on CLAP.

No worries, there's communication. We had not had the time to address all their questions before today, so we've suggested to meet in a few weeks.

This is great

I hope there is a communication also with others like Synapse Audio, Native Instruments, Tone2, Rob Papen, etc.

It is refreshing, however, to see a good list of hosts, especially Presonus, so I can replace Cubase in the near future

[tempsperdu]

And oh yeah, Native Instruments are another surprising omission from the interested list at the moment.

I am in no way at all surprised by their omission, which is just another reason to despair at their behaviour.

[Urs]

Well, there were very productive talks with NI in the beginning, but they declined support for CLAP early on due to their plans to move to VST3. Judging by the pace of that transition, I would really like to talk to this engineer again who raised that point.

It surprised me then and it surprises me now. Because obviously NKS - a major asset of NI - is tied to a deprecated format and obviously the demise of that format has therefore cost NI an amount of money and shareholder value that is certainly unprecedented in the industry. It seems obvious to me that no other plug-in manufacturer has lost more due to this particular decision of another company.

We reached out back then because we were sure that NI would be working on their own format to proceed, and thus it would make sense to collaborate. Apparently they didn't, but still they wouldn't - yet, I sincerely hope they eventually will. CLAP would make so much sense, it's beyond me why they're not on board yet.

[Lady Gaia]

So one of the things we did with clap was make a set of information available without creating a plugin instance. You do need to load the dll but you don’t have to create the plugin to get things like plugin count (since claps can contain multiple plugins) features and more. If you are interested in this there’s a few examples but the most direct is probably https://GitHub.com/surge-synthesizer/clap-info

Thank you for the pointers. I go to great lengths to avoid loading any of the code, as being able to scan hundreds - and sometimes thousands - of plug-ins in a flash is part of the utility’s draw.

If I do wind up giving more information on-demand, that’s where it might make sense to load the library and inquire further. I definitely appreciate knowing more about the new standard.

Thanks for adding clap to your tool!

My pleasure. Best wishes getting more of the industry on board! I know how much effort it takes getting things rolling in the beginning.

[parma]

Hey Urs,

Can you talk to Reason Studios *now* about supporting CLAP so us Reason users can have this functionality by 2040?

[zvenx]

@Urs, you don't think Native Instruments would want to wait to see how CLAP fares first? Whether it is a success or flop? Before they put resources into it?
rsp

[parma]

You don't think they would want to wait to see how CLAP fares first? Whether it is a success or flop? Before they put resources into it?
rsp

It was a joke about how long it is taking them to implement VST3 and how long they take in general in introducing new features.

[zvenx]

Sorry... that was in response to something Urs had said about NI.. I took to long to hit send, so you and someone else posted in between.. I edited it to make it clearer.

Sorry.
rsp

[parma]

Sorry... that was in response to something Urs had said about NI.. I took to long to hit send, so you and someone else posted in between.. I edited it to make it clearer.

Sorry.
rsp

No problem

[Urs]

Regarding Reason Studios, we would love to talk to them, but nobody has any contact and whatever official email addresses some of us have tried seem to have gone into the void. Maybe Reason users should talk to them and their execs and devs can contact us through cleveraudio.org

I think CLAP makes a lot of sense for DAWs regardless of current adoption because it's immediately a superset of any features they'd ever wish to support. All other formats can easily be wrapped to a subset of CLAP. Best part of such a strategy is that those wrappers are being developed in open source projects already: I just had a screenshot of a VST2 running as CLAP in my mailbox.