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

[HcDoom]

How much improvement are we going to see on the cpu/asio side with, for example, a bit
more complex Diva patch? 5-10-15-20-30% compared to vst2/3?

[Urs]

How much improvement are we going to see on the cpu/asio side with, for example, a bit
more complex Diva patch? 5-10-15-20-30% compared to vst2/3?

We have systems showing no improvement at all with some presets, and we have systems showing 100% more instances of Diva with other. A conservative estimate is 20% on average, but our sample size (number of computers tested) is too low to say for sure.

But yes. 100% more on some systems. Twice as many voice.

[Urs]

Thing is though, with CLAP developers can safely and easily implement multicore processing for their more expensive algorithms. More CPU cores has been "the future" for a while now, and there's no reason to believe that this will change. CLAP offers a great option to make use of this.

[skijumptoes]

I'd really love to see a universal plugin format that is aware of the plugins it precedes.
i.e. to place a modulation plugin in slot 1 that can modulate the parameters of slot 2.

Is that even a possibility?

[koalaboy]

I'd really love to see a universal plugin format that is aware of the plugins it precedes.
i.e. to place a modulation plugin in slot 1 that can modulate the parameters of slot 2.

Is that even a possibility?

That's effectively CV, and should be possible. However, a plugin should never need to know about other plugins (unless they share a codebase).

[Urs]

Yes, possible in CLAP

[PieBerger]

How much improvement are we going to see on the cpu/asio side with, for example, a bit
more complex Diva patch? 5-10-15-20-30% compared to vst2/3?

On my M1 Air with a 256 sample buffer I can play 8 VST3 instances of the same 12 voice Diva patch before the audio drops out. With multicore enabled on the CLAP version I can play 10 instances before audio drops out, a 25% performance increase.

[boingy]

It's a shame the designers of this didn't give more thought to the name. In the UK, "clap" is slang for a sexually transmitted disease or infection...

[baconpaul]

I'd really love to see a universal plugin format that is aware of the plugins it precedes.
i.e. to place a modulation plugin in slot 1 that can modulate the parameters of slot 2.

Is that even a possibility?

I have been thinking about this a lot (and it is different than CV if you do it in the control channel). I plan to share an extension proposal for this once we are all calmed down with 1.0.

[baconpaul]

I'd really love to see a universal plugin format that is aware of the plugins it precedes.
i.e. to place a modulation plugin in slot 1 that can modulate the parameters of slot 2.

Is that even a possibility?

That's effectively CV, and should be possible. However, a plugin should never need to know about other plugins (unless they share a codebase).

So I understand why you say this, but it's not quite necessarily true. Most importantly, CV isn't polyphonic.

I have an idea for a sequencer which can explicitly target params of downstream plugins. They don't need to share a codebase but you do need to know the parameter identities to target, and also you need to augment the note stream with that information. This is not just a CV api, it's more a note stream thing to do targeted polyphonic modulation.

[tasmaniandevil]

It's a shame the designers of this didn't give more thought to the name.

https://urs.silvrback.com/clap

[koalaboy]

So I understand why you say this, but it's not quite necessarily true. Most importantly, CV isn't polyphonic.

Maybe I mis-used CV in this instance. I meant that outbound modulation should be possible, and CV is often a concept that people can relate to.

I have an idea for a sequencer which can explicitly target params of downstream plugins. They don't need to share a codebase but you do need to know the parameter identities to target, and also you need to augment the note stream with that information. This is not just a CV api, it's more a note stream thing to do targeted polyphonic modulation.

I would absolutely love to see this - as mentioned in another thread, being able to have (for example) Bitwig expose 'outbound' modulation from a device to influence others would be awesome. Two questions off that, I guess:

1) How is this different (conceptually) from MIDI CC messages ?

2) I presume it could still be abstract enough that those parameter identities do not need to be specific to a plugin - if we go down the route of implementation-specific rather than an interface, that could cause more confusion and become far less of a standard.

[baconpaul]

With the caveat that I haven't even made a concrete proposal yet and people may hate it

1) How is this different (conceptually) from MIDI CC messages ?

MIDI 1 CC messages are monophonic. MPE solves this by using channels which works up to 15 voices. but surge goes to 64 voices pretty easily. Think about if midi CC messages had a note id rather than a channel id and you get closer. And them imagine if they had more resolution.

2) I presume it could still be abstract enough that those parameter identities do not need to be specific to a plugin - if we go down the route of implementation-specific rather than an interface, that could cause more confusion and become far less of a standard.

So that might be the case. See my comment above. There's a scaling question which I am working through and also a user experience one. But like I said, we are still in the middle of 1.0 but the idea isn't that well developed in my head yet.

[koalaboy]

But like I said, we are still in the middle of 1.0 but the idea isn't that well developed in my head yet.

I really appreciate the info, and will keep an eye (ear ?) out as things progress. I'm hoping to dive more into CLAP this weekend (once the day job is out of the way), and hopefully I'll understand more of the specifics when I can play with what's available.

Thanks again

[baconpaul]

Thanks again

No problem!

If you start with https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/clap-saw-demo I think it will walk you through using the API and help understand some of these polymod and note expression ideas clearly.