Bye bye VST2

[jamcat]

And it seems a lot of devs prefer clap to vst3 : I'm not a dev but it's not only on this thread that I did read on the difficulty it is to code for vst3.

Apparently not that many, given the extremely small number of audio companies who have actually released CLAP versions compared to VST3. It would be near impossible to list all of the significant developers who HAVEN'T released CLAP versions, but a pretty easy task to list all who have.

And that's what we have here: nebulous claims that VST3 is no good and has hurt some feelings vs. sheer numbers that demonstrate CLAP isn't a viable solution for audio production right now.

Yes, yes, one day CLAP shall unite the realms. It has been prophecised...

[defiantnerd]

(I mentioned AU and AAX on the previous page, anticipating such pedantry.)

I must have overlooked that - the amount of your posts is surely overwhelming. But if you insist of everyone having all details present from the 36 pages of this thread, that's whishful thinking.

[Music Engineer]

It doesn't matter why (some) other hosts have problems with VST3. That's not my concern.

Rest assured that it does matter a lot to the developers of these hosts. And that's what matters when gauging the likelihood of adoption of alternatives by these developers.

If given a choice between something that works and something that doesn't, why would you choose the one that doesn't?

Exactly. That's how host developers will see it, too. Of course, they have to factor in other considerations as well (like market situation) - but that something works (and works well and easily and without any nasty hacks) is certainly an important factor as well. And if the thing that works more easily is even free of licensing risks, then that's even better. I'd say that's two points for clap (ease of implementation, liberal licensing) vs one point for vst3 (current market situation). Oh and there's a 3rd point for clap: easy extensibility.

[ampetrosillo]

Let's even assume that people here are just taking advantage of the situation to push CLAP. What's your problem with this? An open standard will always be preferable to a proprietary one, by simple virtue of it being open. I'll even say that an open standard can be preferable to a marginally superior proprietary standard, but that's not even the case here. As it stands, embracing VST3 plays into Steinberg's game, embracing CLAP forces them to play along with the rest of the industry.

Let them pile tonnes of shit over VST3; it's for the best anyway. Your best as well as everybody else's (except, maybe, for Steinberg, but I hardly see the value for them in controlling VST3, except for the malicious case whereby they don't actually disclose how to work well with VST host-side, this encouraging people like you to use Cubendo, or maybe Studio One but that's a minor DAW anyway and who gives a shit). You see what you're doing here? You are licking their boots for no return whatsoever. Can't we just say that you're a bit silly?

[gaggle of hermits]

(I mentioned AU and AAX on the previous page, anticipating such pedantry.)

except you didn't. maybe some other page. but not the last page.

you can pretend au and aax were out of context, except they aren't because this reflects the reality of the market. Similarly, i notice you don't mention that uad continues to support vst2 for plugins hosted on the accelerators.

"Yes, VST2 plug-ins are still included in UAD v11 for compatibility purposes. VST2 plug-in support will be discontinued in a future version of UAD Software, so we encourage you to start using VST3 plug-ins from now on for future compatibility."

yeah, they'll be discontinued in the future. but not yet. but that's not a surprise since, I don't know if you've noticed over the past x pages of this thread in between talking about what you want and use, Steinberg has been trying to force plugin developers off vst2.

[sacer]

I don't think Ableton can handle CLAP in the next 10 years, they have had big problems with VST3 a long time and WASAPI is still missing.

Ableton is listening to their username, it is a high ranked feature in centercode and I am sure they will address it, as soon as they have the capacity and CLAP gets more used in other important developer teams like UVI (image line, spectrasonics), Native instruments, Arturia.
Ableton isn’t known as early adopter, but celemony ARA is one of the only wishlist features that they hold back.
I am sure we will see clap in live 12 or at least in live 13.
With Image Line a big player is pushing clap as DAW standard, and Steinberg, Logic and avid will avoid CLAP.
So maybe CLAP becomes the new VST2 and will be compiled in future, to AU, VST3 and AAX.
CLAP will fill the GAP that VST2 will leave.

[Calagan]

And it seems a lot of devs prefer clap to vst3 : I'm not a dev but it's not only on this thread that I did read on the difficulty it is to code for vst3.

Apparently not that many, given the extremely small number of audio companies who have actually released CLAP versions compared to VST3. It would be near impossible to list all of the significant developers who HAVEN'T released CLAP versions, but a pretty easy task to list all who have.

And that's what we have here: nebulous claims that VST3 is no good and has hurt some feelings vs. sheer numbers that demonstrate CLAP isn't a viable solution for audio production right now.

Yes, yes, one day CLAP shall unite the realms. It has been prophecised...

It's not too difficult to understand that you invest time and money in coding for a plugin format in relation to the economical output you can anticipate from this investment.
vst3, in particular since Steinberg warned everybody they will end support for vst2 in favor of its successor, is now a must do for any serious dev (I know only Black Rooster, in my plugin folder, that still didn't propose vst3 version of its catalogue. And they are definitely a serious company, maybe a little stubborn).
VST3 is dominant only because it is pushed by Steinberg, while vst2 is pushed backward.

In this regard, clap is still an experiment, and an investment risk. If it becomes more popular, it will be more widely adopted, then become more popular, then... etc. etc.
Now it's about business decisions, not about elegance and efficiency of a plugin standard.

It's also not so difficult to check the history of adoption by devs and DAWs of plugins standards, and see that vst3 was adopted slowly and reluctantly, while until very recently vst2 was still dominant in what was proposing plugins devs. I mean, vst3 was adopted by Ableton Live (one of the most popular DAW, and definitely one of the most successful economically) in 2019 only ! And at this time, you could read a bit everywhere since ages that Steinberg was deprecating vst2.
for exemple here : https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php ... &start=150
At this time, vst3 was a 10 years old technology !!!
The only reason vst3 was adopted was under the Steinberg pressure, not because devs find vst3 a pertinent upgrade. And now, it will be very difficult, if not juridically impossible, not to propose vst3 plugins if you're a plugin maker.
If vst3 was such a perfect standard, it would have been adopted quickly and massively by everybody, especially given the Steinberg pressure.

[Calagan]

P.S. : the above mentionned thread of the Ableton forum starts in october 2013.
It mentions the fact Steinberg stopped providing sdk for vst2 so it's time for Ableton live to adopt vst3.
https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php ... c979fc08f9
10 years ago, people were not wanting vst3 into Live because it was better, just because they wanted to have some kind of supported plugin standard for the future years. Just like now with CLAP, that has the advantage of being open source so no subject to the bizarre business choices of a unique company.
I mean, it took more than 10 years of pressure from Steinberg so Live adopts vst3. Would it be so long if it were a perfect standard, or even bringing anything better than its predecessor ?
At the time of this forum's thread (2013), most people were saying the same thing as in this KVR thread : vst3 doesn't bring nothing and it's more complicated to code. I'm not a dev, I'm just documenting what people were saying 10 years ago.

And I don't care about using vst3 or vst2 or clap or pileofshit new plugin standard : as a pro user, I just want a stable, reliable and future proof standard for my musical tools.

[machinesworking]

P.S. : the above mentionned thread of the Ableton forum starts in october 2013.
It mentions the fact Steinberg stopped providing sdk for vst2 so it's time for Ableton live to adopt vst3.
https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php ... c979fc08f9

I'm in this thread 11+ years ago, like now pointing out that VST3 is not fun to backwards engineer for hosts, and that Cubendo and Studio One have inside information being part of the company etc. and hamhat ignores that connection completely to deride Live for not having adopted VST3 yet. Hamhat, jamcat, has a ring.
https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php ... 0&start=15

[pdxindy]

It doesn't matter why (some) other hosts have problems with VST3. That's not my concern.

Rest assured that it does matter a lot to the developers of these hosts. And that's what matters when gauging the likelihood of adoption of alternatives by these developers.

It also matters to the developers of other hosts that Steinberg purposefully made adoption difficult for them. Steinberg's first priority is to give advantage to their own DAW's. In this regard, Steinberg has a conflict of interest in being the steward of a common standard.

Every DAW developer knows this (whether they ever publicly comment on it or not). Apple was big enough to make their own format so as not to be at the mercy of Steinberg. Same with Avid. None of the rest want to be at the mercy of Steinberg either and that is why they will all eventually adopt CLAP.

[zvenx]

Just a correction:

Apple did not do AU because of VST/SB.. I am pretty familiar with this one with inside information...your reasoning is close though just not SB.

It was Gibson buying Opcode, killing OMS (and Opcode) that led Apple to decide not to ever depend on a third party again, which led to AU and Core Audio and Core Midi.
rsp

[machinesworking]

It doesn't matter why (some) other hosts have problems with VST3. That's not my concern.

Rest assured that it does matter a lot to the developers of these hosts. And that's what matters when gauging the likelihood of adoption of alternatives by these developers.

It also matters to the developers of other hosts that Steinberg purposefully made adoption difficult for them. Steinberg's first priority is to give advantage to their own DAW's. In this regard, Steinberg has a conflict of interest in being the steward of a common standard.

Every DAW developer knows this (whether they ever publicly comment on it or not). Apple was big enough to make their own format so as not to be at the mercy of Steinberg. Same with Avid. None of the rest want to be at the mercy of Steinberg either and that is why they will all eventually adopt CLAP.

I should be pointed out that Apples standard for Mac OS also has this situation with VST3 type issues. When Audio Units were first introduced for OS X MOTU with Digital Performer immediately decided to adopt them, in OS 9 they had their own plugin format MAS. The first release of AU had them crashing DP, even though MOTU had been super strict on Apples hosting documentation. What had happened is Logic had had some issues withe released specs, Apple had tweaked them, and just forgot to publish the tweaked specs. Then there's the weird way in which Logic handles MIDI out from an AUi, using it as a MIDI effect, that no other DAW has implemented, only hosts like PluginGuru's Unify also do inline AUi MIDI FX.

That said, the only rational reason on a Mac using DAWs with AU support, to use VST3, is for MIDI out, unless we're talking Logic, or the "insider trading" Cubendo and Studio One of course.

CLAP should have happened 20 years ago when AU first came up, and really should have happened in 2018 when Steinberg killed VST2 support. This is coming from someone whose main DAW does not support CLAP, MOTU have limited resources for DP, who knows if I'll even be playing music by the time they introduce it? or if it will still exist?

[pdxindy]

CLAP should have happened 20 years ago when AU first came up, and really should have happened in 2018 when Steinberg killed VST2 support. This is coming from someone whose main DAW does not support CLAP, MOTU have limited resources for DP, who knows if I'll even be playing music by the time they introduce it? or if it will still exist?

For sure Apple has had its share of self serving choices...

And yeah, it would have been great to have a widely adopted open standard a long time ago.

But thankfully, we have it now. CLAP is easily implemented, has improved functionality, is extensible, and is an open standard.

[ampetrosillo]

There was an open standard a few years ago already, which was LV2 (it has existed for at least fifteen years, IIRC, and probably longer). It was/sort of is common on Linux but I don't think there was anything stopping other OSs from hosting the standard. I'm not a developer so I don't know what are its criticalities, if there are any (I don't think it's a licensing issue, since I think it's LGPL).

[mi-os]

It also matters to the developers of other hosts that Steinberg purposefully made adoption difficult for them. Steinberg's first priority is to give advantage to their own DAW's. In this regard, Steinberg has a conflict of interest in being the steward of a common standard.

Can you please elaborate how they do that exactly?