Bye bye VST2

[jamcat]

That is such a bizarre and illogical stance to take, with regard to pessimism and resistance to the CLAP format.

I'm not the one resisting CLAP. It's all the developers who make the plugins that I use who are resisting it. You want me to participate in wishcasting.

My current favourite plugin doesn't * currently * support CLAP. Therefore, if I had to * only * use CLAP plugins, I couldn't currently use my favourite plugin.

So I'm supposed to get excited about something that doesn't exist and doesn't affect my life at all, just because you believe it's coming one day? You're angry that I refuse to spread the Good Word?

That is religion, my friend.

Can't you spot the inherent illogic when talking about the growing support for a relatively new format (especially, as compared to VST/VST3)?

See above and then reevaluate this statement.

CLAP adoption is not static or stalling. There are more CLAP plugins coming all the time. There will be a lot more by this time next year than there are * currently * ... There will be FAR more in 5 years time than next year.

A certain type of developer has embraced CLAP. The type that doesn't have to make payroll or a budget. The kind that doesn't have to meet quarterly earnings targets, or justify expenses.

Maybe you've seen all the threads on KVR about which audio company has been bought by which investment firm. Those firms care about the bottom line only. They don't give a shit about CLAP.

I bet you will be using a majority of CLAP plugins in your projects in five years time ... including all Audio Modeling / SWAM plugins. Because, as a forward-thinking business, they too will have to adapt and support the most popular plugin formats for their users. That includes customers like yourself, but it also includes customers like me, who want to use their plugins in CLAP and who will continue to request this support from them, until they do.

If Audio Modeling starts supporting CLAP in the future it will be because of one of two reasons:

1. Some popular DAW becomes CLAP exclusive, cutting off developers who don't support CLAP from potential customers.
2. JUCE (which Audio Modeling uses) implements low-effort CLAP support.

[wikter]

Maybe because I've been using VST plugins since Cubase VST 3.5 in 1997..?

Though no professional 3rd party plugins supported VST at the time. Those were all DX.
VST plugins were mostly just freeware made by students, hobbyists, and weirdos like Vellocet.

VST didn't really take off until Steinberg dropped support for DX plugins in Cubase.

VST took a little of time to get PRO support, but not more than a pair of months: Prosoniq, Ultrafunk, Emagic, and a long list. But of course, you know nothing about early DAW history, Soundscape, Umatic, Betacam, 888, Samplecell... terms that you probably ignore.
Please, read SOS before making SUCH imaginations, plenty of free articles to talk with a little of property...

[Andreya_Autumn]

A certain type of developer has embraced CLAP. The type that doesn't have to make payroll or a budget. The kind that doesn't have to meet quarterly earnings targets, or justify expenses.

Maybe you've seen all the threads on KVR about which audio company has been bought by which investment firm. Those firms care about the bottom line only. They don't give a shit about CLAP.

I understand the first part of this statement is probably meant to be taken in relation to the second. But on its own you surely realize that's absurd? Fabfilter and U-He decidedly have to make payroll or justify expenses.

Much bigger fish are indeed going to be asking questions about shorter-term ROI, that is true. That same short-term thinking is what many people dislike about corporate decision making though. And I can say for sure, if a larger investor *did* have the long game in mind and a plan to develop new products (most admittedly don't) I'm not so sure they would be indifferent to CLAP. I agree probably no business on that level is currently considering building CLAP-first and wrapping to VST3/AU/etc. But that will change, I'm really sure. The API really is much simpler to implement, for an identical or improved feature set. The dev hours spent wrestling with the VST3 SDK are not cheap... and that's money to be saved on using the CLAP-first approach.

[baconpaul]

is CLAP foss? (free open source software)

Yes. Clap is released under the maximally permissive mit license. The project is governed by a group of developers across commercial and open source projects with a multi person review and design process for change, promotion, etc….

[Super Piano Hater 64]

So I'm supposed to get excited about something that doesn't exist and doesn't affect my life at all, just because you believe it's coming one day? You're angry that I refuse to spread the Good Word?

Nobody's recruiting you to go around saying positive things about CLAP's future potential, but it would be quite nice if you'd stop attacking it with outrageous lies.

For example...

A certain type of developer has embraced CLAP. The type that doesn't have to make payroll or a budget. The kind that doesn't have to meet quarterly earnings targets, or justify expenses.

Are you talking about Presonus there? Subsidiary of Fender? The developers of your DAW of choice? A DAW that, by your own admission a few posts back, recently added CLAP support?

I'm really looking forward to your mental gymnastics about how this somehow doesn't count, or what kind of rogue intern has been sneaking into the offices to do guerrilla programming in the middle of the night.

[Super Piano Hater 64]

I don't really know why I get trapped into trying to convince these types of anything really?

Same here. The categorical imperative? The prime directive? Faith in humanity? Who needs 'em?

I managed to stay out of the fray for most of a year. I should follow an old friend's example and tape up a sign as a reminder: "DO NOT ENGAGE."

[wikter]

Oh, finally... A VST3/VST2/CLAP adapter that works as VST2/VST3/CLAP plug-in.
https://www.kvraudio.com/developer/ctrlbrk
Now that VST2 has a free compatible adapter it's safer to start switching to CLAP.
A Bridge would be nicer, but it's just a Matter of time.

[jamcat]

it would be quite nice if you'd stop attacking it with outrageous lies.

List these "lies."

Are you talking about Presonus there? Subsidiary of Fender? The developers of your DAW of choice? A DAW that, by your own admission a few posts back, recently added CLAP support?

We are talking about plugins supporting CLAP. But you know that.

So what CLAP plugins have PreSonus released? None. Just like 95% of everyone else.

[wikter]

So what CLAP plugins have PreSonus released? None. Just like 95% of everyone else.

FYI. Presonus started releasing their own propietary plugins as VST just 3 years ago, and the list is SHORT. Supporting CLAP with their DAW is the way that makes a flagship industry product support CLAP.

List these "lies."

No need to spread more ones. Just stop writing without evidences, we need documentation to believe you.

[coroknight]

Any music producer who doesn’t support CLAP really has no idea what they’re talking about and is arguing against their own long-term interests.

A lightweight, free, open-source, extensible standard is the future. And will lead to even better plugins that can do more than current plugins are capable of today.

For example, anyone who uses Ableton or Bitwig probably wishes you could edit, or even view, 3rd party EQ curves right from the device chain without opening a window just like 1st party EQs. Well guess what, that’s something CLAP is working on.

What about ARA2? Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t need multiple plugin standards and plugins could integrate more deeply with DAWs? That’s a possibility too. It’s amazing what can happen when you have an open standard that isn’t controlled by individual companies.

[rod_zero]

I wonder in the long term when Ableton adopts clap and then eventually Steinberg makes something stupid and DAW developers drop VST support, what will happen to VST if it is only confined to Cubase/Nuendo, would be enough for developers to justify keeping ports for it?

[machinesworking]

I wonder in the long term when Ableton adopts clap and then eventually Steinberg makes something stupid and DAW developers drop VST support, what will happen to VST if it is only confined to Cubase/Nuendo, would be enough for developers to justify keeping ports for it?

Well even to this day some plugins use a wrapper for AU. Recently a friend found that out when he did not instal the VST3 version of Serum 2. The major difference is when CLAP is what all developers write for initially, then port to AAX, AU and VST3. For any DAW that is not Cubendo, Logic or Pro Tools, CLAP will offer better features and less bugs. My guess is there will be no real noticeable difference in performance for the other formats, just like wrapped AUs are not an issue these days.

[Urs]

I wonder in the long term when Ableton adopts clap and then eventually Steinberg makes something stupid and DAW developers drop VST support, what will happen to VST if it is only confined to Cubase/Nuendo, would be enough for developers to justify keeping ports for it?

One of the things CLAP is needed for is to prevent the owners of legacy platforms from making policy changes that support CLAP. Without CLAP they can do whatever they want, the have all the leverage. With CLAP, that leverage is lessened because a drastic change would push developers towards CLAP.

[whyterabbyt]

That’s a lot of words to say you are enraged that I don’t share your zealous hatred for all things Steinberg and VST3.

Exactly the response we'd expect of a cultist.

[baconpaul]

I wonder in the long term when Ableton adopts clap and then eventually Steinberg makes something stupid and DAW developers drop VST support, what will happen to VST if it is only confined to Cubase/Nuendo, would be enough for developers to justify keeping ports for it?

One of the things CLAP is needed for is to prevent the owners of legacy platforms from making policy changes that support CLAP. Without CLAP they can do whatever they want, the have all the leverage. With CLAP, that leverage is lessened because a drastic change would push developers towards CLAP.

yeah this thread is odd and some of the users here seem way more opinionated than i would think a non-developer would be about an api, but Urs let me reinforce this.

CLAP, as a programming model, is way easier than VST3, AUv2, AUv3, AAX etc... - the code is clean simple and well laid out. And that's not enough to get devs excited.

The thing which really matters about clap is

1. It is liberally licensed and there is no controlling party who can restrict you from using it
2. So you can use it for the base of your development unencumbered

Since *every* plugin you run which supports > 1 format is, in a technical sense, wrapped (I mean come on, do you think there's two copies of every bit of code for the VST3 and the AUv2?), all plugin authors end up with some form of unifying abstraction. For juce this is `juce::AudioProcessor`, and there's an equivalent in iPlug, distrho etc.... For plugins which roll their own API handlers they all have some internal abstraction so things like 'plugin gets midi message' can route to 'my code which does the midi stuff'

The nice thing about CLAP is it is a format which is reasonable as the basis for that abstraction. It's simple, robust, clear, easy to code, etc... and most importantly, IP unencumbered.

Imagine if you were a company who had, for that abstraction, used VST2 and then all of a sudden the license change happens. Your entire product line is at risk. You should not re-tool based on another toolkit with that exposure.

So the benefit of CLAP to a developer is you can use a shared abstraction which presents no IP overhang risk to your business. We have proof that CLAP can be invisibly projected into AUv2, VST3, Standalone, and (not yet in our mainline) AAX.

The fact that also, by doing so, you can run *directly* in a swath of popular DAWs (bitwig, FL, S1, Reaper, MTS, a collection of open source daws, a collection of re-hosters) with just that code is a boon, as is the fact that those DAWs can use extended features.

But for a commercial developer, segregating their exposure to the license oddities of the various other toolkits is a real benefit.