VST3 to VST2

[whyterabbyt]

What's amazing is you are so invested in promoting and defending the use of the CLAP Plugin Format

Liar.

yet refuse to answer why anyone would use it over VST3 and find the mere thought of the question pointless

You're saying that its amazing that I think its pointless for me to say I can provide the motivation of anyone out there who uses CLAP?

Yes, it is. It is actually amazing of me that, unlike you, I dont try and speak for other people.

[IvyBirds]

What's amazing is you are so invested in promoting and defending the use of the CLAP Plugin Format

Liar.

yet refuse to answer why anyone would use it over VST3 and find the mere thought of the question pointless

You're saying that its amazing that I think its pointless for me to say I can provide the motivation of anyone out there who uses CLAP?

Yes, it is. It is actually amazing of me that, unlike you, I dont try and speak for other people.

Again it's amazing you can go off topic over and over again with personal insults, but refuse to answer the simple and logical question at hand

Why would anyone currently using VST3 abandon that in favor of CLAP?

[whyterabbyt]

Again it's amazing you can go off topic over and over again with personal insults, but refuse to answer the simple and logical question at hand

Liar.

Why would anyone currently using VST3 abandon that in favor of CLAP?

viewtopic.php?p=9151998#p9151998

[IvyBirds]

Again it's amazing you can go off topic over and over again with personal insults, but refuse to answer the simple and logical question at hand

Liar.

Why would anyone currently using VST3 abandon that in favor of CLAP?

viewtopic.php?p=9151998#p9151998

Again with the refusal to answer a very logical and on topic question and just hurl out insults

I get it however, you can't answer as there is no logical reason anyone would switch from VST3 at this point to CLAP. Now that VST3 is open sourced with a MIT license, CLAP is the solution to a problem that no longer exists

You can call me a liar all you want, but why not take some of that negative energy and have a conversation on why CLAP should exist moving forward? Why not give compelling reasons for people to use CLAP over VST3?

Or just continue to embarrass yourself and hurl out insults.

[whyterabbyt]

a very logical and on topic question

[Super Piano Hater 64]

You could keep going in circles forever, couldn't you? Well, that's exactly what Steinberg wants, so if you keep this up you're working for them whether you want to or not.

The main technical advantage of CLAP over VST3 does not appear in a bullet point comparison of their respective feature sets, because it's an emergent property of the goals of the two formats and their maintainers' commitment to the value of interoperability. This value may be hard to measure but it's not terribly abstract and this isn't marketing fluff. It's essential to all industry standards. If the maintainers of the standard don't actually value it, they'll do a bad job at maintaining the standard. Steinberg has spent almost the entire lifespan of VST3 so far doing a terrible job.

VST3 "support" is wildly inconsistent from host to host. There are all these cool features that are listed in the feature set, but don't work in the majority of hosts that claim to support VST3. Some hosts tried to add support for them but couldn't figure out how to match Cubendo's behavior, and had to give up because lots of plugins that do support these features would just crash (or worse) when trying to use them in non-Steinberg hosts. Why couldn't they figure it out? Because the VST3 documentation doesn't tell you enough information for that, and Steinberg wouldn't lift a finger to clarify the situation, because Steinberg does not want to help its competitors. So, most* of those VST3 features are effectively just Cubendo features, and when Steinberg markets VST3, it's really telling you to switch to using Steinberg software.

(Why the asterisk? Some VST3 features are broken in Cubendo, too. Great work, everybody!)

VST2 was a de facto standard. It was open enough that anyone could implement it (and they did), and simple enough that you could exhaustively test its whole feature set and have confidence that plugins were working consistently across hosts. This was allegedly an accident: Steinberg didn't actually intend for this to happen, wasn't interested in having it happen again, and deliberately designed VST3 to be more Cubendo-specific. Breaking MIDI support was part of that stance. "MIDI is for the DAW to worry about" was their official policy whenever users or developers asked for MIDI support in VST3. They were happy to have people think of VST3 as the industry standard plugin format as long as they also considered Cubase the industry standard DAW. So, interoperability was not their goal, and every change they made to both VST2 and VST3 up until late 2022 was in the interest of turning users into paying Steinberg customers rather than making either format into a better standard.

CLAP, at an API level, is deliberately designed to be similar to VST2. In some cases it instead borrows from some other APIs, like OpenGL. (OpenGL is not a great example of cross-platform consistency, and I'm not defending it on that point, but it's possible to learn from both its mistakes and its strong points in different ways.) But those technical decisions, as well as the choice of license, are downstream of the most important "feature" of CLAP, ie. the fact that its maintainers have interoperability as a core value and an explicit goal. They want to make it easy to have plugins behave the same way in different hosts. Steinberg never wanted that, and never provided the technical support to third party developers to ensure it would happen.

I have a strong interest in not wasting developers' time. There are actual problems to solve, and it frustrates me to see bureaucratic roadblocks put in the way of dealing with those actual problems. Most programmers know the term "yak shaving" (dealing with loads of other shit before they can get to work on reaching their actual goal) but I've never heard anyone discuss weaponized yak shaving, where a company like Steinberg actively deploys herds of yaks to confuse developers, waste their time, and generally prevent them from succeeding. So, the thing I like most about CLAP is that everyone involved in it has decided "actually, we can have nice things" and explicitly agreed to put up helpful road signs that say "BEWARE OF THE YAK."

If Steinberg can learn from that, that's great. The license change suggests they've started thinking differently. It's too bad they made that yak turd minefield in the first place. I hope they clean it up.

[IvyBirds]

You could keep going in circles forever, couldn't you? Well, that's exactly what Steinberg wants, so if you keep this up you're working for them whether you want to or not.

The main technical advantage of CLAP over VST3 does not appear in a bullet point comparison of their respective feature sets, because it's an emergent property of the goals of the two formats and their maintainers' commitment to the value of interoperability. This value may be hard to measure but it's not terribly abstract and this isn't marketing fluff. It's essential to all industry standards. If the maintainers of the standard don't actually value it, they'll do a bad job at maintaining the standard. Steinberg has spent almost the entire lifespan of VST3 so far doing a terrible job.

VST3 "support" is wildly inconsistent from host to host. There are all these cool features that are listed in the feature set, but don't work in the majority of hosts that claim to support VST3. Some hosts tried to add support for them but couldn't figure out how to match Cubendo's behavior, and had to give up because lots of plugins that do support these features would just crash (or worse) when trying to use them in non-Steinberg hosts. Why couldn't they figure it out? Because the VST3 documentation doesn't tell you enough information for that, and Steinberg wouldn't lift a finger to clarify the situation, because Steinberg does not want to help its competitors. So, most* of those VST3 features are effectively just Cubendo features, and when Steinberg markets VST3, it's really telling you to switch to using Steinberg software.

(Why the asterisk? Some VST3 features are broken in Cubendo, too. Great work, everybody!)

VST2 was a de facto standard. It was open enough that anyone could implement it (and they did), and simple enough that you could exhaustively test its whole feature set and have confidence that plugins were working consistently across hosts. This was allegedly an accident: Steinberg didn't actually intend for this to happen, wasn't interested in having it happen again, and deliberately designed VST3 to be more Cubendo-specific. Breaking MIDI support was part of that stance. "MIDI is for the DAW to worry about" was their official policy whenever users or developers asked for MIDI support in VST3. They were happy to have people think of VST3 as the industry standard plugin format as long as they also considered Cubase the industry standard DAW. So, interoperability was not their goal, and every change they made to both VST2 and VST3 up until late 2022 was in the interest of turning users into paying Steinberg customers rather than making either format into a better standard.

CLAP, at an API level, is deliberately designed to be similar to VST2. In some cases it instead borrows from some other APIs, like OpenGL. (OpenGL is not a great example of cross-platform consistency, and I'm not defending it on that point, but it's possible to learn from both its mistakes and its strong points in different ways.) But those technical decisions, as well as the choice of license, are downstream of the most important "feature" of CLAP, ie. the fact that its maintainers have interoperability as a core value and an explicit goal. They want to make it easy to have plugins behave the same way in different hosts. Steinberg never wanted that, and never provided the technical support to third party developers to ensure it would happen.

I have a strong interest in not wasting developers' time. There are actual problems to solve, and it frustrates me to see bureaucratic roadblocks put in the way of dealing with those actual problems. Most programmers know the term "yak shaving" (dealing with loads of other shit before they can get to work on reaching their actual goal) but I've never heard anyone discuss weaponized yak shaving, where a company like Steinberg actively deploys herds of yaks to confuse developers, waste their time, and generally prevent them from succeeding. So, the thing I like most about CLAP is that everyone involved in it has decided "actually, we can have nice things" and explicitly agreed to put up helpful road signs that say "BEWARE OF THE YAK."

If Steinberg can learn from that, that's great. The license change suggests they've started thinking differently. It's too bad they made that yak turd minefield in the first place. I hope they clean it up.

And that's awesome but plugins and DAWs exist because people buy them to use in their own audio and video productions

How difficult it was for developers to program them really doesn't enter into those buying decisions, especially when they often charge hundreds of dollars to do so

U-he Diva is $179, Bitwig costs $399, if I am going to drop that kind of cash on software, I really could not care less if it was difficult to program, I am certainly not going to change all my other audio software just because u-he and Bitwig GmbH decided to come out with a format that's more convenient for them while offering no real world benefits to me

If VST3 support is to inconvenient for developers awesome they shouldn't use it. They should just release CLAP instead, yet we all know they won't as that is not commercially viable

VST3 provides lots of nice things in fact they are so nice that Bitwig and u-he the "fathers" of CLAP are happy to sell you products at a premium price that use and support the format

[whyterabbyt]

rah rah rah VST3, i keep claiming its been around since 2003

translation : even though LiarBirds whined on endlessly that folk had to prove CLAP had any advantages, the second that anyone names any advantages, Liarbirds disingenously dismisses them as not actually being important.

exactly as everyone expected them to.

[teilo]

It amuses me how certain people lose their sh*t every time CLAP is mentioned. It's like a religious war for them.

You can thank CLAP for the open-sourcing of VST3. Without CLAP, that would never have happened.

[Super Piano Hater 64]

It amuses me how certain people lose their sh*t every time CLAP is mentioned. It's like a religious war for them.

It's usually people who have no idea how software development works.

I always wonder how they react when clients want them to "just EQ my voice so I sound like Frank Sinatra."

[IvyBirds]

rah rah rah VST3, i keep claiming its been around since 2003

translation : even though LiarBirds whined on endlessly that folk had to prove CLAP had any advantages, the second that anyone names any advantages, Liarbirds disingenously dismisses them as not actually being important.

exactly as everyone expected them to.

There you do again with the lies and half truths, all I asked is what advantages CLAP has to offer for users to stop using VST3 and instead switch to CLAP something no one had answered

But we are supposed to feel sorry for developers of something

So again I ask you what advantages does clap have that would get people to stop using VST3

[IvyBirds]

It amuses me how certain people lose their sh*t every time CLAP is mentioned. It's like a religious war for them.

It's usually people who have no idea how software development works.

I always wonder how they react when clients want them to "just EQ my voice so I sound like Frank Sinatra."

The problem with your analogy if course is that I can't make someone who doesn't already sound like Frank Sinatra sound like him by adjusting EQ that would be an impossibility

Yet many developers even one man shops developing freeware plugins can develop using VST3.

It's like you have no idea how software development works or Audio Engineering either, because apparently you think developing VST3 is an impossible endeavor

But I get it, you think we should all feel sorry that certain developers had to use VST3 to sell us products that cost hundreds of dollars and that was hard or something

[whyterabbyt]

<hypocritical lying bullshit from the lying liar removed>

[whyterabbyt]

It's like you have no idea how software development works or Audio Engineering either,

oh the f**king irony.

[IvyBirds]

It's like you have no idea how software development works or Audio Engineering either,

oh the f**king irony.

Awesome so explain how you can make someone sound like Frank Sinatra by using EQ? Or why no one is developing VST3 because it's impossible

Becaus that's the analogy that was made