I have a new idea for a plug-in standard/extension, what should I do with it?

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But then again. One has to start from somewhere.

There exists "cross-compilation" libraries such as WDL-OL that target all formats.

So even if they're not directly compatible, one can at least deal with all of them simultaneously.

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Fluky wrote:How's Apple a big player? Sure they have broad user base in pro audio, but their AU standard is surely "secondary" to VST. VST is the "base standard"? Also, since VSTs run also on mac what AU is is mostly a "dongle", eventhough I believe it has few technological advancements over VST.
VST is the standard plugin format on Mac, and AU is seconday? Did I missed something?
I think a good path might be to ask Sensomusic, Audulus or similar first.
What do you want to ask them?

Help you on getting that standard up to speed?
I would not ask any commercial company for that at a first place. As said - build a community.
Find a coupld of ppl that love writing specs, some that like collecting feedback/managing tasks, some that can implement / submit a patch to open source DAWs to demo it, some that port their plugin to the new format ect pp.

You want them add support for it (as it is) to their product?
It will be kind of a chicken-and-egg problem. Why should Steinberg add it to Cubase if nobody else has it yet and there are no plugins? Why should Apple add it to Logic Pro if nobody else has it? Why should Ableton .. ?
A good reason might be that it has very active github, with lots of other DAW & plugins that support it - but now I'm back on the "build a community" thing.

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Often companies think if it wasn't invented here it not worth much.

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fmr wrote: I think a good idea for a new plug-in standard would be something like MIDI: sitting EVERYBODY at the same table, discuss what should be kept, .... and then come with a new standard that would be TRULY independent of ANY company and kept by an independent consortium, just like MIDI.
.......
More/less this. The questions still remains : Do we need another format, with uw compability for all the existing stuff, and ... to do what ?
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Kalamata Kid wrote:Often companies think if it wasn't invented here it not worth much.
Yes and often the ones that propose their ideas to them think they've invented the holy grail ;-) To be honest this whole discussion sounds exactly like that. Too much secret magic. The OP doesn't want to talk about any details but on the other he wants to make it open.

I personally don't need another plugin format or extension. There are enough out there that cover the needs for specific systems and tasks.

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PurpleSunray wrote:
Fluky wrote:How's Apple a big player? Sure they have broad user base in pro audio, but their AU standard is surely "secondary" to VST. VST is the "base standard"? Also, since VSTs run also on mac what AU is is mostly a "dongle", eventhough I believe it has few technological advancements over VST.
VST is the standard plugin format on Mac, and AU is seconday? Did I missed something?
I think a good path might be to ask Sensomusic, Audulus or similar first.
What do you want to ask them?

Help you on getting that standard up to speed?
I would not ask any commercial company for that at a first place. As said - build a community.
Find a coupld of ppl that love writing specs, some that like collecting feedback/managing tasks, some that can implement / submit a patch to open source DAWs to demo it, some that port their plugin to the new format ect pp.

You want them add support for it (as it is) to their product?
It will be kind of a chicken-and-egg problem. Why should Steinberg add it to Cubase if nobody else has it yet and there are no plugins? Why should Apple add it to Logic Pro if nobody else has it? Why should Ableton .. ?
A good reason might be that it has very active github, with lots of other DAW & plugins that support it - but now I'm back on the "build a community" thing.
Whether I can collaborate with them, because they have worked out some of the issues that are related to my idea. So it would make little sense for me to reinvent the wheel.

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BlueprintInc wrote:
Kalamata Kid wrote:Often companies think if it wasn't invented here it not worth much.
Yes and often the ones that propose their ideas to them think they've invented the holy grail ;-) To be honest this whole discussion sounds exactly like that. Too much secret magic. The OP doesn't want to talk about any details but on the other he wants to make it open.
Well as of now I perceive that someone could hijack the idea and put it into commercial software faster than the supposed open source alternative. E.g. Native Instruments. That's one way to kill open source.

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Fluky wrote: Whether I can collaborate with them, because they have worked out some of the issues that are related to my idea. So it would make little sense for me to reinvent the wheel.
Try it, and let us know how it worked out :D

I think that all of the problems VST has are very well known to Steinberg architects.
And I'm also sure they have solutions in place.
The reason why they don't roll it out, is because there are x billions of plugins out that use the old / current version of the API. If they break it, they have 0 plugins.
Look at how many plugins & DAWs still provide VST2. VST3 is there since about 10 years.. time to drop that old shit, no? No! I still have old VST2-only plugins, and if DAW drops support I drop DAW.

So you need to convince them to introduce yet another API .. I think if they feel like introducing another API, they would do so. But they don't need you for that, they have ppl that do audio architectures since 10+ years and know what the struggles are.

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Steinberg architects have solution in place? Me thinks not. You'd think after Vst2 that Vst3 would address its issues. Did that happen? Not really. A big part of devs have not adopted vst3. Did they answer with Vst4? No, that did not happen as well.

Conclusion: as far as Steinberg is concerned, the current status is fine. They can make their host & plugins work, and third parties seem to be able to figure it out as well despite serious shortcomings.

So Flukey, if this is about optimizations of stuff already currently feasible, just to please plugin developers: forget it.
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Contacting them can't do any harm eh?

Just remember to prep your marketing speak.

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1) Why not update the current format rather than invent a new one
2) Old formats can be supported by wrappers, just as VST2 32bit is supported by some 64bit DAWs

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VariKusBrainZ wrote:1) Why not update the current format rather than invent a new one
2) Old formats can be supported by wrappers, just as VST2 32bit is supported by some 64bit DAWs
1) That's of course what ought to be done.

But before that I need to try out the ideas in practice.

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BlueprintInc wrote:
Kalamata Kid wrote:Often companies think if it wasn't invented here it not worth much.
Yes and often the ones that propose their ideas to them think they've invented the holy grail ;-) To be honest this whole discussion sounds exactly like that. Too much secret magic. The OP doesn't want to talk about any details but on the other he wants to make it open.
Yeah, that's my take on this as well. It has all of the earmarks.

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So do you think it would be a good idea to open up the idea?

After all it's not entirely novel, because parts of it are done by other APIs built on top of VST, but I'm not sure whether they exactly nail what I'm looking for.
Last edited by soundmodel on Mon Jul 10, 2017 7:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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I can maybe illustrate it if you think it's a good idea to reveal it, since it's supposed to be a community project anyways.

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