CLAP... thoughts?

[melomood]

It's not real
Say it's not real

[VicDiesel]

they both make horrible technology decisions frequently,

Being involved in a standards body I wonder how you are going guard against doing just that. Yes, an open standard can be forked (or whatever you do with standards) but that will just lead to XKCD'ing. Are you going to form a standards committee with some vendors to make sure that everyone stays on board, and it's not just the two of you doing things that seem reasonable to you?

Just to be clear: I trust you but I'm curious about the principle.

V.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

For the others developers, those who glue to plug-in formats directly, I have permission to post a screenshot which was shared with me by one of these:


CLAP_Limitless.jpg


This is a screenshot made on the same day DMGAudio joined our team. Same day.

Why NI isn't dropping everything to move their development to CLAP, then spitting out other formats is beyond me. They're clearly a company that dug themselves into a huge amount of tech debt, and it's made them less competitive going forward as they've fallen behind on scalable UIs, VST3, Apple Silicon support, etc. CLAP seems like it would be the perfect opportunity for them to modernize their codebase on a truly open platform, get their code organized/standardized, then support everything they need to in the future.

Then again...I guess it's not beyond me. I just think their decision makers don't understand these things. Then again, I don't know what really goes on behind closed doors there and I should probably assume they know things that I don't and they're making the right decisions for the future. I just can't shake the feeling that's not what's actually happening.

But I do now get the pleasure of getting emails from Native Instruments and Izotope every time Plugin Alliance has a sale (which is daily). To date, Soundwide seems like it exists to exploit NI's huge user base to send SPAM on behalf of Izotope and Plugin Alliance. They better figure out how to leverage more than their mailing lists and fast if they want Soundwide to be a success!

Gripe session over.

[zvenx]

Yep cause after three days of release CLAP is now certified as true and tried and an industry standard. It is indeed the second coming.

Surely I hope you are joking....

I would imagine a large company as NI would at least like to evaluate CLAP not just jump into it after three days after release, only one Host in Beta supporting it etc.

rsp

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Yep cause after three days of release CLAP is now certified as true and tried and an industry standard. It is indeed the second coming.

Surely I hope you are joking....

I would imagine a large company as NI would at least like to evaluate CLAP not just jump into it after three days after release, only one Host in Beta supporting it etc.

rsp

I'm not joking. And I understand that CLAP is 3 days old. But what's clear is this:

1. NI is currently in the process of trying to modernize their codebase after years and years of neglect

2. To-date, they clearly haven't been the type of company that plans strategically when it comes to maintaining their codebase - hence all the tech debt they currently find themselves trying to dig out from

3. Even if zero hosts were to support CLAP and it failed as an end-user format, it's clearly built in such a way that you could develop in CLAP and still release VST3, AU, AAX plugins - which would still make it a good candidate for NI un-f*cking the mess they've made over the years

4. Clap may make it easier to develop things like resizable UI's, seems very modern so I'm sure Apple Silicon is certainly doable, and they can spit out VST3 - all things we agree "NI needs to do"

5. I'm sure NI found out about CLAP more than 3 days ago

6. As pointed out, the ambiguities around what Steinberg's licensing does and does not allow for may seriously endanger NKS - a basket which NI currently has a lot of their eggs in

...I just hope wherever NI do land, that they're currently in the process of unifying their codebase in a way that they can maintain across their entire product line. Regardless of whether they adopt CLAP. My fear is that the bean-counters are handing out marching orders to their developers to do the bare minimum to get each individual plugin ready for VST3 and Apple Silicon and maybe resizable GUI's, while avoiding the hard work of standardizing their codebase into a unified framework. That may make business sense if one only considers the short-term, but would be very bad for their long-term prospects.

...as a counter example, Waves has more products, a variety of FX and instruments, and clearly developed and maintained their codebase in such a way that they ported probably hundreds of plugin to Apple silicone all at once. They've got a GUI mess to un-f*ck, but as a company, they seem (from the outside) to have been way more organized and prepared than NI.

[EvilDragon]

CLAP actually doesn't really help an awful much with resizable GUIs. It does have a proper host-plugin communication/API that exactly specifies how resizing the plugin window should be done. This is what VST2 didn't really have, and VST3 improved upon actually.

The brunt of work regarding resizability is not really plugin format related - it's updating all the graphics assets and in case of NI, completely changing the graphical library that is being used to render the GUI, which is a ton of code hacking because GUI definitions are totally incompatible between stuff from 20 years ago and something modern like Qt or whatever. Completely non-trivial stuff.

[zvenx]

Clearly ED could respond to you much better than I can, even as a Clap Evangelist because he knows first hand of the NI state of affairs.

I would say NI is not looking for a new codebase still, they most likely have it already (look at their newer stuff) and slowly moving older instruments and effects to it as best as they could with all the constrains they have, some of which are not just technical.

rsp

[EvilDragon]

Urs mentioned there was communication between CLAP team and NI early on. This is true. NI has been aware of CLAP months ago.

Also NI is absolutely putting a ton of effort in resolving tech debt. They cannot move forward otherwise.

[mystran]

Is it possible to tunnel CLAP through CORBA?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Urs mentioned there was communication between CLAP team and NI early on. This is true. NI has been aware of CLAP months ago.

Also NI is absolutely putting a ton of effort in resolving tech debt. They cannot move forward otherwise.

Again, my hope (regardless of CLAP) is that they actually resolve it in a fundamental way across their product lines. Not just playing whack a mole with a bunch of one off fixes for each plugin. Like settle on a single GUI framework, a single development framework, do the hard work of rebuilding the various products into that unified new approach and set themselves up to be more nimble in the future.

[zvenx]

Urs mentioned there was communication between CLAP team and NI early on. This is true. NI has been aware of CLAP months ago.

Also NI is absolutely putting a ton of effort in resolving tech debt. They cannot move forward otherwise.

Indeed... I didn't think they only just found out about CLAP three days ago.. if no other way, I am sure you would have mentioned it to them, but I would be shocked if NI or any large company who aren't founders of CLAP would plunge head first into it without weeks if not months or years of evaluation of how it does in the 'real' world.
rsp

[zvenx]

Urs mentioned there was communication between CLAP team and NI early on. This is true. NI has been aware of CLAP months ago.

Also NI is absolutely putting a ton of effort in resolving tech debt. They cannot move forward otherwise.

Again, my hope (regardless of CLAP) is that they actually resolve it in a fundamental way across their product lines. Not just playing whack a mole with a bunch of one off fixes for each plugin. Like settle on a single GUI framework, a single development framework, do the hard work of rebuilding the various products into that unified new approach and set themselves up to be more nimble in the future.

I am sure they are..
But in that process, some products will end up being effectively eol for whatever reason... (some people on kvr mention Abysnth for instance where Brian has effectively moved on).
rsp

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I am sure they are..
But in that process, some products will end up being effectively eol for whatever reason... (some people on kvr mention Abysnth for instance where Brian has effectively moved on).
rsp

Yeah, that's understandable. I don't expect they'll update what are effectively legacy products. Sorry if it seems like I'm down on NI, I think the plugin world is better with them, but they've really made a mess for themselves to clean up.

[zvenx]

I am sure they are..
But in that process, some products will end up being effectively eol for whatever reason... (some people on kvr mention Abysnth for instance where Brian has effectively moved on).
rsp

Yeah, that's understandable. I don't expect they'll update what are effectively legacy products. Sorry if it seems like I'm down on NI, I think the plugin world is better with them, but they've really made a mess for themselves to clean up.

I definitely didn't see it that way (that you are down on NI)... I fully understand and feel the frustration, and feel the criticism is valid....I have stopped using some of their products for this very reason.

rsp

[Hink]

there is a lot of interest on this subject, more than one thread about it, a lot to learn, a lot to talk about...but what we dont need is derailment for you statements, petty bickering or tom foolery. To lock thses threads would be tragic, so if you are just here to bicker or be a distraction dont be surprised if your post doesnt last.

TY