CLAP: The New Audio Plug-in Standard (by U-he, Bitwig and others)

[BazJacuzzi]

I'm a software dev (not for audio - I'm not that clever) Koalaboy's post is 100% on the money.

[trackbout]

I still can't get over the fact that the president off the MIDI Association is from Yamaha, and their own plug-in format snubs MIDI off as something best tucked away as something "legacy" that belongs extinct.

It's not just the president of the MIDI Association, it's senior developers at Steinberg responsible for VST3 that actually hold this insane belief. When we were developing v1 of Ripchord, there was a brief moment where it was actually non-viable, because Steinberg had already stopped granting VST2 licenses so our only option was VST3, and VST3 was originally designed, DESIGNED, to have almost no MIDI support.

Eventually they caved to pressure and added those "legacy MIDI" events to VST3, but when I first came across this post from Steinberg I was completely dumbfounded, speechless:

"Hi, your frustration comes from the misunderstanding that you can build MIDI plug-ins with VST. VST describes an audio plugin API. That you could misuse version 2 for building MIDI plug-ins was not intended. You need a MIDI plug-in API which does not exist across hosts."

https://forums.steinberg.net/t/vst3-and ... /201879/16

Anyway, VERY happy to see the amazing progress you all have made with CLAP. It's extremely needed.

[Urs]

I should eventually post my blog post I started writing years ago (but then got sidetracked) about why the concept that abstracting MIDI to "relief developers of the burden of extra work" is actually the other way round: It costs developers more work to implement multiple abstractions.

I think what many developers will love about CLAP is the single event queue. Params, MIDI, Notes, Tempo changes - everything in one queue that the plug-in can iterate through. This is so good. Now one does not need to zip different sources of events and deal with ambiguation when pressing the a hold pedal happens on the same sample as a NoteOff, and vice versa. It shows just how clumsy the concept of abstracting everything and making tidy little calls for every type of thing is. Yes, tidy. - Practical? - No.

[tempsperdu]

Perhaps their sights are longer range (late 2023?) for a proprietary, all-in-one subscription service. Just need to juggle some current offering in the meantime.

I know that very sadly there already were aspirations for NI to become the 'Adobe of Sound', an aspiration not regarded fondly by many, other than yourself. I had hoped that had been put in the refuse bin where many think it belongs, and if they do choose that route, I hope they go under.

The point is, it's easy to accuse a company of being slow or bad in development, but without all the information there's no way to know. It absolutely could be that they don't care as much as you do about something.

The thing is, if you communicate with people and are reasonably straight with them, even if they think something is wrong, or not what they in particular want, they will at least understand it, and maybe even accept it.
NI have developed a habit of promising and not delivering, appearing to listen, but not actually doing so. Last year they did appear to want things to change, were opening up, and seeming to actually communicate with the users. Now the shutters appear to be up big time as they fall rapidly behind even the lowest of expectations. Most users, particularly of Maschine and its attendant ecosystem, have invested a lot in that system and can see how good it could be and can't help but feel cheated and frustrated at the actuality. There's no plus sides that I can see for anyone involved in what is currently happening.

There is one absolute truth though - if a company is not doing something you want or need, don't feel attached to them. Equally, if a company comes through for you, repay that with support.

Direct your money and support where it best gives you value.

Very sadly that does look like the unfortunate answer, support is not a one way street.

[trackbout]

I should eventually post my blog post I started writing years ago (but then got sidetracked) about why the concept that abstracting MIDI to "relief developers of the burden of extra work" is actually the other way round: It costs developers more work to implement multiple abstractions.

I think what many developers will love about CLAP is the single event queue. Params, MIDI, Notes, Tempo changes - everything in one queue that the plug-in can iterate through. This is so good. Now one does not need to zip different sources of events and deal with ambiguation when pressing the a hold pedal happens on the same sample as a NoteOff, and vice versa. It shows just how clumsy the concept of abstracting everything and making tidy little calls for every type of thing is. Yes, tidy. - Practical? - No.

Absolutely makes sense. One of the most common pitfalls I see in programming generally is overly nested data structures. There is a human tendency to want to group similar properties into their own nested objects, but what many devs miss at their own peril is that each new, seemingly harmless grouping of properties, adds complexity to the API. Every other part of the system now needs knowledge of the nesting API in order to access anything. I'm a huge proponent of flat data structures/streams.

Also, would love to read that blog post some day.

[koalaboy]

NI have developed a habit of promising and not delivering, appearing to listen, but not actually doing so. Last year they did appear to want things to change, were opening up, and seeming to actually communicate with the users. Now the shutters appear to be up big time as they fall rapidly behind even the lowest of expectations.

This is, in my experience, something that often happens as companies look for 'growth'. Sales and Marketing expound all sorts of great ideas and direction, often believing that this is where the company is going, but the realities of engineering being a different matter altogether.

I say this, having lived through it time and again. It's not right or good, and typically leaves many people, both within the company and customers, as feeling let down and just leaving.

Unfortunately, the people calling the shots typically walk away with a nice chunk of money to go on and do the same thing again (or just to retire and not 'worry' about the mess).

It's a really unpleasant place to be in for all involved, and for those that stay in the hope and belief that things 'will get better' it can often be a painful ride. Eventually, things may align back with a more rational ending and once again the pieces can be picked up.

Maybe there's hope though:

Soundwide CEO Mark Cattini has proudly spoken of the company’s aims, stating, “Going forward, we’re asking ourselves: ‘What do our community members need to tap into their ultimate creative workflow and how can we help get them there?.’ By first uncovering and understanding our community’s needs, we can map out our goals and move one step closer to the future of sound.”

[ThomasHelzle]

Soundwide CEO Mark Cattini has proudly spoken of the company’s aims, stating, “Going forward, we’re asking ourselves: ‘What do our community members need to tap into their ultimate creative workflow and how can we help get them there?.’ By first uncovering and understanding our community’s needs, we can map out our goals and move one step closer to the future of sound.”

Yeah, but one can read that just as well as: "We come up with what musicians need and what we can sell them to get there" - NI isn't exactly a proponent of open systems, neither is Izo or PA.
So that kind of management hogwash is as meaningless as it can get and mostly meant for shareholders feeling good.
Over the last couple of years NI was going downhill when it comes to innovation (in my personal book) and so far I can't see that change. And soundwide looks more like a kind of retirement fund for old companies to me, doing their same old, same old.

But hey, "Surprise me" as the critique in Ratatuille said

For the time being, I prefer the CLAP side of things

[koalaboy]

100%.

For me, Komplete 14 and what has actually changed, will be the best indicator. If it's just much more 'content packs' and third-party samples and/or more subscription-based content as others have mentioned, it will demonstrate that they're much other than churning out 'numbers'.

I always hold out hope for change, but completely agree that CLAP and the potential for innovation by more progressive companies is far more valuable and worth my time/money.

[tempsperdu]

It's a really unpleasant place to be in for all involved, and for those that stay in the hope and belief that things 'will get better' it can often be a painful ride. Eventually, things may align back with a more rational ending and once again the pieces can be picked up.

Nearly everywhere I've worked has suffered from the same lack of communication and overall understanding. Departments don't liaise with each other, so the people working there understand how it might affect elsewhere. Usually there's no one with any knowledge or understanding of the whole thing to oversee, instruct, communicate and a very expensive counterproductive mess results that in no way properly utilises the skill sets of those that have them.
NI has some very passionate users, more than willing to try and turn the relationship into a symbiotic one, but repeatedly they snub this to no good end.
So everyone loses and the mess gets messier. Where's the sense in that?

Maybe there's hope though:

Soundwide CEO Mark Cattini has proudly spoken of the company’s aims, stating, “Going forward, we’re asking ourselves: ‘What do our community members need to tap into their ultimate creative workflow and how can we help get them there?.’ By first uncovering and understanding our community’s needs, we can map out our goals and move one step closer to the future of sound.”

Great!, except there is so far zero indication of that, quite the opposite. To get to the 'future of sound' (guffaw), they'd have to drag it kicking and screaming out of the twentieth century first and learn how to listen.

[koalaboy]

This all just reminds me why I should go and work for a smaller company again

[LKBorg]

Regarding the slowness of NI:

they still haven’t adapted to HiRez screens and making their plugins scalable, especially not their big master suites like Komplete etc.

And we have HiRez displays for how long?! Even free plugins manage to give you a fully scalable UI these days. So that’s very disappointing that NI is unable to manage even this simple task

[EvilDragon]

We've been through that a page or so ago. They're not "unable to manage". They have "a ton of tech debt to handle". Resolving this sort of thing is never a fast process.

It is NOT a simple task, and if you really think that, you have no idea how development works in practice, and what sort of terrible nasty things can happen in like 20 years.

[Hadrondrift]

The pace of the developments at NI is glacial for such a big organisation.

"Glacial"—what a fantastic word choice!

Yup, great word, but the comparison is somewhat misleading, because glaciers have been melting faster recently.

I am a software developer myself (business software) and I know all too well the problems that arise when you have to work with a code base that is 20 or more years old. But some hurdles a company has to overcome in a reasonably timely manner, otherwise it will no longer be competitive. I somehow have the feeling that the human and time resources are not distributed far-sightedly enough by the management of NI. HiDPI is extremely important. Communication is extremely important nowadays. More important than more alliances with more companies.

In this sense, I really wish that CLAP will be a success story. In any case, there is no need to worry about the communication and ethusiasm of those involved.

[bM3w]

We've been through that a page or so ago. They're not "unable to manage". They have "a ton of tech debt to handle". Resolving this sort of thing is never a fast process.

It is NOT a simple task, and if you really think that, you have no idea how development works in practice, and what sort of terrible nasty things can happen in like 20 years.

yaaaawn - and for how many years have you been repeating this same old story? It's funny how I was mostly disconnected with kvr over the past couple of years and now coming back to check on CLAP just to see the same old BS from the same people again and again.

On another note: I congratulate Bitwig and u-he for CLAP. I've been playing around with my updated CLAP version of ACE and man, it just works and feels super snappy. Excellent job! Now back to hiding from kvr...

[EvilDragon]

It's not a story, it's facts. But nevermind.