Audio Plugins For Android

The AAP Project has released AAP: Audio Plugin For Android, version 1.0 Preview, as a plugin ecosystem that contains the API, set of libraries, open source plugin ports from desktop, and "UAPMD" host sequencer.

Android lacks commonly used audio plugin format. On Windows and other desktops, VSTs are popular. On Mac and iOS (including iPadOS) there is AudioUnit. On Linux LV2 is used, as well as VST2 (or compatibility) and VST3.

There is no such thing for Android. Audio Plugins For Android (AAP) is to fill this gap.

AAP aims to provide an inclusive standard for audio plugin, adopted to Android applications ecosystem. The license is permissive (MIT). It is designed to be usable like other specific audio plugin formats like VST3, LV2, CLAP, and so on, as long as their features are supported in AAP. Note that those desktop formats are not designed to work on Android - AAP is more like AudioUnit v3 on iOS.

AAP version 1.0 Preview comes with a handful of components and packages that tries to prove it is useful and makes sense:

- LV2 bridge: while AAP itself does not come up with stable API that developers find comfortable to develop with, it provides LV2 plugin bridge (without GUI support).
- JUCE modules: similar to 'aap-lv2', AAP comes with JUCE modules so that any JUCE plugin developers can write code in JUCE manner, and only have to make it work with Android. 'aap-juce' also provides hosting implementation too.
- Plugin ports from desktop: AAP comes with a handful of open source LV2 and JUCE plugin ports, such as MDA-LV2, Dexed, Surge XT, and airwindows. AAP has 10+ up-to-date ports, and many of those are up at Google Play Store under the developer's profile.
- UAPMD: a host/sequencer: the developer also released a cross-platform host sequencer "UAPMD", which supports VST3/AU/LV2/CLAP on desktop, AAP on Android, AUv3 on iOS, and WebCLAP on the browsers.
- CLAP hosting helper: for those who want to write.

AAP (Core) itself is an open source project. You can find more details at: https://github.com/atsushieno/aap-core