# CLAP a new plugin format



## Pier (Dec 17, 2021)

I don't know in which subforum to put this... but there's a new open source plugin format being worked on by U-He, Bitwig, and others called CLAP.

Urs from U-He wrote an introduction here:









KVR Forum: About CLAP - u-he Forum


KVR Audio Forum - About CLAP - u-he Forum




www.kvraudio.com


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## Nando Florestan (Dec 17, 2021)

That sounds brilliant! High time, too!


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## davidnaroth (Dec 17, 2021)

Yeah everything about this sounds fantastic, I hope it does get enough momentum


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## Mike Greene (Dec 17, 2021)

Love this, and having Urs involved is a massive credibility boost.


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## d.healey (Dec 17, 2021)

What does this have that LV2 doesn't (or couldn't)?


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## RogiervG (Dec 17, 2021)

d.healey said:


> What does this have that LV2 doesn't (or couldn't)?


Urs, bigwig involvement (marketing/reference boost)


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## d.healey (Dec 17, 2021)

RogiervG said:


> Urs, bigwig involvement (marketing/reference boost)


Sure, but why couldn't they just continue development of LV2? it's already supported by several DAWs, it's an open format.


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## Bee_Abney (Dec 17, 2021)

d.healey said:


> What does this have that LV2 doesn't (or couldn't)?


That's a good question. Unless you are able to delve into the programming (which is way beyond me) it will be hard to get any kind of answer to that. Hopefully it is a programming-based reason. I suppose it could be something else (personalities, control or influence, and so on). 

It's a pretty exciting prospect to have both Bitwig and U-he taking this one seriously. 

I would have preferred a less disease-inflected name...


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## davidnaroth (Dec 17, 2021)

@d.healey love that comic lol


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## Pier (Dec 17, 2021)

d.healey said:


> What does this have that LV2 doesn't (or couldn't)?


Urs mentions that U-He tried to implement LV2 support and abandoned the effort (although he doesn't really mention why).

Also, all other plugin formats can be wrapped from a CLAP implementation (including LV2).


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## davidnaroth (Dec 17, 2021)

FUTURE: An announcement from all major DAWs

​


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## d.healey (Dec 17, 2021)

Pier said:


> all other plugin formats can be wrapped from a CLAP implementation


If that includes AAX AVID will not be happy


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## Pier (Dec 17, 2021)

d.healey said:


> If that includes AAX PACE will not be happy


Why do you say that? It's because PACE owns JUCE?

Here's the post where Urs talks about this although he doesn't mention AAX specifically.









KVR Forum: About CLAP - Page 6 - u-he Forum


KVR Audio Forum - About CLAP - Page 6 - u-he Forum




www.kvraudio.com





Another interesting point he mentions is that hosts could just implement CLAP internally and use adapters to support any other format (VST, AU, etc).


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## d.healey (Dec 17, 2021)

Pier said:


> Why do you say that?


Oops, I meant AVID not PACE.



Pier said:


> Another interesting point he mentions is that hosts could just implement CLAP internally and use adapters to support any other format (VST, AU, etc).


But all hosts already support the other formats


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## Pier (Dec 17, 2021)

d.healey said:


> But all hosts already support the other formats


Trust me, all devs are happy to delete code! 😂


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## d.healey (Dec 17, 2021)

Pier said:


> Trust me, all devs are happy to delete code!


In order to add new (unproven) code to support a new plugin format?


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## RogiervG (Dec 17, 2021)

d.healey said:


> Sure, but why couldn't they just continue development of LV2? it's already supported by several DAWs, it's an open format.


Human nature?


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## Pier (Dec 17, 2021)

d.healey said:


> In order to add new (unproven) code to support a new plugin format?


In that case no, obviously.

OTOH being able to code for a single plugin API is a pretty strong argument for investing into CLAP. Probably the biggest argument after being open source from a dev perspective.


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## el-bo (Dec 17, 2021)




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## timbit2006 (Dec 17, 2021)

el-bo said:


>


What is a bad marketing decision?


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## d.healey (Dec 17, 2021)

Pier said:


> Probably the biggest argument after being open source


Have they said what license they are using? VST3 is GPL and LV2 is ISC.


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## Pier (Dec 17, 2021)

d.healey said:


> Have they said what license they are using? VST3 is GPL and LV2 is ISC.


MIT









clap/LICENSE at main · free-audio/clap


Audio Plugin API. Contribute to free-audio/clap development by creating an account on GitHub.




github.com


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## Nico5 (Dec 17, 2021)

mmmhhh - I would have thought that Surround sound support would be more important going into 2022. 

I'd hate to loose surround sound support below what I currently take for granted, even when my final output (currently still) is stereo. I use surround sound in Cubase as a multi-channel recording mechanism, where I choose what to do with the channels much later in the production/mixing process. (A bit akin to orchestral library mic positions, but in my case it's recording from my guitar amplifier and pedal-board setup).

And multi-channel, rather than separate stereo channels, because I can do some audio manipulations efficiently in a Cubase multi-channel track, but not simultaneously in multiple tracks. 

And if surround sound is a thing for me, how much more for the film composers so richly represented here?

And not fully supporting surround, also makes the idea of a single CLAP wrapper around VST3 and AU somewhat more questionable to me. So the premise of saving work for developers may or may not really be there?

I'm also quite surprised that Urs didn't have a better understanding from his developers what made them give up on LV2.

I hope that some of these decisions and communications are just growing pains, because I find a wide open cross platform plugin standard preferable to walled gardens. Midi is great because it's free and universal and it has done incredible things for making music.


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## Dirtgrain (Dec 17, 2021)

Nico5 said:


> I'm also quite surprised that Urs didn't have a better understanding from his developers what made them give up on LV2.


It seemed he was being polite/diplomatic. He does not like to throw dirt on others in the industry from what I've read from him.


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## Nico5 (Dec 17, 2021)

Dirtgrain said:


> It seemed he was being polite/diplomatic. He does not like to throw dirt on others in the industry from what I've read from him.


yes, that's most certainly possible - maybe he hopes that someone else will spell out the reasons why his company and the other project participants came to that conclusion. It definitely seems to be a pretty reasonable question from my (albeit limited) understanding of what the LV2 project is about. 

On the other hand, if you believe that actions speak louder than words, then arguably this entire project is throwing a large heap of dirt on all of the incumbents .


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## Faruh Al-Baghdadi (Dec 18, 2021)

I wonder how many years it's gonna take to devs to move all their plugins into this new format.
ARA, for example, is yet to be used by many developers despite its advantages(even though this format is not as open as CLAP).


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## dts_marin (Dec 20, 2021)

why they didn't call it SLAP? Slap in the face of Steinberg and AVID.


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## Bee_Abney (Dec 20, 2021)

dts_marin said:


> why they didn't call it SLAP? Slap in the face of Steinberg and AVID.


They want it to be contagious and sexy?


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## Megreen (Dec 20, 2021)

Cool stuff. Urs found a new excuse not to work on Zebra 3.


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## Pier (Dec 20, 2021)

Megreen said:


> Cool stuff. Urs found a new excuse not to work on Zebra 3.


Urs isn't personally working on it though:



> I'm really not that much involved in the development side... I'm more involved with bringing people together and telling them about CLAP. So I know about the bigger picture, but I don't know all the particular little things











KVR Forum: About CLAP - Page 16 - u-he Forum


KVR Audio Forum - About CLAP - Page 16 - u-he Forum




www.kvraudio.com


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## EvilDragon (Dec 20, 2021)

d.healey said:


> What does this have that LV2 doesn't (or couldn't)?



Better governance, simpler implementation, actual chance of success on non-Linux platforms (yeah Reaper supports LV2, ask Mac and Windows Reaper users how many LV2 plugins they actually use).

Also, I am not sure if LV2 supports polyphonic modulation, non-destructive automation... There could probably be an extension written for it since LV2 is extensible as well, but who's gonna bother?


That said, this article gives a good low-down..


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## Trensharo (Dec 24, 2021)

liquidlino said:


> Too true. I work in IT. And this is exactly what happens. Unless you get a significant percentage of the market key participants to join the same forum and agree a standard together, you're not creating a standard, you're just creating yet another specification.


This is the outcome I expect.


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## Nando Florestan (Dec 24, 2021)

Trensharo said:


> This is the outcome I expect.


You know, I just read an awesome quote, it went "let's reserve our pessimism for better times". It fits, times are terrible right now for standards and freedom in the audio software industry -- something like CLAP is sorely needed.


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 24, 2021)

My impression about LV2 is that too many cooks in the kitchen happened with that one..all these people piped in and they tried to make it the "ultimate" format, which in my view lended itself to over-engineering and complexity. Its still out there, anyone is welcome to use LV2 or develop for it if they don't want to try CLAP. Let the best one win! Myself when I tried to use some sample LV2 plugins KushView Element, they just crashed all the time and I gave up.

My perception of CLAP is that they intentionally have kept public discussion to a minimum to avoid feature creep. The people working on it have been around, they know what is needed and they are specifically avoiding complexity and over-engineering as far as I can see. it will have a few nice additions that will be a step up from previous well known plugin formats such as VST, AU, AAX....but still kept relatively simple...such that some people were allegedly able to convert some of their existing projects in the matter of a day...so they said...with "eye popping" performance results due to multi-threaded handling.

I am very much in favor of CLAP, I really hope it takes off. LV2 was the linux-head attempt that failed and will never take off in my view, but CLAP has a decent chance of doing so...and finally we can maybe have a plugin format that is truly independent of Steinberg or Apple or Avid... This is actually really badly needed. I really hope it succeeds.


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## Trensharo (Dec 24, 2021)

Nando Florestan said:


> You know, I just read an awesome quote, it went "let's reserve our pessimism for better times". It fits, times are terrible right now for standards and freedom in the audio software industry -- something like CLAP is sorely needed.


When has there ever not been a saturation of competing "standards?"

Even then, the quality of a specific implementation is always in question - even for products that are standardized.

The difference in the quality of support for the plug-in formats we have right now is a clear demonstration of that. Not just for Audio Plug-ins, but also for things like OpenFX Video Plug-ins and other things.

Developing a hypothetically better standard does not mean that the support for that standard in DAW, or the quality of the plug-ins developed on it will be practically any better than what we already have.

That is also the risk DAW developers have to take. What if the CLAP supports ends up worse than VST2/3 support, and what if the plug-ins developed on that platform end up buggier and glitchier than VST2/3 plugins developed under that system.

Saying this will not be the case is a massive assumption. No one can answer that question. With VST, at least it is a known entity, and a fairly complete - production ready - one at that.


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## Nando Florestan (Dec 24, 2021)

You are aware that VST2 plugins can no longer be legally produced by anyone new, aren't you?








Designing Audio Effect Plugins in C++


Designing Audio Effect Plugins in C++ presents everything you need to know about digital signal processing in an accessible way. Not just another theory-heavy digital signal processing book, nor another dull build-a-generic-database programming book, this book includes fully worked, downloadable...



books.google.pl


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## creativeforge (Dec 24, 2021)

Nando Florestan said:


> You are aware that VST2 plugins can no longer be legally produced by anyone new, aren't you?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Could you summarize what you mean by this? You clearly concluded this from reading a bunch of stuff. It would help (me) understand if you could simply state what you know in short form.

Thanks!


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## Nando Florestan (Dec 25, 2021)

You seem to think competing standards is the issue. The problem in the audio industry is that it is led by a company that has the power to kill old standards and push new ones when it wants to.








Can I create VST 2 support for host application? (VST 3 license)


I understand your points but after talking internally with our lawyers it is not possible to license a VST2 for host too for new development, sorry. In 2013 Steinberg announced the end of the VST2 SDK release. Five years later, in October 2018, Steinberg no longer makes the VST2 SDK available...




 forums.steinberg.net




The link above shows an incredibly unfair situation created by that problem.

Standards must be free of patents and copyright, otherwise your work can be held hostage. If you disagree with the previous sentence, please stop making me explain things to you -- no longer interested.


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 25, 2021)

creativeforge said:


> Could you summarize what you mean by this? You clearly concluded this from reading a bunch of stuff. It would help (me) understand if you could simply state what you know in short form.



Steinberg requires a signed license agreement in order to distribute any vst host or plugin. It no longer allows anyone to obtain a vst2 license if they didn’t have one already. That’s the only way existing vendors are able to continue distributing vst2 hosts and plugins. New developers cannot obtain this license at all now.

The license for vst3 is even more restrictive and actually provides an easier way in the future for Steinberg to pull the rug out from everyone at their own whim if and when they decide to. Based on Steinberg’s own actions in the past and present there is very justified reason to be concerned about that possibility. 

I guess that if they had done the original vst2 license as restrictively as vst3 then they already would have completely forced everyone to change to vst3 by now.

Steinberg has been a very self interested party with regards to vst tech and and as such it is not a good standard for the rest of the industry to become dependent on for reasons having nothing to do with the actual tech.

But on top of that, the vst3 tech actually does have numerous technical problems which Steinberg has refused to acknowledge or address for ten years. It serves their purpose for cubase and that’s all they really care about.


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## creativeforge (Dec 25, 2021)

Dewdman42 said:


> Steinberg requires a signed license agreement in order to distribute any vst host or plugin. It no longer allows anyone to obtain a vst2 license if they didn’t have one already. That’s the only way existing vendors are able to continue distributing vst2 hosts and plugins. New developers cannot obtain this license at all now.
> 
> The license for vst3 is even more restrictive and actually provides an easier way in the future for Steinberg to pull the rug out from everyone at their own whim if and when they decide to. Based on Steinberg’s own actions in the past and present there is very justified reason to be concerned about that possibility.
> 
> ...


Thank you, I really appreciate your explaining it this way. 

So Steinberg owns the patents to VST but there are other formats for Mac, yes? Could they be ported to PC? I'm not familiar with Mac technology.


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## Dewdman42 (Dec 25, 2021)

I’m not aware of any patents for vst tech. In the case of vst2 there is literally a single header file that is copy righted. There is some open debate about whether someone could legally reverse engineer that header file and develop vst2 plugins without steinberg’s consent. The header file in question does not have anything complicated or patentable. It’s mostly just a list of opcodes. There are many threads on the internet debating this point. But it would not be fun to be tangled in a lawsuit with Steinberg over such a thing so most people just avoid that and follow whatever demand Steinberg has laid down.


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## EvilDragon (Dec 26, 2021)

There are no patents on VST. Steinberg owns the IP.



Dewdman42 said:


> There is some open debate about whether someone could legally reverse engineer that header file and develop vst2 plugins without steinberg’s consent.



Clean room reverse engineering would work out. ABIs cannot be copyrighted AFAIK. But yes it could be very expensive 2-3 years in court trying to defend that claim...


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## Nando Florestan (Dec 30, 2021)




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## d.healey (Dec 30, 2021)

Vst3 is GNU GPL dual licensed, of course this is no good for most developers who want to make proprietary plugins, but it works for me.


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## José Herring (May 12, 2022)

Do you think Clap will catch on? Worth learning the format? In June I'm going to start taking my first foray into learning how to program. Curious what the state of VST 3 vs. Clap will be in the future.


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## gsilbers (May 12, 2022)

Im guessing Apple the way they normally behave is finding a “tech reasons” for Logic Pro to not approve AU that are wrapped or whatever scenario Apple spec is not being used as the standard. 


Also, as for the surround mode issue mentioned earlier in the thread.
the industry is moving away from surround and into atmos/immersive.

But the time this plug-in standard makes out most likely most deliveries to post will be done in atmos/etc type format.


And lastly. The industry just made a big change with Fransisco partners creating soundwide, who also owns juce. I wonder what does that mean in this context. If juce will adapt it. Etc.
And its been one year. I haven’t hear much about clap. 
Its a Risky move if the biggest daw guys don’t adopt it. That’s steinberg, Apple and avid who all want their plug-in to be the standard and get some of that back end dough.


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## KEM (May 12, 2022)

José Herring said:


> Do you think Clap will catch on? Worth learning the format? In June I'm going to start taking my first foray into learning how to program. Curious what the state of VST 3 vs. Clap will be in the future.



My guess is no


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## Pier (May 12, 2022)

José Herring said:


> Do you think Clap will catch on? Worth learning the format? In June I'm going to start taking my first foray into learning how to program. Curious what the state of VST 3 vs. Clap will be in the future.


If you're just starting out, don't worry about plugin formats.

Get something like JUCE that will abstract all this for you and just focus on the DSP and the UI which are hard enough.

Also I'd be very surprised if JUCE didn't support Clap in the future so it should be just an extra compile target.

As for whether Clap will have wide adoption... Who knows. AFAIK Cockos (Reaper) and Bitwig are on board. Ableton and Presonus will probably get on board too. I think Apple will remain AU only, and Steinberg will become VST3 only.


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## cedricm (May 12, 2022)

Maybe for basic plugins. 
I would be surprised that JUCE supports all of CLAP's advanced features from day one.


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## ReleaseCandidate (May 12, 2022)

José Herring said:


> Do you think Clap will catch on?


Apple won't use it. Steinberg won't use it. And Avid... 
Ableton will maybe support it in the distant future (they still have no ARA), if enough plugins exist. As they always are, ahem, conservative with their feature set. 

So, there is not much incentive for plugin developers to make CLAP only plugins, which means that they can't use CLAP's special features which are not supported by the other APIs. 

This isn't ARA, which had Melodyne - which just about anybody has to use and is a PITA as 'normal' plugin. The current plugin APIs are 'good enough'. 

Btw Mixbus (an Ardour clone) has LV2 support on all 3 plattforms, Harrison even sells LV2 plugins for this DAW and any pther LV2 host








Mixbus Plugins - Music Recording Software for Audio Post Production


Artistic Effects for your Instruments and Vocals. Tools to Clean Your Tracks. Tools to Maximize Your Performance while Mastering your Mix.




harrisonconsoles.com


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## d.healey (May 13, 2022)

José Herring said:


> Do you think Clap will catch on? Worth learning the format? In June I'm going to start taking my first foray into learning how to program. Curious what the state of VST 3 vs. Clap will be in the future.


Learn JUCE, if the CLAP is contagious enough then JUCE will get an exporter for it.


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## Dewdman42 (May 13, 2022)

José Herring said:


> Do you think Clap will catch on? Worth learning the format? In June I'm going to start taking my first foray into learning how to program. Curious what the state of VST 3 vs. Clap will be in the future.


I would also recommend JUCE as its and easier learning curve starting out. Nobody knows the future of VST3, CLAP, etc... its a controversial topic. But anyway, CLAP vs VST is only a small part of the programming you have to learn... I would not recommend starting out with CLAP. That is still in its infancy. I am hoping for CLAP to succeed, because of licensing issues more than anything, but nobody knows if it will yet, and the resources available to learn it are nearly zero. JUCE is going to be the easiest way to get your feet wet learning how to dev plugins. I would start there. 

By the way there is already a fork of JUCE happening where its being adapted for CLAP. So if CLAP gains enough host support, I'm pretty sure it will end up being supported officially by JUCE also, and even if it doesn't happen officially, there will probably be a way to crank out a CLAP plugin from your JUCE project one way or another. Don't over analyze it. Start out with JUCE and learn for now.


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## d.healey (May 13, 2022)

José Herring said:


> In June I'm going to start taking my first foray into learning how to program. Curious what the state of VST 3 vs. Clap will be in the future.


What kind of plugins do you want to make (fx, instruments, etc)?


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## Bee_Abney (May 13, 2022)

José Herring said:


> Do you think Clap will catch on? Worth learning the format? In June I'm going to start taking my first foray into learning how to program. Curious what the state of VST 3 vs. Clap will be in the future.



I wish you every success with that!


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## EvilDragon (May 13, 2022)

ReleaseCandidate said:


> Apple won't use it. Steinberg won't use it. And Avid...


The beauty of it is: they don't _have_ to. Wrappers towards other plugin formats will exist, and the main point behind this all is that developers can develop their plugins without being encumbered with licensing issues that might change whenever Steinberg feels like it.



gsilbers said:


> And its been one year. I haven’t hear much about clap.


Well, CLAP is not even v1.0 yet, so a number of things are still moving targets. Developing a good and sane API takes time (emphasis on _sane_ - VST3 is not).


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## Bee_Abney (May 13, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> The beauty of it is: they don't _have_ to. Wrappers towards other plugin formats will exist, and the main point behind this all is that developers can develop their plugins without being encumbered with licensing issues that might change whenever Steinberg feels like it.
> 
> 
> Well, CLAP is not even v1.0 yet, so a number of things are still moving targets. Developing a good and sane API takes time (emphasis on _sane_ - VST3 is not).


Poor old VST3. No-one loves it.


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## EvilDragon (May 13, 2022)

There's not much to love in that overengineered madness, really...


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## vallisoftware (May 13, 2022)

Some one has already mention that CLAP is around for licensing issues with Steinberg.
This has nothing to do with Apple.

CLAP won't survive for Audio Units because they already have AudioKit.

JUCE has to dumb down to support across all platforms.
The minute you use something specific to Audio Units V3, VST3, etc... you defeat the purpose of using JUCE.

And at some point, for optimization, you're going to put in Assembly code. That did kill NI Massive in regards to porting to the ARM since Massive requires a AVX Compatible Processor,


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## Superabbit (May 19, 2022)

IMO, any new plug-in format/specification would have to include a solid implementation of features that would allow it to perform better than the currently available formats. Stuff like multithreading, crash protection (especially that), kernel sharing, memory sharing, a silence-detecting idle state that actually works, inter-plug-in communication (not just between plug-ins from a single manufacturer), standards for MIDI control, delay compensation, better sharing of data with the host, built-in metering, intersample clip protection, etc., whatever.

Having a new format just for the sake of industry politics is unlikely to succeed because only people like us care about that. Most of the DAW world just wants their rig to work, and give little or no thought to "breaking the stranglehold that Steinberg has on plug-in development" or whatever.

Steinberg tried to sell VST3, the "New Coke" of plug-in specs as having new swoopy features, like the detection of silence or stopped transport unloading the plug-in from memory. But the problem is that to this day, nearly nobody is taking advantage of that feature. Meldaproduction is the only plug-in developer with a silence/sleep function and I think he coded it independently of the VST3 API. Also sidechaining and UI resizing, which....many plug-in developers had been doing for years within VST2.

Any new format _must_ have an incentive for uptake. The problem with sharing code between different formats is that the plug-in ends up being coded for the lowest common denominator spec, feature-wise. And so they wind up not taking advantage of the newer spec's features. Waves is the only company I can think of that advertises that their VST3 plug-ins have any of the new features, and the one they're using is sidechaining (which they had had for years in their VST2 plug-ins).

But if they have the ability to not crash the host as often, due to memory and execution protection, or use fewer resources, due to sharing them or streamlining them, or are faster due to multithreading, _and devs take advantage of those things_, then we might possibly see some uptake. But only then. Anything a company does has to be so that it will make more money (usually by selling more of their product). If CLAP can make them money, then they'll do it. And that's money in the short term, because a lot of companies have to focus on paying the bills NOW, not 3 years from now when being freed of Steinberg's yoke allows them to flourish.

Look at ARA as an example. The only thing I know of that takes advantage of it is Melodyne, and since I don't care about Melodyne and its golden turds, I don't care whether my DAW supports it or not (Cakewalk, which does, BTW).

I would love love love to see a new standard independent of Steinberg, and one that works better than VST/AAX/AU/DXi. But to get that, there has to be an incentive for uptake, both for the consumer and the developer.


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## José Herring (May 19, 2022)

d.healey said:


> What kind of plugins do you want to make (fx, instruments, etc)?


I have ideas for instruments really. I do have some idea for FX but that would be more out of my wheel house artistically. 
Mostly though I just want to learn more about how things work under the hood as well. I will learn first and then figure out how to apply it. But, 90% of my software ideas fall under the heading of instruments.


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## d.healey (May 19, 2022)

José Herring said:


> I have ideas for instruments really. I do have some idea for FX but that would be more out of my wheel house artistically.
> Mostly though I just want to learn more about how things work under the hood as well. I will learn first and then figure out how to apply it. But, 90% of my software ideas fall under the heading of instruments.


I recommend you start with HISE. It's built with JUCE and if you find you are hitting limitations you can bring in additional features from JUCE.


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## José Herring (May 19, 2022)

d.healey said:


> I recommend you start with HISE. It's built with JUCE and if you find you are hitting limitations you can bring in additional features from JUCE.


Right, but don't you think that I should learn a bit about how to program first? The last time I tried programming I was 15 and taught myself Basic. So, I should maybe get a little bit of a grounding in programming, right?


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## Bee_Abney (May 19, 2022)

José Herring said:


> Right, but don't you think that I should learn a bit about how to program first? The last time I tried programming I was 15 and taught myself Basic. So, I should maybe get a little bit of a grounding in programming, right?


Ah, sweet, sweet BASIC! The last time I tried programming was for a school project in BASIC. It was also the first time. So I'm not fit to advise on this point.

If I were creating plugin instruments, I would be looking for a way that involved the least amount of coding in text, and the greatest amount of interaction with the code through visual interfaces. At least for a year or so.


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## d.healey (May 20, 2022)

José Herring said:


> Right, but don't you think that I should learn a bit about how to program first? The last time I tried programming I was 15 and taught myself Basic. So, I should maybe get a little bit of a grounding in programming, right?


You can get your grounding in HISE.


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## mobiuscog (Jun 15, 2022)

Official launch is today: https://u-he.com/community/clap/


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## d.healey (Jun 15, 2022)

This will help adoption I think - https://github.com/free-audio/clap-juce-extensions/


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## Pier (Jun 15, 2022)

I love CLAP and the last thing I want is to be a party pooper but...

It seems the biggest practical benefits are about modulation. Which, to be fair, is mostly a Bitwig thing today.

Live has modulations too (via M4L I believe) but nowhere near as integrated as in Bitwig. Who knows, maybe Ableton now will add proper modulation with the argument that they want to support CLAP (and not copy Bitwig).

Other DAWs don't care much about modulation, which kinda makes sense. Bitwig and Live are modular like sound design environments. Would people use modulations in Cubase etc without having instrument and effects racks? Or rather... would it make sense for Steinberg, Presonus, Apple, etc, to invest in implementing CLAP and modulations? I don't know.

If anything, this makes the argument of being able to load Bitwig (with modulators etc) as a plugin host in other DAWs, stronger than ever.


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## Trash Panda (Jun 15, 2022)

So if a plugin was made in CLAP format specifically for the currently most popular subgenre of hip hop, would that plugin be a...CLAP...TRAP?

Get it, Claptrap? Like the character in...I'll see myself out.


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## mobiuscog (Jun 15, 2022)

Pier said:


> It seems the biggest practical benefits are about modulation. Which, to be fair, is mostly a Bitwig thing today.


Don't forget no longer being beholden to Steinberg for a 'license'.

CLAP has so much potential through extensions also, and a lot more CV for modular. For me, it's about more freedom and potential.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 15, 2022)

Pier said:


> Or rather... would it make sense for Steinberg, Presonus, Apple, etc, to invest in implementing CLAP and modulations? I don't know.


Well if you didn't catch, Presonus and AVID are in the list of companies evaluating (AVID being the most surprising one to me, next to Epic Megagames). This is pretty huge. And Image-Line of course, too. They're big on modulation as well. Reaper is also a no-brainer.

Will it make sense for Steiny and Apple? Only time will tell.


Epic Megagames also evaluated VST3 and laughed it off after reading the license. And they're now in talks with other game developers and are pushing to make CLAP the de facto audio plugin standard across all game engines. Nobody really likes Wwise!


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## zvenx (Jun 15, 2022)

mobiuscog said:


> Don't forget no longer being beholden to Steinberg for a 'license'.
> 
> .....


I am always 'fascinated' by this argument.
Commercial developers who are ok with their users having to follow a EULA seem somehow not to want to beholden to SB's license.
At least SB's vst3 license is free.
rsp


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## Pier (Jun 15, 2022)

mobiuscog said:


> Don't forget no longer being beholden to Steinberg for a 'license'.


Yeah there are many benefits for plugin developers, which will eventually waterfall down to the end user, but it's not immediate. And if DAW/host developers don't implement it, it will be kinda useless.



EvilDragon said:


> Will it make sense for Steiny and Apple? Only time will tell.


Honestly... I think Steinberg would be happy to let VST go. One less problem to care about 

Time will tell indeed.



EvilDragon said:


> Nobody really likes Wwise!


That's a good point. Although you will have to admit, realtime audio for games is a niche thing at best.


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## zvenx (Jun 15, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Well if you didn't catch, Presonus and AVID are in the list of companies evaluating (AVID being the most surprising one to me, ......


yeah that was the only surprise for me today.. that Avid is considering... (I assume what that means).
rsp


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## zvenx (Jun 15, 2022)

Pier said:


> .....
> 
> Honestly... I think Steinberg would be happy to let VST go. One less problem to care about
> 
> ....


This is based on?
It is an incorrect assumption. SB is actually quite happy with VST and its progress and now that vst2 is no longer... they can do more stuff with vst3 at least in Cubendo.
rsp


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## Pier (Jun 15, 2022)

zvenx said:


> This is based on?
> It is an incorrect assumption. SB is actually quite happy with VST and its progress and now that vst2 is no longer... they can do more stuff with vst3 at least in Cubendo.
> rsp


Just my personal opinion. No official info or anything.

But as someone who has been in software for 20 years, I'd be happy to offload some work to someone else 

(assuming CLAP is better than VST3 of course)


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## zvenx (Jun 15, 2022)

I beta test for SB.
They are happy with vst3, and now that they wouldn't have to make sure Cubendo is still compatible with vst2, they can let vst3 soar... (not saying it will end up better than CLAP, I have no idea), but there are technical reasons why Cubendo two or so years from now will not be vst2 compatible, and it isn't just to make everyone's lives miserable. 

rsp


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## d.healey (Jun 15, 2022)

mobiuscog said:


> Don't forget no longer being beholden to Steinberg for a 'license'.


You're not if you release a VST3 under the GNU GPL or you could use the LV2 format.


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## mobiuscog (Jun 15, 2022)

d.healey said:


> You're not if you release a VST3 under the GNU GPL or you could use the LV2 format.


Yes, but GPL3 rules out anything commercial, and LV2 rules out most non-Linux DAWs.


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## d.healey (Jun 15, 2022)

mobiuscog said:


> GPL3 rules out anything commercial


It rules out anything proprietary. Commercial use is fine.


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## mobiuscog (Jun 15, 2022)

d.healey said:


> It rules out anything proprietary. Commercial use is fine.


Apologies, my wording was lax, and you are correct.

For most plugin authors though, it will rule out commercial use.


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## Pier (Jun 15, 2022)

d.healey said:


> It rules out anything proprietary. Commercial use is fine.


Just to confirm, you mean releasing a proprietary plugin format using the VST3 codebase, right?


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## EvilDragon (Jun 15, 2022)

No, proprietary DSP. If you use VST3 under GPL3 license, you also need to provide all the source code alongside.

Say you're a plugin developer and you found a neat DSP trick nobody else did and you want to market it and profit from it. You can't this with VST3 under GPL3. Everyone can see what you did in the source code that GPL3 obliges you to provide.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 15, 2022)

I'm super excited about the future of CLAP, very happy to see this announcement. There is a youtube video attached to it also, in case people missed it:



I don't think we will ever see CLAP hosting in LogicPro. Possibly not in Cubendo either, but time will tell. They might cave in eventually. But Apple won't. Just one man's opinion.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 15, 2022)

Open source is not "usually plagued with bugs", any more than commercial products. There are actually many bits and pieces of open source in whatever operating system you happen to be using today. Not all open source projects are created equally.. In this case, they have been controlling tightly the project with extremely seasoned developers. They are just as good as anyone working at Apple or Steinberg, for example. The only difference is they will share the code and eliminate licensing headaches. The audio industry doesn't even realize yet how badly we need this. If it takes off, everyone will look back and wonder WhyTHEF__ we ever put up with proprietary plugin API's for as long as we did.


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## Pier (Jun 15, 2022)

3DC said:


> My only concern of this new "standard" is Open Source nature of it. These initiatives are usually plagued with bugs, a lot of good wishes and promises, endless roadmaps and severe lack of development founds. I've seen failed open source projects from even bigger companies with much larger initial budget.


The world runs on open source software. Most databases are open source, your browser, servers running Linux, your wifi router, programming languages, etc.


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## d.healey (Jun 15, 2022)

3DC said:


> See AMD, Intel, Microsoft and their notable examples of failed open source standards


All 3 of those are contributors to the Linux Kernel and many other open source projects. Pick any proprietary software application and I will show you a bug or security flaw that you can't do anything about.


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## gsilbers (Jun 15, 2022)

I admit im a bit skeptical. Just because in 20 years ive seen several simialr intents of several manufacturers, brands, for different realms of pro audio and they failed.

Adoption would be the main one. And the wall DAW companies implement so they have the dominating platform theyve tried to push for so long and get somethign in return.

Apple logic would be the main one.

And of course, the most hated of them all, Avid.

Cubase has its own. Which doesnt support AU And logic doesnt support vat and axx this and so on.

So the issue is not technical. Im sure its great. i see it more of a business politics thing. Even if its free for them. 

What I do see happening is that cubase and/or logic will grab the ideas of this new open source and use it for them. the way it deals with multi thread. the idea of several parameters at once. and the idea of non destructive editing. plus the fast loading of plugins and so on.

The only way that this might work if its implemented by ableton live and it becomes popular for the user side. And for programmig i guess if JUCE uses it. But not sure that side. but business side, yep.. ableton remains the most used daw and we can see how DP and Logic tried to copy that live loops due to competition from live. So if live uses it and becomes THE THING then apple might be open to it. But sadly, logic, cubase and a few others remain the main dominant daws. And developers adopting yet another plugin standard, unless its a "export CLAP" in juce and its that easy, i dunno.

Hope it catches on and there is only one standard.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 15, 2022)

gsilbers said:


> And of course, the most hated of them all, Avid.


AVID is in the CLAP fold. They're not joking. It's going to become really interesting.



gsilbers said:


> the way it deals with multi thread.


Cubase would need some very heavy rewrites for that to work... I don't see that happening easily.



gsilbers said:


> Hope it catches on and there is only one standard.



This is not the reason why CLAP exists. There doesn't _have_ to be only one, necessarily. If you look at things, we never really had *a* standard for DAW plugins. We had proprietary _platforms_. That's not the same thing as a standard.


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## d.healey (Jun 15, 2022)

3DC said:


> I am sure you can point me to all notable open source standards or key technologies in music production


You have over-estimated my abilities but I'll try to think of a few. MusicXML, Sound Font, SFZ, VST3, LV2, LADSPA/DSSI, JUCE, JACK, PipeWire, FLAC, OGG, MIDI/OSC, FFTW, RTP-MIDI.


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## gsilbers (Jun 15, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> AVID is in the CLAP fold. They're not joking. It's going to become really interesting.
> 
> 
> Cubase would need some very heavy rewrites for that to work... I don't see that happening easily.
> ...


Avid beeing there is interesting.

I do prefer if there was only one plugin format thats open standard and every daw used it.

maybe im not getting all of this.. but what this clap would be doing is having yet another plugin type.
a .clap along with the others. ?








Then logic and avid and cubase and dp and ableton live would have to update their DAW to accomodate?

Or is it INSIDE AU and VST where logic can still use either a clap vs non clap AU?


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## d.healey (Jun 15, 2022)

gsilbers said:


> Avid beeing there is interesting.
> 
> I do prefer if there was only one plugin format thats open standard and every daw used it.
> 
> ...


If it takes off and everyone starts supporting it I will immediately drop VST3 and AU formats for my own plugins.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 15, 2022)

The thing is, the CLAP folks are already working on wrappers so that CLAP plugins will be able to run inside LogicPro and Cubase. They will of course be limited to the constraints of AU and VST capabilities in those cases...won't be able to take advantage perhaps of the poly-modulation...or the thread-pooling..unless/until they choose to give in to the tribe and host CLAP directly. But CLAP plugins will be able to be ran in those hosts...with or without them adding CLAP support.

I also seriously doubt that Apple LogicPro will ever provide CLAP hosting, for the same reason they never provided VST hosting. So whatever AU3 wrapping is provided, that will be what is provided. But the CLAP has been taking this wrapper concept heavily into consideration, and its in the works. This alone should enable plugin developers to develop for CLAP, have it be able to run anywhere, and no license hassles. That is a big deal.

Hosts that embrace CLAP more fully will be able to reap some of the additional technology benefits...but like I said..I seriously doubt Apple will do that. I don't think Steinberg will either for at least 10 years...and even after that maybe not, but we'll see.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 15, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> for the same reason they never provided VST hosting


That reason was/is the license that VST has. So, you never know...

It's little known that AVID was also looking into VST3 back in the day when they planned to drop RTAS, and they stopped thinking about it as soon as they read through the license, then just made their own thing.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 15, 2022)

Well that is a good point, but I still doubt they will. They didn't add LV2 either. Apple spent a lot of resources building the the whole CoreAudio infrastructure, which includes the AU api, and it is not simple like VST either..its probably arguably better then VST3, but its not a simple API on its own...it fits into a larger sphere of how they think audio apps should be built using their Xcode system and API's, etc.. Their AU spec is something they designed for the entire MacOS and iOS, not just for LogicPro. They are quite steadfast at building what they think is the ultimate developer toolkits, but only works on Mac, etc.. So no...I am very doubtful they will add it, they will just try to add features to AU perhaps to bring it up to speed with thread pooling or other features that become mainstream in VST and CLAP... But hey...we never know..maybe they will...certainly the license will not be getting in their way this time.


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## FireGS (Jun 15, 2022)

Has no one made the joke about catching the .clap?

I have not read the thread.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 15, 2022)

yes those jokes already came and went months ago and despite many people complaining about the name for various reasons, they seem to remain steadfast to keep it. Clap also stands for other things like what you do with your hands to applaud a nice performance.


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## FireGS (Jun 15, 2022)

I have no feelings one way or the other about the name. It just came to me -- i don't ask for these things. I'm a conduit. 

Carry on!


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## Pier (Jun 15, 2022)

3DC said:


> Just to be clear I am not against open source, not at all. I am just pointing to usual problems typical for opens source projects. Please note the cost of one single developer per year - we are talking about +50.000$ per developer, development time, bugs, intellectual property .... it all adds up pretty quickly to a sad failure if you are not extremely careful. See AMD, Intel, Microsoft and their notable examples of failed open source standards - some worth millions in development.


No offense, but your premise is wrong. Bugs are not a typical problem of open source.

All software has bugs. I can guarantee 100% that all commercial closed software you use has bugs.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 15, 2022)

Axiom of the universe: there is no bug-free software.


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## gsilbers (Jun 15, 2022)

Yep.

I don’t think this thing will go anywhere soon per what I mention above about the business politics side of it.






The Clever Audio Plugin [LWN.net]







lwn.net





But good luck. Really hope it does.


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## gsilbers (Jun 15, 2022)

FireGS said:


> I have no feelings one way or the other about the name. It just came to me -- i don't ask for these things. I'm a conduit.
> 
> Carry on!




I missed the clap jokes. 

Does it have a The Clapper implementation


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## zvenx (Jun 15, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> That reason was/is the license that VST has. So, you never know...
> 
> It's little known that AVID was also looking into VST3 back in the day when they planned to drop RTAS, and they stopped thinking about it as soon as they read through the license, then just made their own thing.


Hmmm.. I am curious where you got this info from...if you can say of course.

I know a bit of Apple's reason for going AU and Core Audio etc..... After Gibson bought Opcode and fired everyone, Apple and others were left in the lurch at the sudden demise of OMS, so they hired the OMS creator and guru (who I think is still there) for the simple reason that they said they will never be held again at 'ransom' to the whims and fortunes of a third party.

At around the same time, I know Dave Oppenheim went to Digidesign, so though I don't know I would imagine that Digidesign's reasoning was similar... and they decided to use technology that was in house... I guess open source allows them to continue developing CLAP or a derivative of it, if the current CLAP consortium folds... but the vst3 thing is news to me and indeed would surprise me.


(I use to be a former opcode user and we had email groups back in the days and it continued long after Opcode officially died, and several ex opcode exployees stayed on the group for years after too).
rsp


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## Geoff Grace (Jun 15, 2022)

For any who are eager for a test drive, the free synth, Surge XT, has a beta release with CLAP support:









Surge


Surge is an open source digital synthesizer.




surge-synthesizer.github.io





Best,

Geoff


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## Alchemedia (Jun 15, 2022)

Geoff Grace said:


> For any who are eager for a test drive, the free synth, Surge XT, has a beta release with CLAP support:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I believe U-He Diva, Ace & Hive also.


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## mobiuscog (Jun 15, 2022)

Regarding open source, the part of the software industry that I work in, is involved with looking at all of the open source that other companies use in their own software - the majority of modern software is built on top of open-source components.

It's extremely rare to find any software that isn't using some open-source components - it's just much cheaper and easier, and nobody generally wants to reinvent the wheel.

Also, this is the ABI that is open source and license free. Not the DAW or the plugins, but the interface between the two. The fact that it's open source means that anyone finding bugs is able to look at the code and submit fixes if they know the problem, to the benefit of everyone - part of the reason open source is so popular is because companies are not locked in to anything.

Perhaps 20 years ago you could have claimed open source was a risk, but these days most (if not all) of the really big names are using it. It is pervasive throughout most all industries.


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## mobiuscog (Jun 16, 2022)

3DC said:


> Not true.


We'll have to agree to disagree - from my seat in the software industry, working with very large customers, most if not all of their software is *built on* open source components.

I'm not saying the end result is open source, but it's definitely used as a part. Most languages are also open source now.

If all open-source code disappeared tomorrow, most software companies would close (or need to re-write huge chunks of code). The internet would stop. Open source powers far more than 40% of the overall software market.


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## tressie5 (Jun 16, 2022)

Why, oh, why didn't they just call this new technology CAP? Could've been worse. Could've been Digitally Operated Native Group (DONG), or the Basic Electronic Normative Digital System (the BENDS), or...well, you see where I'm going with this.


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## mobiuscog (Jun 16, 2022)




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## Ger (Jun 16, 2022)

Really nice !


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## d.healey (Jun 16, 2022)

mobiuscog said:


> Open source powers far more than 40% of the overall software market.


I received an email yesterday from the Free Software Foundation that linked to an article by github/Microsoft. According to the article 99% of software contains some Open Source elements - https://github.blog/2022-01-13-open...ity-summit-securing-the-worlds-code-together/

Unfortunately they give no source for that specific claim but being github/Microsoft I think they'd have a pretty good idea. Also I find it quite easy to believe when you consider that "Open Source" includes a lot of software licensed under permissive terms like MIT which means that it can be included in proprietary software.



3DC said:


> especially how these stacks against all commercially developed technologies and standards.


Most open source standards/protocols are developed for commercial purposes. CLAP being a recent example of that trend.


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## allen-garvey (Jun 16, 2022)

Something I have not seen mentioned anywhere, is this also meant to be a replacement for ARA2, or are they complements to each other?


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## mobiuscog (Jun 16, 2022)

allen-garvey said:


> Something I have not seen mentioned anywhere, is this also meant to be a replacement for ARA2, or are they complements to each other?


It is not a replacement for ARA2. If Celemony support it / collaborate with the work, then CLAP plugins could be used with ARA2 I believe.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 16, 2022)

ARA can easily become an extension to CLAP. CLAP is all about extension-based additions.


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## gsilbers (Jun 16, 2022)

Here is more backstory:







The Clever Audio Plugin [LWN.net]







lwn.net






The angle is more "plugin companies vs DAWs" sort of vibe. 

Hope it works though.


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## Nico5 (Jun 16, 2022)

I'm really wondering why plugin makers with sophisticated parameter modulation capability already in their plugins (as competitive edge), would want to support a movement towards having more modulation control in the host.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 16, 2022)

It's an addition to existing things the plugin does, not a replacement of what the plugin does.

But also - why not?


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## Nico5 (Jun 16, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> But also - why not?


Maybe because a commercial plugin maker eeking out a living, wouldn't want to enable something that gives a super power to the masses, that only a select few currently have.


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## mobiuscog (Jun 16, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> Maybe because a commercial plugin maker eeking out a living, wouldn't not want to enable something that gives a super power to the masses, that only a select few currently have.


And that's how you become less popular. If you treat your users with no respect, don't expect any back.
A plugin is just that - it 'plugs into' a DAW, and should interoperate as best it can.

I'm sure some plugin makers will follow your idea, but they're not the good ones and not the ones that will build up a loyal following.


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## Nico5 (Jun 16, 2022)

mobiuscog said:


> A plugin is just that - it 'plugs into' a DAW, and should interoperate as best it can.


The boundary of what “should“ be controlled by the DAW vs. what “should” be controlled by the plugin is an additional, relevant and interesting topic, which probably attracts a range of different opinions from different end users.

Some users prefer their DAW to be as feature complete as possible, seeing plugins more as crutches to overcome DAW limitations. — Others prefer to minimize their dependency on a specific DAW, so they can swap DAWs, while keeping their favourite plugins. — And many in between preferences.

So there’s no “universal truth” in this topic (as in most of life).


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## mobiuscog (Jun 16, 2022)

That's the point. Ideally either can control things, the flexibility giving the best of both worlds. If you don't want to use the DAW modulations, that's great, but don't lock away from those that do.

As you said, there's no "universal truth" so as many options as possible is good.


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## Nico5 (Jun 16, 2022)

mobiuscog said:


> so as many options as possible is good.


Even that is not necessarily the case, since balkanization is one of the downside consequences of too many options.

Just to be clear - I don’t really have a strong opinion on the merits of CLAP. I‘m just an interested observer in industry evolution and how the various participants act and standards evolve from time to time. And obviously I continuously make little personal choices of things I purchase and/or use. Those choices are loaded with my very personal biases, preferences and experiences.

There’s a considerable part of me, that wishes CLAP to succeed, since going from the 3 incumbents to 4 standards, the new one a somewhat different model has arguably more upside than downside. But the gambling man in me wouldn't place bets on this one quite yet.


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## Pier (Jun 16, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> I'm really wondering why plugin makers with sophisticated parameter modulation capability already in their plugins (as competitive edge), would want to support a movement towards having more modulation control in the host.


From what I've seen, CLAP is just a better format to program for than VST and AU.

That's a big incentive for plugin devs as they can simplify their code, and then use a wrapper for VST3 and AU.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 16, 2022)

Pier said:


> That's a big incentive for plugin devs as they can simplify their code, and then use a wrapper for VST3 and AU.



Precisely! Simplifying code also means less resources spent in maintaining it.


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## Nico5 (Jun 16, 2022)

Pier said:


> That's a big incentive for plugin devs as they can simplify their code, and then use a wrapper for VST3 and AU.


Incentive for some - especially newcomers, but if someone has built, debugged and matured their own wrapper system already, this is also a reason for not switching or adding another layer of disintermediation - especially one that doesn’t yet have track record.

So maybe the trick will be for CLAP to concentrate on attracting new plugin developers, in addition to those established developers who have a philosophical and/or historical bone to pick with the incumbent owners of plugin standards.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 16, 2022)

So much about difficulty of supporting CLAP in already established build systems.


These developers, they know what they're doing. And all interested parties have already expressed how much easier CLAP is to work with, vs VST3, AU and AAX. But especially VST3. That's just a really badly devised API in all sorts of ways.


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## Pier (Jun 16, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> Incentive for some - especially newcomers, but if someone has built, debugged and matured their own wrapper system already, this is also a reason for not switching or adding another layer of disintermediation - especially one that doesn’t yet have track record.


It's true but OTOH U-He and Bitwig are using it in production and putting their money where their mouth is. Urs has been in the audio dev industry for 2 decades or maybe more. It's not some rando on the internet.

Another point is that if a company has already a custom mature wrapper, it shouldn't be too much work adding a new output. And if that allows them to trash their VST3 and AU wrappers... well, deleting code is probably every coder's wet dream.

But many (most?) companies are using JUCE instead of a custom build system and there is already a CLAP wrapper for JUCE. I'd be very surprised if JUCE didn't support CLAP officially. In those cases adding CLAP to the plugin should be very straightforward.

I think the problem is more about DAWs supporting CLAP, rather than plugin devs.


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## A.G (Jun 16, 2022)

Pier said:


> I think the problem is more about DAWs supporting CLAP, rather than plugin devs.


Most of DAWs belong to big companies which developed the major standards: VST by Steinberg and AU by Apple for example.
I doubt that these major DAW developers will 100% support new standards such as CLAP.


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## Pier (Jun 16, 2022)

A.G said:


> Most of DAWs belong to big companies which developed the major standards: VST by Steinberg and AU by Apple for example.
> I doubt that these major DAW developers will 100% support new standards such as CLAP.


Time will tell.

The only thing I'm almost certain is that Logic won't support anything other than AU. OTOH Apple supports open source projects in other areas (eg: web, graphics, etc) so who knows.


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## Nico5 (Jun 16, 2022)

Pier said:


> using JUCE instead of a custom build system and there is already a CLAP wrapper for JUCE.


albeit 3rd party - not core JUCE


Pier said:


> I'd be very surprised if JUCE didn't support CLAP officially.


I hope you're right, but don't you think that one of the very compelling value propositions of JUCE is their wrappers stuff around the existing formats? So wouldn't they arguably make a chunk of their income because of the current technical mess? If CLAP cleans up that mess, doesn't it remove at least some of the very value proposition for JUCE? And what do you think about JUCE being owned by PACE (the iLok people)? i.e. a company who's core business depends very much on software being NOT open/libre?


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## José Herring (Jun 16, 2022)

The more I read about Clap the more excited I get about the development. I'm hoping for a Clap epidemic. 

Still doesn't sound right. But really I think it's an excellent idea and I've long wanted for other VST plugins to have the same routing capabilities as Reason synths and FX. I think Clap will have even more capabilities. 

I'm going to try and figure out how to use Surge in Clap format. I'm vaxed and ready for Clap. Is bitwig the only current DAW that supports it?


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## Technostica (Jun 16, 2022)

José Herring said:


> I'm going to try and figure out how to use Surge in Clap format. I'm vaxed and ready for Clap. Is bitwig the only current DAW that supports it?


This does also and there’s a free version:





MultitrackStudio - Audio/MIDI Multitrack Recording Software


Features of MultitrackStudio audio/MIDI multitrack recording software.




www.multitrackstudio.com


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 16, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> I hope you're right, but don't you think that one of the very compelling value propositions of JUCE is their wrappers stuff around the existing formats? So wouldn't they arguably make a chunk of their income because of the current technical mess?



JUCE provides an API with a lot more than just the plugin stuff, it has GUI stuff and some data structures and so forth that are very convenient. CLAP is not going to hurt JUCE.


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## Pier (Jun 16, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> If CLAP cleans up that mess, doesn't it remove at least some of the very value proposition for JUCE? And what do you think about JUCE being owned by PACE (the iLok people)? i.e. a company who's core business depends very much on software being NOT open/libre?


JUCE does *a lot* more than just being a wrapper for VST, AU, etc. For instance, I've seen non-audio projects that use it because how it solves graphics and makes crossplatform UIs in C++ super accessible.

About PACE... honestly, I'm still scratching my head why they bought it. I'm guessing ROLI was in dire need of cash and they probably made an offer they couldn't refuse.


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## Nimrod7 (Jun 16, 2022)

What is recommended to use for a graphics library in combination with Clap (assuming that you're not intending to use JUCE)? Common C++ libraries like glfw, imGui etc?


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## mobiuscog (Jun 17, 2022)

Nimrod7 said:


> What is recommended to use for a graphics library in combination with Clap (assuming that you're not intending to use JUCE)? Common C++ libraries like glfw, imGui etc?


This is also something I'm very interested in. It seems a lot of effort will focus around JUCE to start with, as it's so commonplace, but it would be really good to see other examples/options.

I'm thinking of starting with nih-plug though, as I am keen on rust as a language, it has CLAP support and also has links to rust UI packages.


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## Pier (Jun 17, 2022)

Nimrod7 said:


> What is recommended to use for a graphics library in combination with Clap (assuming that you're not intending to use JUCE)? Common C++ libraries like glfw, imGui etc?


Yeah you can use whatever you prefer. For example KiloHearts use Skia to render their custom UI. Or you could use Cinder, OpenFrameworks, etc.

I think Madrona labs use Nano GUI.


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## tmhuud (Jun 17, 2022)

I would think instead, “CLAP is (not) sorely needed.”?


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## AlexRuger (Jun 17, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> JUCE provides an API with a lot more than just the plugin stuff, it has GUI stuff and some data structures and so forth that are very convenient. CLAP is not going to hurt JUCE.


The person you were replying to clearly stated that it's "*one of* the very compelling value propositions of JUCE." Pointing out _other _compelling value propositions doesn't mean they're not wrong. As far as I understand it, "write once/release everywhere" was one of the driving forces behind the creation of JUCE in the first place.

As much as I love JUCE, I'd prefer instead that it didn't _need _to exist. Ideally, CLAP actually _will _"hurt" JUCE in the sense that DAWs will just coalesce around this one format. If I'm writing just for one format, JUCE will certainly feel like quite a bit of overkill and unnecessary abstraction, at least in terms of non-GUI related stuff.


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## Pier (Jun 17, 2022)

AlexRuger said:


> If I'm writing just for one format, JUCE will certainly feel like quite a bit of overkill and unnecessary abstraction, at least in terms of non-GUI related stuff.


JUCE solves much more than just being an abstraction on top of VST/AU and GUI stuff.

OSC, DSP stuff, buffers, MIDI events, application scaffolding, MPE, etc.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 17, 2022)

Plogue converting their stuff in about a day of work. How cool is that?


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2022)

AlexRuger said:


> The person you were replying to clearly stated that it's "*one of* the very compelling value propositions of JUCE." Pointing out _other _compelling value propositions doesn't mean they're not wrong. As far as I understand it, "write once/release everywhere" was one of the driving forces behind the creation of JUCE in the first place.



There are plenty of reasons to keep using JUCE+CLAP. I myself would probably use JUCE + CLAP once that combination is available. I would use because it is simplified and very easy way to get going with plugin development and provides a lot of extra API's for GUI and other things. But I need CLAP export from JUCE due to VST license restrictions, I cannot obtain VST2 license. So really, JUCE will gain my business only at such time that it exports CLAP. Otherwise, yes I will probably not use JUCE....since it doesn't yet support CLAP...I will seek a different solution. it will be in JUCE's best interest to embrace CLAP.



AlexRuger said:


> As much as I love JUCE, I'd prefer instead that it didn't _need _to exist. Ideally, CLAP actually _will _"hurt" JUCE in the sense that DAWs will just coalesce around this one format. If I'm writing just for one format, JUCE will certainly feel like quite a bit of overkill and unnecessary abstraction, at least in terms of non-GUI related stuff.



JUCE is good
CLAP is good

why don't you want them to exist? A lot of plugins only exist because of JUCE making it easier to make plugins. Of course if you don't want to use JUCE you don't have to...CLAP or no CLAP...

Note that VST has had AU wrappers already for years...that didn't stop JUCE from becoming a thing..


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2022)

Anyone know where I can get a Bitwig 8-track license? The one I had hit the one year mark last month so I can't get the beta version that supports CLAP...and I'm not really ready to buy BigWig at this time, just wanna try out CLAP...


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## EvilDragon (Jun 17, 2022)

Actually Bitwig summer upgrade sale is on so if you find 8-track you can upgrade to full for less.



Dewdman42 said:


> So really, JUCE will gain my business only at such time that it exports CLAP. Otherwise, yes I will probably not use JUCE....since it doesn't yet support CLAP


Well, there _is_ an extension that does make a CMake based JUCE project spit out CLAP.

But the wrapper for CLAP-to-VST2 is not yet there. It's being worked on, though.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2022)

Its yet to be seen whether I can write a plugin in JUCE-to-CLAP, or directly in CLAP...and wrap it as VST2 without having a Steinberg license. I think it depends on how they do that CLAP wrapper, we shall see. If they don't do it in a way that I can wrap CLAP as VST2 without a license, then I will have to wait until hosts support direct CLAP hosting. VST3 is no go for me. 

I know I can get Bitwig 16 track for $79 or something, but its not a product that I really want or need unless/until I start doing some CLAP development perhaps if nobody else is hosting it. Plus I am opposed to Bitwig's yearly subscription plan concept...which is why my second 8-track license expired..and so I will not update Bitwig8 again until someone else throws in a free 8-track license with some other product, which is how I got the first two. Then I'll update it again for a year. I think Bitwig is a fine and cool product, don't get me wrong..its just not something I need, especially in light of the subscription plan.


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## Technostica (Jun 17, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Anyone know where I can get a Bitwig 8-track license? The one I had hit the one year mark last month so I can't get the beta version that supports CLAP...and I'm not really ready to buy BigWig at this time, just wanna try out CLAP...


You should be able to buy one for $5 or less on here, knobcloud or KVR.


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## d.healey (Jun 17, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Its yet to be seen whether I can write a plugin in JUCE-to-CLAP, or directly in CLAP...and wrap it as VST2 without having a Steinberg license. I think it depends on how they do that CLAP wrapper, we shall see. If they don't do it in a way that I can wrap CLAP as VST2 without a license, then I will have to wait until hosts support direct CLAP hosting. VST3 is no go for me.
> 
> I know I can get Bitwig 16 track for $79 or something, but its not a product that I really want or need unless/until I start doing some CLAP development perhaps if nobody else is hosting it. Plus I am opposed to Bitwig's yearly subscription plan concept...which is why my second 8-track license expired..and so I will not update Bitwig8 again until someone else throws in a free 8-track license with some other product, which is how I got the first two. Then I'll update it again for a year. I think Bitwig is a fine and cool product, don't get me wrong..its just not something I need, especially in light of the subscription plan.


Why do you want to use VST2 rather than VST3?


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 17, 2022)

midi plugins. VST3 has midi design flaws. It has been explained on the internet in numerous times, I don't want to explain it again now. For this reason I primarily always use VST2 versions of my instruments plugins also rather then VST3. I also do not wish to sign any agreement with Steinberg, including VST3. But its not even possible to sign for VST2 now anyway...which is the only way I can properly do a couple things I want to do with midi.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 18, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Its yet to be seen whether I can write a plugin in JUCE-to-CLAP, or directly in CLAP...and wrap it as VST2 without having a Steinberg license. I think it depends on how they do that CLAP wrapper, we shall see. If they don't do it in a way that I can wrap CLAP as VST2 without a license, then I will have to wait until hosts support direct CLAP hosting.


The whole point is that CLAP-to-VST2 wrapper would come from a company that's a legitimate VST2 licensee, and it would 100% bind CLAP features into VST2 features, including MIDI processing. So you don't have to own the VST2 license to spit out VST2s via that wrapper. That's the clincher.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 18, 2022)

I really hope you are right...but I'm still waiting to see if they make the wrapper in such a way that this will be the case. I think it would have to be a runtime binding that can take a pure CLAP plugin and make it run in a VST host. If there is any compile time binding at all, I don't see it going quite that smoothly in terms of license...and I expect Steinberg to put up a fight too. So we'll see.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 18, 2022)

Steiny can't do anything. Even if they attempt something, somebody could just write a wrapper that binds against ABI points of VST2. ABI copyright is not enforcable and there's court precedent for that.


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## TVbene (Jun 18, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> Anyone know where I can get a Bitwig 8-track license? The one I had hit the one year mark last month so I can't get the beta version that supports CLAP...and I'm not really ready to buy BigWig at this time, just wanna try out CLAP...


Couldn’t you just use the newest trial? should be fully functional besides saving.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 18, 2022)

Newest trial is not the version that has CLAP enabled. That version is still in beta.


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## TVbene (Jun 18, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Newest trial is not the version that has CLAP enabled. That version is still in beta.


ah yes you‘re right.


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## SteveC (Jun 22, 2022)

They should layer it with a snare to get more punch.


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## DSmolken (Jul 4, 2022)

The blooo by Full Bucket Music - Synth (Analogue / Subtractive) Plugin VST VST3 Audio Unit CLAP


The blooo is a polyphonic software synthesizer for Microsoft Windows (VST2/VST3/CLAP) and Apple macOS (VST2/VST3/AU/CLAP) based on the class...




www.kvraudio.com





Full Bucket has a CLAP version of Blooo.


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 4, 2022)

AudioThing also just announced a CLAP version of their *Wires* plugin


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## Pier (Jul 7, 2022)

This video is from a couple of weeks ago, but I think it wasn't posted here:




Holy shit. In that video the CEO of Bitwig shared that they saw a 2x increase in Diva performance when using CLAP vs VST.


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## EvilDragon (Jul 7, 2022)

Note that the performance increase relates to number of instances you can have until CPU falls over. Also current tests suggest this works better on Intel and M1, not as good on AMD.


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## Markrs (Jul 10, 2022)

New YouTube series on how to code for CLAP

1st video:


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