A shot across Steinberg's VST3 bow?

I understand – and there’s no record of any edit for that post. But please, edit it now if you like. If you want to discuss this more, please PM me.

Ok, thanks. We can leave it at this.

It’s more important Steinberg learns something from the dawn of CLAP . I don’t think all those devs did it because everything was fine with VST2/3 and didn’t have anything better to do with their time.

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i see this movement to be more about virtual instruments, would be nice to keep things more clear here, since in the “developer category forum” there is a lot of good information about many unfunded complains about vst3, people need to study more.

Don’t forget that a lot of the CLAP development was already done before other developers jumped on the wagon.

Anyway, I think this has a lot to do with politics, like so much these days. Power stuff. If I take a look into the KVR Audio forum, they almost preach like religious fanatics now. In my opinion, this has only little to do with providing a better alternative.

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To be fair, Steinberg doesn’t want VST control to be taken away from them. Therefore, they use a license, that means that nobody else can come in and say “no, actually, you have to do it our way now, and we still call it VST.” That’s reasonable, if a bit heavy handed.

What people really like about CLAP (and I understand why!) seems to be the “free and open source” bit – there’s not one company whose agenda might get in the way of actually doing needed work on the standard. But, is that true? Who are the committers to the standard repo? Will the governance work well? Which kinds of concerns will be really listened to and acted on? If someone comes along and wants to port it to run on NVIDIA GPU CUDA hardware, which will require some API changes to work well, what will the process and reception be? Or if NVIDIA forks it, and also calls it CLAP, then what? Is it still free and open source?

It’s OK to dream. It’s OK to be happy about new good things perhaps being born into the world. But early enthusiasm, times a number of years of seeing how that usually ends, builds a robust shell of “wait and see” on most experienced people :smiley:

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You know what’s specifically funny about that? He writes about all the advantages of the new format, but, obviously misses one thing: That, in foreseeable future time, he has to support all plugin formats PLUS CLAP, if he wants to support that in future versions of his plugins. At least if he doesn’t want to miss out on the massive amount of market share of both Cubase and Nuendo. Nice, eh?

I thought developers were able to think. It’s not as if VST3 will go anywhere. They all will still have to support it, regardless of how nice they think the new format is. That’s the error in thinking. The world won’t suddenly switch over.

The short answer minus all the techno nerd speak (don’t get me wrong I appreciate and am a nerd about some things) is this. As a sound designer/engineer/composer… let me know when there are real products, that are fully developed and worth using and that will most likely determine it’s future. Most end users don’t give a poop what’s happening under the hood so to speak. We just want tools that work. If a bunch of good plugs jump on board and push DAW developers to implement the protocol it might happen. But it’s unlikely unless you get the big boy DAWs on board, like Logic and Cubase and Pro Tools. And all of those developers have their own protocols or their fingers in the pie of the team developing the protocol. Few in the Mac world care about what is happening in VST. Avid always marches to their own drum unless they MUST bend (look how many years it took them to put in faster than real time rendering) and Steinberg has VST and has Yamaha on their side. I don’t see how any new protocol makes many wavs. Yes there are other DAWs, yes they all have good and bad things that others don’t. But one only needs to watch a few YouTube videos on people sharing their tricks or what have you to know which DAWs are the most popular and most used by people earning a living in the industry. Maybe if Ableton got on board? But don’t they have their own format as well?

Sorry that was far longer than I intended. All I meant to say was… let me know when there are real products and why I need them over what I already have. Then maybe I’ll bother to try something out. Till then… best of luck.

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Isn’t asking Steinberg to support CLAP kinda like asking Burger King to carry Big Macs?

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I don’t know what’s being discussed exactly (I’m reading with much interest though), but to me it sounds like someone came up with a sandburger, or a burgwich and now some people want both Burger King and Mc Donalds to start making them, because their burgers and sandwiches aren’t good enough. McDonalds said we’ll look into it and now people are telling Burger King they aren’t going to get far in life if they don’t start making them too.

At least that’s my take. I don’t know if I’ll have a change of opinion when I get something to eat. :sweat_smile:

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Well, a better analogy would be that a new burger joint appears on the scene which is offering it’s customers full transparency on the ingredients.

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And doesn’t give you indigestion?

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With all do respect, this seems to be a myth that was perpetuated falsely.

It’s more like, unhappy because daddy entered the room and told them to get their things in order. That’s why, these are lazy developers who built their lives on the 15 year old VST2 spec and then when daddy comes in and tells them to get their room in order, they have a tantrum and go an make their own plugin format… instead of tidying up their room.

The only difference is, instead of leaving home to get their own room, they will continue to feed off of VST because they wont be able to make a profit with CLAP for some time.

Sorry, what is this based on? How do you know?

It is and it isn’t, I simply host whatever I need to do inside of Cubase. Reaktor, Unfiltered Audio, etc. Cubase paradigm provides more the architecture, you have to add some furniture. This is why Cubase users use Cubase, how things are organized, workflow for composition and different style workflows, etc.

Again, people who don’t want to keep their room in order. I wonder if they take the same approach with their music publishing - lol.

So does VST3, does it not?

Does it even make sense to have the plugin format dictate how MIDI 2.0 is used? How much thought have you actually given that, no offense? It might be better for MIDI 2.0 support and integration to be DAW side, depending on how the users of that DAW want to work?

MIDI 2.0 is a language, not a feature. If you think of it as a music keyboard - “the host” - the designer of the keyboard decides on how they implement the language and to what extent. It’s not the greatest analogy, but, the concept in general perhaps needs a bit more… thought…

I was making good music 20 years ago with Cubase, and making good music today. No worries over here.

Interesting video - “Lets Talk CLAP - the new Plug-in Format, With the Developers”

They all seem like nice people, and I commend them on their interest and pursuit of code development, and exploration of the “open source” concept.

But, 5:47 sort of seems like backwards logic:

Since when does the plugin format dictate the DAW? DAWs are supposed to have different implementations. That’s why different people have different DAWS.

The second bit of backwards logic, is his seeing a solution to the landscape of too many differing implementations as… open source? Isn’t that the opposite? And, isn’t this exactly what Steinberg wanted to accomplish by getting everyone to tidy up their room so that everyone is on the same page with VST3, get everyone on MIDI 2.0/MPE, etc, etc?

As someone said before, this just seems like open-source “cool factor bandwagon”, without realistic forethought.

MIDI 2.0 is, essentially what is “open-source”. It makes much more sense for DAWs to decide how it is implemented and how it communicates with VST3 plugins, rather than have a plugin format that tries to dictate to DAWs?

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I don’t think Steinberg would consider themselves “Daddy” at all. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

CLAP is an option for DAWs that wish to support and embrace it’s features, that’s all. I wouldn’t get so tearful about it.

Sad that a few of the creative community have such adverse reaction to an open format entering the market.

Through using it, of course.
You don’t think it’s out-dated to be forced to map MIDI CC values within VST3 plugins, and then utilise MIDI CC generators to modulate parameters?

This is why it’s falling on other DAW’s to take the lead, as Presonus/Celemony did with ARA(2), and now BW/u-he establishing with CLAP.

Steinberg’s ‘new’ MIDI API is stuck at JavaScript ES5 (2009), neither future proofing themselves or able to match what it’s replacing.

Articulation system is antiquated. Again, another DAW already leading the way and working with third parties to develop a universal ‘dynamic’ discovery system that alleviates the need for manual maps.

And how many apps do we need to maintain an average Cubase/HALion rig? Let’s see…
Steinberg download assistant
Steinberg activation manager
Steinberg library manager
eLicenser control center
Cubase application

Despite having 5 applications it’s still a manual process to see what’s installed and what updates are available based on your held licenses. They’re so ahead of the curve it’s mind blowing. /s

They’re very much dining out on their past successes, hence why we’re both a user.

So why create an account specifically to reply to my post, using words like “Daddy entered the room”?

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With regard to CLAP as a “wrapper”:

Can anyone explain this ? Does it mean that you can develop a CLAP plug-in and wrap it as a VST3 plug-in?

That is what it basically means, yes. You have a plugin developed using the CLAP-API and it could run as a VST3, too. For that to work someone has to write a CLAP-to-VST3 “wrapper”, which is basically some code that can translate the CLAP functions into valid VST3 functions. I think I’ve read somewhere that this is already in the works, but can’t remember where.
You’d still need to sign the VST3 license if you want to distribute your plugin commercially as a VST3.

Pretty much. :grin:

I can assure you that it won’t happen, as long as hell doesn’t freeze over.

That’s the awesome things about new formats set out to become the “standard”. They will most likely end up as another format you have to develop for and support. The people behind CLAP know that, yet they still want to establish it. Well, more fun and more work for developers then. After all, they love the work and the challenge, right? :wink:

Again, another DAW already leading the way and working with third parties to develop a universal ‘dynamic’ discovery system that alleviates the need for manual maps.

What DAW are you referring to?

Studio One, and their sound variation API.

I believe third parties such as Spitfire audio, VSL, UJAM and EW libraries are using it already. Works very well.

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