Is VST 3 the new common format for Android Virtual Instruments??

Developer VST 3 SDK
1

With the release of Android O and the new High-performance AAudio NDK, the latency limitations for a virtual instrument sampling app have been surpassed for modern Android devices. The way I see it, the only real barrier that stands now is that there is no common file format for developers to create virtual instruments that can be used in the Android OS. If I were to utilize the AAudio NDK to create a low latency midi triggered virtual instrument app, ideally, the user should be able to download a VST/VST3 and load it into the app to be controlled by a USB midi device. Barring this, the app developer would have to create their own virtual instruments specifically designed for their app.

I know that JUCE has some Android capabilities, though it is unclear if hosting VST in Android is capable from their documentation, and I know that they still have not released anything using high-performance AAudio. Are there any decent ways to wrap a .VST in a way that is usable in Android, so that I can still port the I/O through AAudio?

What are the limitations for developing an app for Android that would host VST virtual instruments? Could we build Android ready versions of currently released VST VIs?

2

Actually, there is already some sort of a plugin format existing for Android, which has been developed by Samsung for their Soundcamp (proprietary) DAW:
http://developer.samsung.com/galaxy/professional-audio/guide

But I agree with you, we need a new and open standard on Android, as robust as A.U. on iOS.

BTW, the Patchfield project from Google is also of interest, allowing inter app audio routing:

3

The Patchfield project hasn’t been updated in 4 years and has only been tested on very old devices, and uses older auidio IO standards.

4

In this talk, Phil Burk talks about a C++ wrapper which chooses either AAudio or Open SL during runtime:

It is not “released” yet but looks interesting.

The VST 3 SDK compiles and runs successfully on a Raspberry PI (with Raspbian Stretch installed). It has the same processor architecture like a Samsung Galaxy S3 device. Though I have not tested that yet but building the SDK on Android in order to produce .so files/plug-ins (without GUI) might be possible.

Only thing missing is a proper audio callback which I hope comes with AAudio.