Re: [linux-audio-dev] do YOU support LASDPA? (was Re: Linux Audio plugin API's: where arewe ?)

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] do YOU support LASDPA? (was Re: Linux Audio plugin API's: where arewe ?)
From: Paul Barton-Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: Fri Apr 07 2000 - 05:24:42 EEST


> 1. Isn't very focused or stable (constantly changing)

Hopefully not too much anymore.

> 2. I would just have to reimplement the specialized tracker features on
>top of LADSPA

Legitimate point. But thats what code sharing tends to lead to. Unless
you believe that OCTAL is the One True Way, and that all the good
stuff will be written for OCTAL using its own native API, this seems
like a small price to pay for using plugins written for other systems
as well.

> 3. seems very focused on DSP-primitives and interconnections thereof,
>which isn't the point of high-level UG environments

This is the wrong way to view LADSPA.

The design has almost nothing to do with the "level" of the operation
done within the plugin. Instead, its a reflection of what happens when
you are connected to real audio h/w, either for input or output or
both:

  Every so often, more sample data becomes available, or is
  needed. So, the basic plugin model is of a list of entry points
  to code that accepts and/or produces chunks of data.

It doesn't get any more basic and general than that.

There's nothing in the API thats says that a plugin's "run()" function
wraps a "DSP primitive". As I've described previously, it could be a
fully fledged "application" that is called. In fact, its precisely
this possibility that bothered JM, who suggested the need to have
plugins be RT-bounded. a LADSPA plugin could be OCTAL itself, or it
could be a gate function. You decide.

>nearly completed, I'm not sure what real benefit would be derived by
>using LADSPA.

Imagine if you were writing OCTAL for Windows. Would you want to
support just the Buzz plugin API, or would it also make sense to
support VST and/or DirectX as well ?

I know that if I were writing a tracker-style program for Windows, I'd
want at least VST support in addition to some "native" plugin API,
just so that I could attract people to the ability to stick the Orange
Vocoder, or SciFi, or other extremely cool, relatively cheap plugins
into my processing chain without having to whine to their makers'
about doing a port to the Buzz API, or whatever.

The fact that Buzz doesn't do this says more about Buzz's audience
than the attractiveness of the idea, IMHO.

--p


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