Re: [LAU] LV2, DSSI and the future of plugins

From: Philipp Überbacher <hollunder@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Fri Jan 14 2011 - 14:25:21 EET

Excerpts from Hartmut Noack's message of 2011-01-14 12:08:09 +0100:
> Am 14.01.2011 11:08, schrieb allcoms:
> > Hi list,
> >
> > I suppose I could've just addressed this to drobilla and got most of my
> > questions answered but it concerns us all really as even if A3 and qtractor
> > were to achieve feature parity with Cubase and buds tomorrow (obviously I'm
> > stretching things a bit there) we still wouldn't see vast droves switching
> > to Linux DAWs for a few reasons such as hardware support, people liking what
> > they know etc. but most importantly the dearth of quality native plugins
> > available for Linux seems to be a primary showstopper for most.
> >
> > DSSI has a few things coded for it but not much and its still very early
> > days for LV2 so the open plugin format of the future is still anyones game
> > and it may not necessarily be either of those that succeeds and gets widely
> > used of course.
>
> I think it would be wise, to throw everything on LV2 and to abandon DSSI
> and LADSPA in the long run. And to make that clear to everyone out there
> who thinks about getting into plugin-programming for Linux.
>
> LV2 has matured a lot and it has get a lot of new great plugins that
> show its powers in the last year. Think of CALF, LinuxDSP or, just
> recently IR.
>
> There is still a lot to be done but see, what a normal user can actually
> do today with LV2 -- this is exactly, what people are asking for if they
> complain the lack of plugins on Linux.

One thought that occurred to me:
The big advantage and disadvantage of LV2 is its extensibility.
I dare to guess that a big number of LV2 plugins exists that aren't
usable in every host out there. I'm not sure how many hosts there
currently are, but I guess around 5 popular ones. I dare guess that very
few plugins work in those hosts, and that those are only the most simple
plugins.

I dare not to draw a matrix of hosts and plugin compatibility, hence I
propose:

Each plugins author could work together with
b) authors of popular hosts
c) extension authors
to make his plugin work in at least the handful of popular hosts.

This would give the users choice and less frustration and also serve as a
base for plugin authors.

Regards,
Philipp

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Received on Fri Jan 14 16:15:04 2011

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