[linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?

[Steve Harris]

I wasn't particularly disagreeing with your proposal BTW, I was just
rambling on my pet topic :)

On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 12:50:36 +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote:
> > I think thats down to two factors (and its not a good thing)
> > 
> > 1) LADSPA developers are few in number and short in time. The basics are a
> >    good place to start.
> 
> The number of dsp developers isn't relevant.
> Besides - there's at least 5 devs i know of. The number will grow.

It is relevent, the point is that the development efort going into plugins
is dispraportioanlyl small compared to the apps. This means that the few
of us wh oare coding plugins start with fairly basic things, as there
needed most.
 
> > 2) The lack of a UI standard makes complex plugins a bit pointless.
> 
> Why do you need a UI standard for jack fx/synth clients? Does JAMin
> follow one such standard?
> You could do a virtually unlimited amount of UIs for exactly 1 fx/synth
> using IPC.  

JAMin is not a plugin. Its an app.
 
> > There are a few counter examples (e.g. my VyNil plugin wraps a lot of
> > different bits), and infact if you look in many LADSPA plugins you will
> > see theres really more going on than there appears to be.
> 
> According to my proposal, this shouldn't happen. :)

Ah, but its a good thing :)
 
> >   Fewer controls is better.
> 
> Doesn't seem like if you look at the most successful
> VST(i)/DX(i)/RTAS/TDM/AI plugins :)

They have fewer controls than they could have. Also, with custom UIs its easier
to get away with more as some can be hidden in an "advanced" popout or
whatever.
 
> >   Affordance, appearance and usability has as much affect on the perceived
> >   sound quality as the DSP code (posivly and negativly). Some of this can
> >   be achieved without a custom UI.
> 
> Today we've got 100% Affordance, 0% appearance and 0% usability. :)
> At least the point that there's no unified affordance since each host
> implements it's own, makes the question of usability irrelevant.

I Disagree. We have 0% affordance, 0% appearance, 100% usability (not that
there really orthoganal). You cant have affordance if you dont have
control over appearance and layout.

On topic though - there are some advantages to the way plugins interact
with apps - as thier hosted thier execution order and control binding can
be controlled by apps. This is very useful.

Look at DSSI, which is an attempt to move some of the kind of things from
th JACK model into the LADSPA model, fine control over the routing is
quite important.

- Steve

- Steve