<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">well, i wouldn't read ken's comment as fundamentalist open source<br>
zealotry, but rather as "live and let live" - people who need a wider<br>
selection of plugins and instruments and are willing to pay can always<br>
use what's on the market. but why should open source users bother?<br>
<br>
the open source community doesn't have to cater to all needs.<br>
<br>
particularly since, in my book, the commercial plugin world is riddled<br>
with dysfunctional chrome and marketing bs - actual innovations are<br>
quite rare. what you can get is ok if you are using plugins as a source<br>
of inspiration, tweaking a knob here and there to get interesting, new<br>
results. if, on the other hand, you know perfectly well what you need<br>
for your mix, then some magic little plugin with dials labelled "depth",<br>
"crunch" or whatever won't help.<br>
<br>
you can't sell bs as open source, because everybody can clearly see what<br>
a plugin does, and if it's an hf shelf with some gentle harmonic<br>
distortion, then people want the gui to say so, and not read "vintage<br>
warmth".<br>
<div><div></div><br></div></blockquote><div><br><br>While I understand the main message and agree with it, I think you are overgeneralizing.<br>VST plugin world has enough innovations and the amount of very capable, serious<br>
plugins is actually quite large. Not all of them use the word "Depth" or "Crunch", although<br>in some cases Depth is not a bad term at all, but even if they do, very often they have<br>instructions which explain in detail what each parameter actually is.<br>
<br>It is true that there are plugins which are just a joke, but on Linux I can also find several weird<br>LADSPA plugins, which have parameter names even worth than Depth, something along<br>the lines of S,Q,T,P1,P2 and some other unhelpful labels and which produce strange noise, but<br>
it really is not representative.<br><br>When it comes to VST world, the technical representation will not be in favor of Linux, unfortunately.<br>I wish it was, but it's not. I can name many excellent plugins, both VST and VSTi, which are both<br>
great functionally and are well marketed.<br><br>Perhaps I misunderstood what you want to say, but if you try to convey a message that VST is just<br>a bunch of cloned technology with good marketing and GUI, I would say you are over simplifying things<br>
enormously.<br><br>In fact, a couple of months ago on LAD list I did ask that same question and all you guys who are<br>developers answered. The question was whether VST stuff is really unique or whether there is not much<br>
innovation, but just copying. I don't remember exactly what everybody said, but I do remember people saying<br>that there are complex stuff in the VST world that at the moment do not exist on Linux, particularly good<br>
reverb algorithms. Some other complex DSP fields were also mentioned.<br><br>So, what I am saying is that VST world is some serious stuff and although there are many free plugins made<br>with SynthEdit which suck ass, there is a huge number of great VSTs which are not only marketing.<br>
<br></div></div>-- <br>Louigi Verona<br><a href="http://www.louigiverona.ru/">http://www.louigiverona.ru/</a><br>