[linux-audio-dev] XAP: Some thoughts on control ramping

[Paul Davis]

>On Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 11:24:20 -0500, Paul Davis wrote:
>> some guys from ohm force mentioned at the unified plugin api meeting
>> on sunday that they and a number of other people on the music-dsp (or
>> perhaps some other list) have written a 60 page document on proposals
>> for a plugin API. they left the meeting before i could get a url (they
>> had a copy with them - this is not vaporware).
>> 
>> it seems like it would be worth reading before going to far further
>> with XAP. 
>
>Yes. Do you have anything to report back from the meeting?

well, it was interesting. as one could have predicted, nothing much
happened in terms of movement other than the 40 or so people there
signing up to a mailing list. it was proposed that there would be a 4
stage process:

      requirement gathering
      design
      review
      publication

it was not clear whether any of these steps would be accomplished. ron
noted that expected the whole thing to take several (1-3) years.

however, it was very significant to have every involved company except
digidesign there (MS is represented, in essence, by Cakewalk who wrote
DXi). i'm not sure that it has ever happened before. the most
suprising thing for many people was steinberg's response: they seemed
really quite hurt, in the full psychological sense of that term, that
this was even happening. they considered VST to be "the standard" and
that it was MOTU and Cakewalk who spoiled things by not adopting
it. the politics of the session were quite delicate. a rep from apple
indicated a real reluctance on their part to putting much effort into
it because of their recent effort on AU, but they promised to track
what comes of it (if anything). there was a certain level of
skepticism that even if a new API was developed that anyone would use
it as any more than the "5th format" (after VST, MAS, AU, TDM etc.)
ron kuper from cakewalk who initiated the whole thing was quite clear
that one possible outcome from the process could be a decision to
recommend an existing API, but that the goal of the process is
definitely to have an industry group and/or standards body manage
whatever was selected. several folks raised the central problem of
(even benign) proprietary control of an API, and the shadow of the
OMS/Opcode/Gibson debacle hung long over any claims that a particular
company could safeguard "a standard". it was inevitably the plugin
writers who were most enthusiastic, and several people talked about
their desire for new features (or even just fully implemented
features). joe bryan of universal audio, always one of the most lucid
contributors to the vst-plugin list and a really really deeply
technical guy was very clear about some of the things they want to see
- they have particular issues because they are running plugins on
dedicated hardware, not the host CPU.

the biggest issue right now is just what happens next. the MMA is
going to sponsor a mailing list. the initial requirements gathering
phase of the process will be open to the public, but the current
thinking is that the design phase after that will be restricted to MMA
members. if that happens, i propose that LAD organizes to raise the
$450 or so that it would take to register a corporate membership of
some kind. the review phase (if it ever gets there) will be public,
and then the release phase will be private. the result will end up
being much like the MIDI spec - publically accessible, though the full
specs might cost non-MMA members (unlikely in an online era). note
that many plugin companies are not MMA members either - this is not
just an issue for folks in the linux world.

there was a slight air of "this is never going to work" that hung in
the room, but at the same time, there was also a sense of "its time we
did this". the absence of digi was very notable - if they are really
the 800lb gorilla that everybody thinks they are, its a bit of a
problem. 

the last thing i would mention are the concerns i heard about copy
protection. apparently one of the reasons why some plugin writers only
write for TDM is that it provides excellent (hardware based) copy
protection. waves would be the obvious example here, though they
support some other formats too. it seems that those companies who
stake their existence on plugins would be very scared of supporting
any platform that allowed copying in the way that windows/macos and
linux do. on the other hand, i talked with angus hewlett of fxpansion
(another brit). angus knows that his warez/demo-to-sales ratio is on
the order of "hundreds to 1", but he doesn't seem to care too much. he
makes a living with/for 2 other employees, and things look ok to him.

the biggest thing that struck me (and this was echoed by comments from
angus) was how **tiny** the whole music/audio software industry
is. angus said that after 2-3 years of doing this, he knows more or
less everyone in the industry. you really had the sense that, barring
digidesign, we had the whole group in that room. i used to have
friends who could have bought most of the companies represented there
out of their own personal accounts :)) people planning on getting rich
in this field are out of their minds.

--p