[linux-audio-dev] RFC: Disposable Soft Synth Interface

[Chris Cannam]

Disposable Soft Synth Interface (DSSI, pronounced "dizzy") is a 
proposal for a plugin API for software instruments (soft synths) with 
user interfaces, permitting them to be hosted in-process by audio 
applications.  Think of it as LADSPA-for-instruments, or something 
comparable to a simpler version of VSTi.  It's intended to be simple, 
easy to write plugins for, GUI-toolkit-agnostic, and slightly biased 
towards familiarity with MIDI, and is proposed as an interim measure 
until bigger and better things come along: hence "disposable".

The proposal consists of an RFC, which describes the background and 
defines part of the proposed standard, plus a documented header file 
(dssi.h) which defines the remainder.  The distribution also contains 
a handful of public-domain example files including an almost complete 
(but not pretty) host implementation and a simple synth plugin with a 
GUI.  The API itself is licensed under the LGPL.

The full RFC may be read here:

  http://dssi.sourceforge.net/RFC.txt

The header file is here:

  http://dssi.sourceforge.net/dssi.h.txt

The 0.1 distribution containing RFC, header and examples may be 
downloaded from SourceForge: see http://dssi.sourceforge.net/ and 
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=104230 .

This proposal was constructed by Steve Harris and Chris Cannam.  
Comments to LAD please!  (Steve will be at ZKM, as those of you who've 
seen the schedule thingy will know; I can't make it there myself, so 
I'd quite like to see some feedback here.)


Chris