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

Steve Harris S.W.Harris at ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tue Jun 8 10:11:58 UTC 2004


On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 01:52:02 +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote:
> > JAMin is not a plugin. Its an app.
> 
> Think about it.
> A typical fx plugin takes audio as input does DSProcessing to the audio
> and outputs that. What does JAMin do?
> The whole purpose of JAMin is to do DSP. And if you make a send in
> ardour... :)

The point I didnt make is that JAMin /cannot/ be implemented efficiently
as a set of plugins. The (majority, non-ladspa) DSP code is very
intermingled, to make it run in realtime. You could argue that its just a
bad example, but I dont think thats the case.
 
> > 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.
> 
> Usability - as each host provides it's own UI for the same plugins,
> there's really no usability at all. The true beauty about VSTs is that
> they have the same visual appearance no matter which application you're
> using. That's rule #1 for having usability at all. And then there's the
> question of smaller usability issues, this varies from VST plugin to VST
> plugin.

Usability is a very broad term, some things, like not glitching when you
move a control or making each control have an (apparently) linear and
a definable effect on the sound, are also usability features. Those are
got by correctly mapping the user-facing controls to the underlying DSP
parameters. Usually in a very non-obvious way, but they have no bearing on
the appearance.

Though I do think appearance is important.

- Steve



More information about the Linux-audio-dev mailing list