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

[Fons Adriaensen]

On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 01:54:58PM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote:

> Fons' Moog HP filter is a complex piece of DSP i suspect.

No, it's actually quite simple :-) The most complex one is
the four-band parametric filter I released recently, and 
that's also the only one that is not intended as an AMS
plugin. And it will reappear in some time as a JACK
application with it's own GUI, as this permits to do some
things that would be difficult in a plugin.   

Just to throw in my 2 eurocents in this debate:

- When I saw the collection of VST plugins that Paul Davis used
to show his VST hosting in Karlsruhe, I asked myself "My god,
do they all look that childish ?". This is just to say I terribly
dislike this eye-candy style, and given the choice between that
and a (maybe boring) set of standard toolkit sliders, I'd prefer
the latter. The ideal is somewhere in between, but certainly not
to the eye-candy side. 

- Before everything went digital, multitrack mixing desks had 
lots of controls and very little space to put them in. Good 
layout was absolutely essential, and most of the big name 
manufacturers mastered this quite well. It's done by 

   - observing elementary aesthetic rules (e.g. color 
     combinations),
   - removing all useless clutter,
   - following the logic of the application, e.g. keeping
     things that are related together,
   - accepting culturally defined standards, such as that
     a signal flows from left to right and from top to bottom.
   - using hints that are picked up unconsciously, rather
     than explicit labeling.

All of this is practically the inverse of eye-candy.

- Confucius says: When you see a piece of audio equipment
with the word "Professional" printed on it, then it probably
isn't.

- The typical VST plugin (talking about the serious ones)
corresponds more to a JACK application than a LADSPA plugin,
not because both have a GUI, but because of the complexity.
This is just a matter of naming. We could start calling a 
JACK application a JACK 'plugin' but I'd vote against.
JAMIN is a good example of this.

- As to LADSPA plugins, we could probably give almost all
of them a very functional and nice GUI by defining a set
of a few dozens of 'widget types'. Then there are a few
options:

1. the plugin specifies the dimensions and positions of
all the widgets,

2. the dimensions are standard, and the plugins specifies
the positions only,

3. the host keeps it own database of layouts indexed by
plugin ID.

I'm somehow in favour of 3, if the host's end user has
a simple way to add new plugins to the database.

-- 
Fons