[LAU] Plugin confused

[Paul Davis]

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Julien Claassen <julien at c-lab.de> wrote:
> Hello Chip!
>  I think there is the Vamps system. I don't know, what these plugins were
> developed for. I know, that there are problems for finer speech processing.

VAMP is not a realtime plugin API. Its designed for things that need
to do at least 1 pass over the data before deciding what to do.

>  LADSPA is sort of LV1. At least LV2 was designed starting from LADSPA. I
> think it is designed to also allow MIDI control ports and built-in UIs.
>  DSSI and LADSPA are very close, I think part of their API is compatible,
> please correct me if I'm wrong. But DSSI also allows for UIs. I don't know,
> if DSSI directly supports MIDI input or if it is somehow forwarded through
> the dssi host. DSSI is mainly used for soft synths.

DSSI was just a stop-gap measure introduced because LADSPA had no way
to support MIDI (and thus you cannot write a LADSPA MIDI-driven
instrument plugin)

LV2 represents some kind of version of the community's best-effort
attempt to define a better plugin API. It is hard to explain why LV2
is so superior because its rooted in a feature that actually makes it
quite annoying for anyone who isn't instantly convinced that endless
extensibility is the right goal. But it allows for more or less
anything, assuming that both parties (the plugin and the host) can
agree on it.