[LAU] LV2, DSSI and the future of plugins

[Jeremy Jongepier]

On 01/14/2011 11:08 AM, allcoms wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> I suppose I could've just addressed this to drobilla and got most of my
> questions answered but it concerns us all really as even if A3 and qtractor
> were to achieve feature parity with Cubase and buds tomorrow (obviously I'm
> stretching things a bit there) we still wouldn't see vast droves switching
> to Linux DAWs for a few reasons such as hardware support, people liking what
> they know etc. but most importantly the dearth of quality native plugins
> available for Linux seems to be a primary showstopper for most.
> 

Is that necessarily bad? Maybe there is a dearth of quality native
plugins, but I'm fine with the plugins that are available currently. And
I'm happy I don't have to make up my mind which plugins to choose from
the thousands of plugins available if I would use a proprietary OS.

> DSSI has a few things coded for it but not much and its still very early
> days for LV2 so the open plugin format of the future is still anyones game
> and it may not necessarily be either of those that succeeds and gets widely
> used of course. I think a couple of VSTs have been ported over to LV2 but
> I'm not aware of any that have been ported to DSSI and I think that the ease
> in doing so is quite an important factor in the success of any such format,
> if not the be-all and end-all. If anyone here has any experience with coding
> and/or porting VSTis - what is currently lacking from LV2 or DSSI that could
> potentially cause problems for someone wanting to port their big beefy synth
> or snazzy FX from VSTi to LV2 or DSSI? I already know about the incomplete
> persist LV2 extension but I'm pretty sure that won't be the only thing
> needing work.
> 

Don't forget native Linux VST's, their number is steadily growing also.
I think I have about 60 to 70 of those sitting on my harddrive.
Unfortunately there are very few hosts.

Best,

Jeremy