[LAU] LV2, DSSI and the future of plugins

linuxdsp mike at linuxdsp.co.uk
Fri Jan 14 14:30:23 UTC 2011


Dave Phillips wrote:
> Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
>> On 1/14/11, Jeremy Jongepier wrote:
>>> 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.
>>>     
>>
>> The last sentence quite nails it :)
>>
>>   
> 
> Qtractor's been doing a pretty good job with the native VSTs I've tried 
> in it. What really needs done is a repair/rejuvenation of Lucio 
> Asnaghi's JOST. A working standalone host for native VSTs would be nice.
> 
> I recently purchased Loomer's Sequent, it's a lot of fun. I notice they 
> also have a nice-looking synthesizer in their catalog.
> 
> The LinuxDSP plugins - in all formats - seem pretty professional to my 
> ears and eyes.
> 
> Best,
> 
> dp
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> 

The plan is that the linuxDSP plugins should all be available in "all" 
formats eventually - LV2 seems to be by far the most popular, although I 
suspect that is in no small part due to ardour's support for it.  There 
are not many VST hosts, and I can understand that the steinberg license 
causes problems for some open-source projects (although, I have been 
testing the linuxDSP VSTs with builds of qtractor using the vestige 
headers and everything seems to work, so perhaps that provides a way to 
drive more support for VST - Rui has done a great job with qtractor, 
creating a DAW is no small undertaking!)
As regards the perceived lack of plugins - I think actually there are a 
wealth of capable plugins available, but as with any OS there are some 
good and some bad, (think of the number of questionable synthedit 
generated free VSTs on windows..) - from a (commercial) developer point 
of view, I would add that developing reliable and useful (and perhaps 
professional quality) plugins requires a lot of specialist knowledge, 
and is a very significant amount of work.  Often the commercial returns 
are quite small - our most significant revenue last year came not from 
downloads of linux plugins but from porting DSP technology to other 
commercial products, and I suspect this is true for developers on other 
OS too.  Some of which might explain the reluctance of commercial 
developers to support development for linux.



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