[LAU] LV2, DSSI and the future of plugins

michael noble looplog at gmail.com
Sat Jan 15 04:11:44 UTC 2011


I'm coming late to the conversation here but I wanted to bring this point up
a while back, probably the last time this conversation took place.

When I was first getting started with computer based music and sound
production I used windows, and from recollection, one of the early events
that led to an explosion of interest in and creation for the VST standard
was the graphical tool Synthedit.  It enabled non-programmers, but people
willing to experiment with dsp development, or even people with dsp
knowledge but wanting a faster tool chain, to develop complex plugins, and
also share libraries developed for synthedit to allow a mixed community of
amateur and professional developers to emerge.

I may be overstating its significance in the rise of windows audio
production. Nor am I saying that everything created with such a tool was of
a high standard - it clearly wasn't. I do think though that such a tool may
spur development in linux based plugins.

The curious thing is that such a tool exists, at least in early stages, but
no one here ever talks about it much, which I think is a shame. I'm talking
about CLAM network manager, which is a QT based graphical tool for many
things. It is similar in some ways to other graphical patching environments
like PD. ingen or even AMS (another vastly underrated tool IMO). One feature
that makes it pertinent to this discussion is that it has been able to be
used to build ladspa plugins for some time now, and I believe the coming
release allows building LV2 plugins with QT UI. I've used it to build a
rudimentary ladspa plugin and it just worked.

Certainly I think if more plugins are desired, it wouldn't hurt to either
try using CLAM, or get involved in its development to make it a tool that
could spur linux audio development in general.

-michael
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