Re: [linux-audio-dev] XAP: Some thoughts on control ramping

well, it was interesting. as one could have predicted, nothing much happened in terms of movement other than the 40 or so people there signing up to a mailing list. it was proposed that there would be a 4 stage process: requirement gathering design review publication it was not clear whether any of these steps would be accomplished. ron noted that expected the whole thing to take several (1-3) years. however, it was very significant to have every involved company except digidesign there (MS is represented, in essence, by Cakewalk who wrote DXi). i'm not sure that it has ever happened before. the most suprising thing for many people was steinberg's response: they seemed really quite hurt, in the full psychological sense of that term, that this was even happening. they considered VST to be "the standard" and that it was MOTU and Cakewalk who spoiled things by not adopting it. the politics of the session were quite delicate. a rep from apple indicated a real reluctance on their part to putting much effort into it because of their recent effort on AU, but they promised to track what comes of it (if anything). there was a certain level of skepticism that even if a new API was developed that anyone would use it as any more than the "5th format" (after VST, MAS, AU, TDM etc.) ron kuper from cakewalk who initiated the whole thing was quite clear that one possible outcome from the process could be a decision to recommend an existing API, but that the goal of the process is definitely to have an industry group and/or standards body manage whatever was selected. several folks raised the central problem of (even benign) proprietary control of an API, and the shadow of the OMS/Opcode/Gibson debacle hung long over any claims that a particular company could safeguard "a standard". it was inevitably the plugin writers who were most enthusiastic, and several people talked about their desire for new features (or even just fully implemented features). joe bryan of universal audio, always one of the most lucid contributors to the vst-plugin list and a really really deeply technical guy was very clear about some of the things they want to see - they have particular issues because they are running plugins on dedicated hardware, not the host CPU. the biggest issue right now is just what happens next. the MMA is going to sponsor a mailing list. the initial requirements gathering phase of the process will be open to the public, but the current thinking is that the design phase after that will be restricted to MMA members. if that happens, i propose that LAD organizes to raise the $450 or so that it would take to register a corporate membership of some kind. the review phase (if it ever gets there) will be public, and then the release phase will be private. the result will end up being much like the MIDI spec - publically accessible, though the full specs might cost non-MMA members (unlikely in an online era). note that many plugin companies are not MMA members either - this is not just an issue for folks in the linux world. there was a slight air of "this is never going to work" that hung in the room, but at the same time, there was also a sense of "its time we did this". the absence of digi was very notable - if they are really the 800lb gorilla that everybody thinks they are, its a bit of a problem. the last thing i would mention are the concerns i heard about copy protection. apparently one of the reasons why some plugin writers only write for TDM is that it provides excellent (hardware based) copy protection. waves would be the obvious example here, though they support some other formats too. it seems that those companies who stake their existence on plugins would be very scared of supporting any platform that allowed copying in the way that windows/macos and linux do. on the other hand, i talked with angus hewlett of fxpansion (another brit). angus knows that his warez/demo-to-sales ratio is on the order of "hundreds to 1", but he doesn't seem to care too much. he makes a living with/for 2 other employees, and things look ok to him. the biggest thing that struck me (and this was echoed by comments from angus) was how **tiny** the whole music/audio software industry is. angus said that after 2-3 years of doing this, he knows more or less everyone in the industry. you really had the sense that, barring digidesign, we had the whole group in that room. i used to have friends who could have bought most of the companies represented there out of their own personal accounts :)) people planning on getting rich in this field are out of their minds. --p