On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 10:18, Steve Harris wrote:
On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 11:45:53 +0200, Marek Peteraj
wrote:
VST plugins tend to be rather complex, offering
tons of features and
eyecandish GUIs, while LADSPAs usually offer limited functionality, no
GUI at all(hosts usually provide simple ones to control the parameters).
But what's interesting is that each LADSPA plugin usually implements
exactly one type of DSP technique, for example, an oscillator, or a
delay. This basically leads to a situation where a certain DSP technique
is 'isolated' in a separate plugin.
I think thats down to two factors (and its not a good thing)
1) LADSPA developers are few in number and short in time. The basics are a
good place to start.
The number of dsp developers isn't relevant.
Besides - there's at least 5 devs i know of. The number will grow.
2) The lack of a UI standard makes complex plugins a bit pointless.
Why do you need a UI standard for jack fx/synth clients? Does JAMin
follow one such standard?
You could do a virtually unlimited amount of UIs for exactly 1 fx/synth
using IPC.
There are a few counter examples (e.g. my VyNil plugin wraps a lot of
different bits), and infact if you look in many LADSPA plugins you will
see theres really more going on than there appears to be.
According to my proposal, this shouldn't happen. :)
[OT] - my canned plugin writing experience - all generalisations and IMHO
of course
Time breakdown: 10% writing code, 10% maths and optimising, 80% tweaking
and tuning.
See point 6)
Fewer controls is better.
Doesn't seem like if you look at the most successful
VST(i)/DX(i)/RTAS/TDM/AI plugins :)
Affordance, appearance and usability has as much affect on the perceived
sound quality as the DSP code (posivly and negativly). Some of this can
be achieved without a custom UI.
Today we've got 100% Affordance, 0% appearance and 0% usability. :)
At least the point that there's no unified affordance since each host
implements it's own, makes the question of usability irrelevant.
You mentioned JAMin - true that does use LADSPA plugins - but of the total
ammount of code the LADSPA plugins are a tiny fraction. I just reused them
because I hate fixing bugs in two places :)
And? :)
Points 5) and 6)
Marek