I&#39;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.<br><br>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.<br>
<br>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&#39;t. I do think though that such a tool may spur development in linux based plugins.<br>
<br>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&#39;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&#39;ve used it to build a rudimentary ladspa plugin and it just worked. <br>
<br>Certainly I think if more plugins are desired, it wouldn&#39;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.<br><br>-michael<br>