5 ms·

what’s the point of a new standard when no DAW besides Bitwig supports it?

smoldesu 4y ago
Old standards suck. VST is owned by Steinberg, and has caused all sorts of trouble in the quest for the "perfect" plugin format. Apple had a couple different solutions to this, but all of them were obviously proprietary to their ecosystem (and only a sidegrade to being shacked to Steinberg). It would be nice to see "one standard to rule them all" for Windows, MacOS and Linux, and u-he has enough weight behind their name to influence a change. There's a lot of hope behind this, and unless Apple decides to open-source their plugin format, there's nobody to compete. VSTs are so bad that most DAWs would adopt an alternative with zero additional features, simply because Steinberg's positioning is a pain for the community. I reckon this little format has a chance, but it remains to be seen whether it's successful or not.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Optimal_Persona 4y ago
  Since CLAP was announced last year, I've seen lot of online interest in CLAP from electronic musicians, plus independent audio developers who are sick of dealing with bureaucratic BS around Apple's AU Avid's AAX, and Steinberg's VST plugin standards. I would put Urs Heckman from u-he at the tip-top of not just audio DSP developers, but small business owners who truly care about advancing the state of the art. If u-he and Bitwig can get other Berlin-based audio shops on board this has a good chance of succeeding.
happyhardcore 4y ago
Looking at Ableton 11's feature set it seems they're running out of ideas; CLAP support would definitely be the kinda thing that could compel people to upgrade to a future version. It being MIT licensed also gives it a much better chance of getting integrated into all sorts of smaller DAWs and cheaper ones too that might not have wanted to deal with all the nonsense that comes with VST.
- zarmin 4y ago
  They can't even add ARA2 when every other major DAW has had it for years. Something is deeply wrong with Ableton, either they have trash product managers, SWE, or the 20+ year old codebase is too fragile. For example, why can't I have more than 7 collection folders?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Note that Bitwig does not have ARA2 support either. Bitwig was developed by some folks who left Ableton to push in directions that Ableton did not want to go. So ... consider the possibility that the fundamental data models in both Live and Bitwig make it hard to support ARA2, in an inverse of the way that Live (and later Bitwig) had clip launching for 16 years before any other DAW.
    - zarmin 4y ago
      Yes, I think that is very likely the case. That worries me as a customer, especially as more ARA-based plugins are released.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Or ARA is not a priority for their market? They have rewritten their codebase back 10-15 years ago (or at least refactored it heavily) and have made videos about it.
    - zarmin 4y ago
      https://i.imgur.com/u7VVCLT.png https://i.imgur.com/u7VVCLT.png
      - coldtea 4y ago
        Given enough users, people will ask for any feature. The question was whether it was a priority for most.
pier25 4y ago
Most likely Studio One, FLStudio, and Reaper will have it too. I think Live will support it at some point. Cubase and Logic... I doubt it.
- sylwester 4y ago
  FL Studio is already mentioned as application supporting CLAP
  - ratww 4y ago
    Image Line (makers of FL Studio) are in the "are already evaluating CLAP" list, so they're not already supporting.
Shared404 4y ago
> CLAP 1.0 is the result of a multi-year project initiated by u-he and Bitwig, with design and implementation contributions by a group of commercial and open source audio developers from across our industry. Looks like it's only a matter of time until others pick it up.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
I've invested a lot of time in VST3 lately and honestly, it's got problems. The actual API isn't terrible, if you can find it under the huge pile of abstractions and classes and toolkits built overtop of it and shipped in the SDK. Steinberg's SDK has too many normative lifestyle assumptions. From VSTGUI to their own COM-like component model to the huge mile high pile of macros they've thrown onto CMake, it's just ... pushy, its own universe. Doesn't play well with others. I built for it because I wanted what I was working on to be workable in the majority of DAWs. But as the thing I was working on went from "maybe a $$ project" to "I'll open source this", I'm not sure I want to invest anymore time in VST3. I could see porting to CLAP instead.

Old standards suck. VST is owned by Steinberg, and has caused all sorts of trouble in the quest for the "perfect" plugin format. Apple had a couple different solutions to this, but all of them were obviously proprietary to their ecosystem (and only a sidegrade to being shacked to Steinberg). It would be nice to see "one standard to rule them all" for Windows, MacOS and Linux, and u-he has enough weight behind their name to influence a change. There's a lot of hope behind this, and unless Apple decides to open-source their plugin format, there's nobody to compete. VSTs are so bad that most DAWs would adopt an alternative with zero additional features, simply because Steinberg's positioning is a pain for the community. I reckon this little format has a chance, but it remains to be seen whether it's successful or not.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Optimal_Persona 4y ago
Since CLAP was announced last year, I've seen lot of online interest in CLAP from electronic musicians, plus independent audio developers who are sick of dealing with bureaucratic BS around Apple's AU Avid's AAX, and Steinberg's VST plugin standards. I would put Urs Heckman from u-he at the tip-top of not just audio DSP developers, but small business owners who truly care about advancing the state of the art. If u-he and Bitwig can get other Berlin-based audio shops on board this has a good chance of succeeding.

happyhardcore 4y ago

Looking at Ableton 11's feature set it seems they're running out of ideas; CLAP support would definitely be the kinda thing that could compel people to upgrade to a future version. It being MIT licensed also gives it a much better chance of getting integrated into all sorts of smaller DAWs and cheaper ones too that might not have wanted to deal with all the nonsense that comes with VST.

zarmin 4y ago
They can't even add ARA2 when every other major DAW has had it for years. Something is deeply wrong with Ableton, either they have trash product managers, SWE, or the 20+ year old codebase is too fragile. For example, why can't I have more than 7 collection folders?
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Note that Bitwig does not have ARA2 support either. Bitwig was developed by some folks who left Ableton to push in directions that Ableton did not want to go. So ... consider the possibility that the fundamental data models in both Live and Bitwig make it hard to support ARA2, in an inverse of the way that Live (and later Bitwig) had clip launching for 16 years before any other DAW.
  - zarmin 4y ago
    Yes, I think that is very likely the case. That worries me as a customer, especially as more ARA-based plugins are released.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Or ARA is not a priority for their market? They have rewritten their codebase back 10-15 years ago (or at least refactored it heavily) and have made videos about it.
  - zarmin 4y ago
    https://i.imgur.com/u7VVCLT.png https://i.imgur.com/u7VVCLT.png
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Given enough users, people will ask for any feature. The question was whether it was a priority for most.

pier25 4y ago

Most likely Studio One, FLStudio, and Reaper will have it too. I think Live will support it at some point. Cubase and Logic... I doubt it.

sylwester 4y ago
FL Studio is already mentioned as application supporting CLAP
- ratww 4y ago
  Image Line (makers of FL Studio) are in the "are already evaluating CLAP" list, so they're not already supporting.

Shared404 4y ago

> CLAP 1.0 is the result of a multi-year project initiated by u-he and Bitwig, with design and implementation contributions by a group of commercial and open source audio developers from across our industry. Looks like it's only a matter of time until others pick it up.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

I've invested a lot of time in VST3 lately and honestly, it's got problems. The actual API isn't terrible, if you can find it under the huge pile of abstractions and classes and toolkits built overtop of it and shipped in the SDK. Steinberg's SDK has too many normative lifestyle assumptions. From VSTGUI to their own COM-like component model to the huge mile high pile of macros they've thrown onto CMake, it's just ... pushy, its own universe. Doesn't play well with others. I built for it because I wanted what I was working on to be workable in the majority of DAWs. But as the thing I was working on went from "maybe a $$ project" to "I'll open source this", I'm not sure I want to invest anymore time in VST3. I could see porting to CLAP instead.