Tracking CLAP hosts and plugins

[whyterabbyt]

Not clap
This is the future:
https://www.gpu.audio/

No, an audio processing API is not the future of plugin format APIs.

[mabian]

Not clap
This is the future:
https://www.gpu.audio/

How long are we supposed to feed this troll debate...?

If the "big three" don't support CLAP why should they support GPU audio, especially considering it will be much more strictly tied to some specific (hardware)? Come on let's talk about something more interesting and real...

- Mario

[mabian]

Not clap
This is the future:
https://www.gpu.audio/

How long are we supposed to feed this troll debate...?

If the "big three" don't support CLAP why should they support GPU audio, especially considering it will be much more strictly tied to specific constraints (hardware)? Come on let's talk about something more interesting and real...

- Mario

[dayjob]

I see Ableton mentioned in this thread but is there anything beyond rumors about them supporting CLAP? It’d be great if they do.

[gaggle of hermits]

I see Ableton mentioned in this thread but is there anything beyond rumors about them supporting CLAP? It’d be great if they do.

I'm not sure it's even a rumour. but given recent events, they have fewer choices, unless they plan to face Steinberg down over continuing vst2 support. it's possible they might use the recent launch of v12 to slow-walk that removal - "well, we couldn't pull it now in a minor update, it's gotta stay until at least v13. see you in court if you really care, steinberg"

but doing it now, especially as their main competitors, in the shape of flstudio and bitwig both have CLAP support, makes sense looking at as an observer.

[syntonica]

Considering it took Jo about a week to add CLAP support to Mulab, and he's a lone wolf developer, I think any other DAW dev with multiple programmers could add it in an afternoon.

( just a little sarcasm here, but it's really that simple if the DAW already supports multiple plugin formats.)

[gaggle of hermits]

Considering it took Jo about a week to add CLAP support to Mulab, and he's a lone wolf developer, I think any other DAW dev with multiple programmers could add it in an afternoon.

yes, but <gerard butler voice>"THIS IS ABLETON!"

[syntonica]

Considering it took Jo about a week to add CLAP support to Mulab, and he's a lone wolf developer, I think any other DAW dev with multiple programmers could add it in an afternoon.

yes, but <gerard butler voice>"THIS IS ABLETON!"

Fine. Since it takes then five times longer to do anything, FIVE afternoons.

[Kypresso]

Considering it took Jo about a week to add CLAP support to Mulab, and he's a lone wolf developer, I think any other DAW dev with multiple programmers could add it in an afternoon.

yes, but <gerard butler voice>"THIS IS ABLETON!"

Fine. Since it takes then five times longer to do anything, FIVE afternoons.

But they would have to take a 3 month break to recover after each afternoon, so it would take about a year. Still speedy for ableton.

[dayjob]

I’m curious if anyone from CLAP has had a conversation with the abletons about it. I wonder how those conversations might be characterized if they indeed have happened

[NAD]

I’m curious if anyone from CLAP has had a conversation with the abletons about it. I wonder how those conversations might be characterized if they indeed have happened

Both Bitwig and U-he are based in Berlin and so is Ableton, so theoretically they could all just go for a coffee together.

[liquidsound]

I was able to load SurgeXT-Clap in Reason and Ableton with MuLab app.
Not a wrapper but...

[jules99]

I’m curious if anyone from CLAP has had a conversation with the abletons about it. I wonder how those conversations might be characterized if they indeed have happened

This has been talked about in this thread about 365 times. Ableton might include CLAP at some point, especially given that now FL is doing it. But Ableton has many times been slow to include features other DAWs had for years like comping, wavetable, or round-robin sampling. Pitch-correction still isn't there.

So it might be 1-2 years away at least....

[xbitz]

That was such a well-put-together answer that I'm quoting it here as well,

Hevy - IL FLStudio

Can someone please explain what are the advantages of using a CLAP plugin in FL?
Or what advantages we could expect in the future?

My personal thought is that it is a good thing that shows Steinberg that they do not have the power and someone want's to get their 'throne'.
I do not think that they want to fight VST, as they try to prevent a 'VST vs CLAP' list from their side on, but a lot of people are really fed up by how Steinberg handles VST and VST3.
VST3 is a mess to implement, for example, the implementation of VST3 into a host takes weeks + a LONG time afterwards to get bugs out of the system.
CLAP takes around 3 days and was for most parts bug-free (in terms of communication between host/plugin, etc, minor bugs and mostly bugs from CLAP itself as far as I understood).
It is designed to be minimal at the interface, modular as you have a LOT of extensions you can implement, depending on what you need/want.

For example:
You do not need the latency reported as you have a special host that is not depending on other tracks for PDC? Don't use CLAP_EXT_LATENCY.
You want to be able to know which note ports (note configuration) the plugin has, or the host is on? Use CLAP_EXT_NOTE_PORTS.
Same for audio ports: CLAP_EXT_AUDIO_PORTS.
CLAP_EXT_STATE for the state saving/recalling.
CLAP_EXT_NOTE_NAME for showing names in the Piano Roll or CLAP_EXT_CONTEXT_MENU to show the hosts content menu.

And the best part is, it loads quicker, scans quicker, AND allows for a more optimized CPU usage with CLAP_EXT_THREAD_POOL.

So it allows you to have a deeper/better integration than VST/VST3, while only needing a part of the work to maintain it.
It is modular so you can extend it or write your own extensions (Reaper has a API extension for example).

CLAP has (unlike VST) full MIDI support.
It is better multithreaded with a better allocation or roles between plugin/DAW.
Open source (so writing plugins is easier under the non-proprietary licensing framework MIT License)

So it should help with plugin scanning times, better CPU usage inside the plugin and less stress/hussle to keep the standard working and as bug-free as possible.

https://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic. ... 9#p1935439

[kperry]

Here is why we MUST have CLAP. The very thing that everyone feared has happened.

Steinberg, in the agreement for VST 3.7.10 has exercised their right to revoke access to the VST2 SDK, which means that very soon every developer who builds their plugin frameworks and CI pipelines around VST2 are now SOL. They will no longer be able to use it, and they either have to re-engineer everything from scratch around VST3, or invent their own plugin-neutral platforms, or rewrite to use some other intermediate platform such as JUCE, or do the smart thing and develop to CLAP, and wrap as VST3, AAX, and AU. JUCE itself must drop VST2 support, and no one with older versions of JUCE can produce VST2 plugins for sale with it.

https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3s ... eement.pdf

The key provisions are 1.6:


9.4:


and 9.8:


Note that 9.4 was in previous VST3 agreements. So in effect, this means that once that written notice goes out and 6 months have passed, the next release of every host and every plugin, and all new hosts and plugins hereafter, which support VST3, must drop support for VST2.

The only ones who are safe are those who previously signed the VST2 agreement, never signed the VST3 agreements, and therefore only support VST2.

The only question is: When will the written notice in 9.4 go out? This agreement was published this January. When it does go out, the clock starts ticking.

I am not a lawyer, but usually a capitalised word (Agreement) means something very specific and is defined in the header of the contract. With that in mind, would Agreement mean VST 3 "agreements", especially in light of 1.6? ie. Signing this Agreement (VST 3) terminates and replaces all other Agreements (VST 3) and explicitly does not refer to other agreements there may be with Steinberg, in particular those relating to VST 2 development or hosting?