hackernews client

VST3 audio plugin format is now MIT

557 pointsposted 13 hours ago

by rock_artist

(forums.steinberg.net)

128 Comments

mastazi

11 hours ago

I'm going to file this under "examples of Yamaha doing the right thing" (Steinberg is owned by Yamaha)

previous examples:

* Yamaha saved Korg by buying it when it was in financial trouble and giving it a cash injection, only to then sell it back to its previous owners once they had enough cash[1].

* Yamaha in the 80's had acquired Sequential (for those not familiar: Sequential Circuits is one of the most admired synthesizer makers). Many years later, Sequential's founder Dave Smith established a new company under a different name and in 2015 Yamaha decided to return the rights to use the Sequential brand to Smith, as a gesture of goodwill, on Sequential's 40th anniversary (this was also thanks to Roland's founder Ikutaro Kakehashi who convinced Yamaha that it would be the right thing to do) [1][2][3]

[1] https://www.soundonsound.com/music-business/history-korg-par...

[2] https://www.gearnews.com/american-giants-the-history-of-sequ...

[3] https://ra.co/news/42428

bayindirh

10 hours ago

Yamaha is an old company found on very different ethos compared to others. Their history is interesting, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6t5F3cb810

It's worth a watch.

On another note, it's very telling that companies that protect their "hey! we do this interesting thing, gonna buy?" character survives for much longer compared to companies which say "we can earn a ton of money if we do this".

The companies in the second lot does a lot of harm to their ecosystems to be able to continue existing.

singingfish

8 hours ago

I've had some impressive customer service from Yamaha concerning decades old saxophones that they have zero prospect of generating revenue from in the future, for an unrelated (musical) data point.

bayindirh

4 hours ago

Japanese companies don't give you a good service because of future revenue prospects.

They give a good service because they respect the thing they built and the person who cares for it. They want their products to live and bring joy to people who guards and cares for them.

This is a completely different and much deeper philosophy.

This is not limited to Japanese companies though. A Lamy representative told me that the factory in Germany restored an out of production fountain pen to mint condition, for free.

ErroneousBosh

2 hours ago

Want a bit for your early 80s Mercedes? Your local dealer probably has it, or knows where to get it.

Want a bit for your early 50s Mercedes? Your local dealer knows a guy in Stuttgart who will send it over.

Want a bit for your early 30s Mercedes? Your local dealer knows a guy in Stuttgart who knows a guy who will *just go and make you one*, albeit it will be priced accordingly.

TazeTSchnitzel

9 hours ago

Yamaha still document their products properly and provide very long driver support. I currently have a Yamaha product with USB from 1999 and there is still a maintained driver for it 26 years later, for Windows 11 and modern macOS versions.

oidar

7 hours ago

I wouldn't depend on them to do this for all their products esp software. I can think of two of the top of my head that they dropped support.

iainctduncan

29 minutes ago

Another thing they do right is build cheap instruments that are actually decent and have high build quality. It is quite remarkable how high quality their "beginner" and "intermediate" line saxophones are.

They are really well respected in professional music circles. I don't like their tenor saxes, but man they made some great altos and sopranos, including the mid tier ones.

coldtea

11 hours ago

customer: hello, I want to buy a piano please

yamaha: sure, here you go

customer: great, thanks! lol, I also need a motorcycle. Do you know where I can buy a good one?

yamaha: you're not gonna believe this...

sparky_z

11 hours ago

Completely separate companies, both called Yamaha. One was spun off from the other, but I don't think there was ever a time when the same company sold both. (Basically, the musical instrument company was redirected to making war materiel during WWII. After the war, they didn't want to just throw away all of their new industrial capacity so they spun off a company to make use of all their new equipment and expertise and then went back to making instruments.)

Gormo

7 hours ago

Although the Yamaha that makes music and audio products is the same Yamaha that makes golf clubs (https://global.golf.yamaha.com/en/) and industrial equipment (https://www.yamahafinetech.co.jp/en/).

tessierashpool9

9 hours ago

The OG Yamaha produced a motorcycle in 1954, the YA-1. That success then led to the spin off.

(fun fact: the motorcycle Triumph and the undergarment Triumph are two entirely different companies that just happen to share the same name)

rzzzt

5 hours ago

A motorcycle named Norton Commander also exists, and Nokia* sold winter bicycle tires with studs on them so they would grip better on ice and snow.

kilpikaarna

2 hours ago

Not sure about the meaning of your asterisk, but the Nokian Tyres corporation is not related to Nokia the telecoms co, other than being founded in the same town.

Nokia did manufacture rubber boots though, before they spun off the footwear division in 1990 and went all in on electronics.

blacklion

3 hours ago

Nokian studded tires for bicycles are (were?) the best! Rode many-many kilometers at winter with them!

alterom

7 hours ago

Triumph is also a garment brand? Never heard of it.

pegasus

7 hours ago

I had no idea you've never heard of it. Thanks for keeping us informed.

smcnally

6 hours ago

It’s also a Wonder Dog, a Canadian power trio not featuring Neal Peart, and a moment when we shouldn’t evacuate the Death Star.

thunky

6 hours ago

> Wonder Dog

I think you meant Insult Comic Dog.

reactordev

6 hours ago

I guess we were too good at Triumphing…

reactordev

6 hours ago

Same company

They may have “different legal entities” but it’s the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_Corporation

ants_everywhere

6 hours ago

I didn't realize when I was a kid that the Yamaha music company came first.

I remember being confused when looking at high end saxophones that one was made by an old French company (that made sense, France makes many fine luxury goods including instruments) and the other was (in my mind) made by a motorcycle company. How could a motorcycle company possibly have compiled the expertise to make high end musical instruments when most musical instrument companies were chasing the low end of the market at the time?

But Yamaha music (1887) was started only 2 years after Selmer (1885). They got their start making reed organs. Reed organs (1) are technical, (2) make sound with reeds, and (3) are luxury items. So their expertise in sax (a reed instrument) and synthesizers (technical keyboard instruments) makes a ton of sense.

duznad

4 hours ago

Day Start proekror proom

jurip

7 hours ago

I love Yamaha Motor using the tuning forks as their logo. It's a proper beautiful old-timey logo (well, from 1967, apparently, but anyway) and it's just so weird seeing them on a motorcycle.

https://www.yamaha.com/en/about/history/logo/

Shadowmist

5 hours ago

Just pretend it is the thing that hold the front wheel.

GuinansEyebrows

2 hours ago

Coincidentally also called a fork/forks :)

somat

8 hours ago

Apparently they also make network switches. I guess it is in support of their computerized audio equipment. but I was a bit surprised when they showed up in a search result.

https://usa.yamaha.com/products/proaudio/network_switches/in...

They have the technical capability to design one, but on the surface it is enough outside their core product line that I wonder if it is a oem rebadge.

bayindirh

7 hours ago

They claim that they're developing routers since 1995 and they're used widely in domestic Japan (SME and SOHO).

Looks like switches came in 2011 and there's some secret sauce which makes them autoconfigure each-other to reduce networking setup.

It might not be a standard OEM stuff.

Citing the page:

> Yamaha entered the router business in 1995, and has grown to hold a significant share of Japan’s small to medium enterprise and SOHO network market. Yamaha gigabit L2 switches that could be linked to Yamaha routers/firewalls were introduced in 2011, with features that significantly reduced the network setup, maintenance, and management workload.

conradfr

4 hours ago

They make Dante licenced products.

bobson381

7 hours ago

Huh, thanks for sharing. Funny to see the switches in the same color scheme as some of their receivers.

cisophrene

11 hours ago

I don't think Yamaha Motor is producing any large trucks. They do a lot of things but mostly motorcycles, atv, boat engine, even car engines but not the whole car.

Also, you should note that Yamaha Corporation, the musical instrument maker and Yamaha Motor are now 2 distinct independent companies, even if were originally part of the same group.

coldtea

10 hours ago

They are independent yes, but originally the motor company was an affiliate spin-off. They do have an agreement and share the same logo, and Yamaha Corporation has some shares in the Motor one tho.

aatd86

10 hours ago

a former keiretsu?

actionfromafar

9 hours ago

Former, current, reformed keiretsu?

ErroneousBosh

2 hours ago

drcongo

2 hours ago

Wait till you find out about Mitsubishi.

temp0826

34 minutes ago

I remember being bewildered their diversity as a teenager, and then even more so when I found out that MUFG actually backed my bank at the time.

sim7c00

10 hours ago

interesting stuff. I love Yamaha for audio stuff for sure, didn't know they owned Steinberg though.

Their speakers i think are lovely examples of their engineering quality. Great and honest sound, some of the best out there, and they are not super over-priced. Also ,they are super repairable. Had some really bad experiences with other brands which were, more expensive for a more biassed sound, had 'black gunk' over the PCBs as some kind of anti-repair mechanism. (overheats the boards too! ew!) and other crappy issues.

Cool to hear there's such a story behind the quality. Makes sense!

tannhaeuser

8 hours ago

Had no idea it was bought by Yamaha.

Still they're a separate legal entity and their HQ, development, support, etc. are still located in Hamburg like they used to be since the early-mid 1980s when they released their MIDI sequencing software for Atari ST (Steinberg Twenty 4 I believe it was called?). I guess you could do worse than being bought by Yamaha, but I think this decision isn't related to it.

unleaded

4 hours ago

Strangely enough Yamaha has never released a software version of any of their synths. (there's S-YXG50 and the Montage one but I wouldn't really count those)

giancarlostoro

3 hours ago

What really kills me about companies and maybe Yamaha is a little different, or rather drastically, is any time CEO's shift, or original founding CEO is swapped, the company culture changes too drastically. There's companies whose original culture I admired, and then the CEO shifts and its just meh, or worse.

pantulis

11 hours ago

Great recap!

oybng

3 hours ago

The direct result of the newer, open CLAP format being objectively better in every way. Steinberg has gone to great lengths to force adoption of the trash that is VST3 and retain it's stranglehold on the audio world, including but not limited to, takedowns of distributors, takedowns of VST2.4 SDKs, constant threats of legal action against independent VST2.4 developers forcing them to remove purchases from customers, and funding particular plugin frameworks & daw developers to slow CLAP adoption.

keyle

12 hours ago

Congrats for making it but it feels like being pushed to do it since CLAP was brought forward quite successfully [1]

[1] https://u-he.com/community/clap/

artdigital

2 hours ago

I do a fair bit of music and have never seen a CLAP plugin in the wild

pdntspa

31 minutes ago

A lot of open-source plugins include CLAP builds.

u-he's stuff (Diva, Repro, Zebra) has CLAP builds.

As another comment mentioned, I guess FabFilter plugs support CLAP now?

It is niche but I am watching it closely as I would love to get off of Windows or MacOS and CLAP plugins often have linux support.

https://cleveraudio.org/hosts-and-plug-ins/

Jorchime

2 hours ago

I use FabFilter plugins all the time.

stuaxo

10 hours ago

Very useful for all the existing plugins though, especially if any want to become open source.

dsp_person

11 hours ago

how has CLAP adoption been? do the popular plugins out there generally provide a CLAP version nowadays?

bandrami

10 hours ago

All the commercial ones I've bought in the past year or so do, and ever since I think JUCE 7 there have been good libraries for open source projects that want to add the format.

I think there's still a lot of bad feeling about the fact that there are many VST2 plugins that are open source but nonetheless illegal (or at least tortious) to build.

stuaxo

10 hours ago

Hopefully this provides a path for those VST2 plugins.

codedokode

6 hours ago

No. VST2 has nothing in common with VST3 despite similar name.

conradfr

4 hours ago

Why? In Juce isn't that a matter of choosing multiple build target?

codedokode

4 hours ago

If you have the source code and use JUCE then yes, you can convert the plugin to VST3. But if you don't use a framework then you need to port the code manually.

squeaky-clean

3 hours ago

If you're using JUCE and not using any of the VST2 features removed in VST3.

rebolek

11 hours ago

I see more and more brands not only adopting CLAP but also offering Linux versions of their plugins. The adoption is slow but that's expected with a relatively new format but it certainly grows.

itsgabriel

11 hours ago

There is a list of software with support here https://clapdb.tech/

alterom

7 hours ago

Wow, didn't realize u-he grew so big. I remember them from Zebra days.

cbzbc

6 hours ago

They aren't big - but they are bigger than when it was just Urs and a couple of guys turning out plugins.

They becoming popular on the back of Diva, and Hans Zimmer using Zebra (he's very fulsome in his praise whenever mentioning u-he in interviews).

yahoozoo

7 hours ago

They make a lot of great virtual instruments nowadays. Diva being a big one.

1313ed01

an hour ago

I like my old ACE, but people with better ears than me say that the sound engine is not as good as some other U-He synths but it was more in my price range and I wanted something good enough but without DRM. U-He was (is?) one of the few makers of audio software that did not rely on some online registration or USB dongles (plus Linux support as a bonus).

pier25

4 hours ago

Maybe Steinberg is getting ready to add CLAP to their software?

Polarity

11 hours ago

clap is way better

codedokode

11 hours ago

Clap doesn't allow describing plugin in a manifest (like VST3 and LV2 do). This allows to scan for plugins faster.

Also, CLAP uses 3 or 4 methods to represent MIDI data (MIDI1, MIDI1 + MPE, MIDI2, CLAP events). This requires to write several converters when implementing a host.

But, CLAP is much simpler and doesn't use COM-like system (VST3 resembles a Windows COM library with endless interfaces and GUIDs).

Also, VST3 interfaces in SDK are described as C++ classes with virtual functions (example: [1]), and I wonder how do they achieve portability, if the layout for such classes (vtables) is not standardized and may differ across compilers.

[1] https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3_pluginterfaces/blob/3...

wrl

3 hours ago

> Clap doesn't allow describing plugin in a manifest (like VST3 and LV2 do). This allows to scan for plugins faster.

VST3 only recently gained the `moduleinfo.json` functionality and support is still materialising. Besides, hosts generally do a much better job about only scanning new plugins or ones that have changed, and hosts like Bitwig even do the scanning in the background. The manifest approach is cool, but in the end, plugin DLLs just shouldn't be doing any heavy lifting until they actually need to create an instance anyway.

> Also, CLAP uses 3 or 4 methods to represent MIDI data (MIDI1, MIDI1 + MPE, MIDI2, CLAP events). This requires to write several converters when implementing a host.

I've not done the host-side work, but the plugin-side work isn't too difficult. It's the same data, just represented differently. Disclaimer: I don't support MIDI2 yet, but I support the other 3.

On the other side, VST3 has some very strange design decisions that have led me to a lot of frustration.

Having separate parameter queues for sample-accurate automation requires plugins to treat their parameters in a very specific way (basically, you need audio-rate buffers for your parameter values that are as long as the maximum host block) in order to be written efficiently. Otherwise plugins basically have to "flatten" those queues into a single queue and handle them like MIDI events, or alternately just not handle intra-block parameter values at all. JUCE still doesn't handle these events at all, which leads to situations where a VST2 build of a JUCE plugin will actually handle automation better than the VST3 build (assuming the host is splitting blocks for better automation resolution, which all modern hosts do).

duped's comment about needing to create "dummy" parameters which get mapped to MIDI CCs is spot-on as well. JUCE does this. 2048 additional parameters (128 controllers * 16 channels) just to receive CCs. At least JUCE handles those parameters sample-accurately!

There's other issues too but I've lost track. At one point I sent a PR to Steinberg fixing a bug where their VST3 validator (!!!) was performing invalid (according to their own documentation) state transitions on plugins under test. It took me weeks to get the VST3 implementation in my plugin framework to a shippable state, and I still find more API and host bugs than I ever hit in VST2. VST3 is an absolute sprawl of API "design" and there are footguns in more places than there should be.

On the contrary, CLAP support took me around 2 days, 3 if we're being pedantic. The CLAP API isn't without its share of warts, but it's succinct and well-documented. There's a few little warts (the UI extension in particular should be more clear about when and how a plugin is supposed to actually open a window) but these are surmountable, and anecdotally I have only had to report one (maybe two) host bugs so far.

Again, disclaimer: I was involved in the early CLAP design efforts (largely the parameter extension) and am therefore biased, but if CLAP sucked I wouldn't shy away from saying it.

duped

an hour ago

> 2048 additional parameters (128 controllers * 16 channels) just to receive CCs.

It's worth mentioning that it's 2 x 16 x 16,384 in MIDI 2, + 128 x 16 MIDI1 because you gotta support both.

But to quote Steinberg devs, "plugins shouldn't handle MIDI CC at all"

duped

5 hours ago

>Also, CLAP uses 3 or 4 methods to represent MIDI data (MIDI1, MIDI1 + MPE, MIDI2, CLAP events)

Contrast to VST3 which doesn't support MIDI at all, unless you count cresting thousands of dummy parameters hardcoded to MIDI controller numbers "support."

codedokode

4 hours ago

VST3 uses proprietary events for things like note on/off and note expressions. As for MIDI controllers, the host is supposed to convert them to parameter changes.

This makes sense if you want to map a controller to a plugin parameter in a DAW. However, if you want to write a "MIDI effect", which transforms incoming MIDI data for controllers, it would be difficult.

Also it is interesting that VST3 has an event for note expression, and separate event for polyphonic pressure although it can be considered a note expression.

duped

3 hours ago

> As for MIDI controllers, the host is supposed to convert them to parameter changes

And nearly everyone except Steinberg considers this to be a mistake. MIDI messages (CCs, pitch bend, and so on) are _not_ parameters.

Zoadian

10 hours ago

they are com classes. the vtable layout for them is specified.

codedokode

9 hours ago

I don't think GCC has a special case for handling COM classes. However, I found that GCC uses "Itanium CXX ABI" on Linux which specifies vtable layout which accidentally might match the layout of COM classes. However, it is not guaranteered (for example, by C++ standards) that other compilers use the same layout.

duped

6 hours ago

The ABI is stable everywhere VST3s are used. It has to be or nothing would work.

codedokode

4 hours ago

Everything would work except for VST3, if written according to standards.

duped

2 hours ago

The ABI isn't covered by C++ standards, it's target and architecture dependent. For the purposes of this discussion that ABI is stable for C++ vtables on the targets and architectures that VST3 supports.

If a compiler and linker don't follow those ABIs then it would also be close to useless for compiling or linking against shared libraries. So in the wild, all useful compilers do target the same ABIs.

gcc in mingw on windows is the odd duck, but most production software does not support it anyway.

debugnik

9 hours ago

Not really, VST3's COM-like API just uses virtual methods, they don't guarantee layout to the same degree actual COM does with compiler support. They simply rely on the platform ABI being standardized enough.

pjbk

11 hours ago

You would have thought they learned from their mistakes implementing VST2, but they doubled down going even further basing VST3 on the Windows Component Object Model. I guess it was a decision to avoid reinventing the wheel, but you can quickly realize it is a very bad model for real time audio plugins and audio host support. The API just exploded in complexity, and testing was a nightmare. In contrast you can tell the U-He developers have all the experience from the trenches.

p0nce

7 hours ago

> it is a very bad model for real time audio plugins and audio host support

COM is just 3 predefined calls in the virtual table. CLAP gives you a bunch of pointers to functions, which is similar.

jsmith45

3 hours ago

> COM is just 3 predefined calls in the virtual table.

COM can be as simple as that implementation side, at least if your platforms vtable ABI matches COM's perfectly, but it also allows far more complicated implementations where every implemented interface queried will allocate a new distinct object, etc.

I.E. even if you know for sure that the object is implemented in c++, and your platforms' vtable ABI matches COM's perfectly, and you know exactly what interfaces the object you have implements, you cannot legally use dynamic_cast, as there is no requirement that one class inherits from both interfaces. The conceptual "COM object" could instead be implemented as one class per interface, each likely containing a pointer to some shared data class.

This is also why you need to do the ref counting with respect to each distinct interface, since while it is legal from an implementation side to just share one ref count for it all, that is in no way required.

waffletower

2 hours ago

In principle this is a great thing -- but in reality this will only continue to exacerbate the monoculture of 1970s era musical metaphors in digital music production. The VST3 format is confined, much like MIDI 1.0, to provide extremely opinionated and limited instrument and sound processing designs. If AudioUnits were suddenly MIT licensed I would react very differently.

wrl

2 hours ago

"opinionated and limited" in what way? I'm also curious to hear how AU differs appreciably from VST3, mostly at a conceptual level (as I'm already familiar with the low-level details of both APIs).

postit

9 hours ago

The shift away from proprietary formats is long overdue.

As a composer and arranger working with different studios, I need multiple DAWs installed for compatibility. Every time I open my DAW or Gig Performer after a few days, it rescans all plugins. With around 800 installed, that happens across AU, VST, and VST3.

I hope Apple and Avid are holding meetings after this decision to help simplify the life of library/plugin makers. As an example AAX requires a complete mess to compile and test their plugins, and several AU plugins are just wrappers aroud VST that add another layer.

I really hope the next five years bring real standardization and smoother workflows.

pmkary

10 hours ago

This is technical people at their finest! There couldn't be any news more important than this—or more anticipated by the community. For so many years people wished for this, and they announce it this low-key in a forum! This is so awesome. Thanks to Steinberg & YAMAHA, I guess so much good is to come out of it.

p4bl0

12 hours ago

There is a lot of good news in open source audio these days. Also see this video presenting the work done and planned for the future version 4 of Audacity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38

dtf

11 hours ago

Funnily enough, that video talks about the pain of implementing a VST3 host at around the 25 minute mark. "If you're planning on doing it, set aside a lot of time."

Zoadian

10 hours ago

i have my own vst3 host. it's not really that difficult. the real problem is that theres a lot of plugins that do some random thing that wont work becasue it's not standard.

moritzruth

4 hours ago

IIRC that's also what is said in the video.

sim7c00

10 hours ago

try implementing the same without VST3 technology.

If you're planning to do that. Set aside a lot of time.....

junon

9 hours ago

I just hope they don't try to sneak in Google Analytics again.

BolexNOLA

5 hours ago

I’m keeping a very close eye on audacity 4 mostly to make sure they don’t try something again lol

AaronAPU

3 hours ago

I still get customers requesting that I distribute VST(2) builds. Some old DAWs and apps still can’t load VST3. Thus far it hasn’t been possible due to licensing restrictions with commercial plug-ins, imposed by Steinberg.

I wonder if that will change as well..

unwind

11 hours ago

As a complete audio outsider, my observations are:

1. Great news! VSTs seem to fill an important role in the audio-processing software world, and having them more open must be a good thing.

2. From the things they mention, the SDK seems way larger than I had imagined, but that is normal for (software) things, I guess. "This API also enables the scheduling of tasks on the main thread from any other thread." was not easy to unpack nor see the use of in what was (to me) an audio-generation-centered API.

3. The actual post seems to be somewhat mangled, I see both proper inline links and what looks like naked Markdown links, and also bolded words that also have double asterisks around them. Much confusing.

swiftcoder

11 hours ago

> the SDK seems way larger than I had imagined, but that is normal for (software) things, I guess. "This API also enables the scheduling of tasks on the main thread from any other thread." was not easy to unpack nor see the use of in what was (to me) an audio-generation-centered API

VST plugins almost all have a GUI, thus the VST SDK has to support an entire cross-platform UI framework... This threading functionality is mostly about shipping input events/rendering updates back and forth to the main (UI) thread

codedokode

11 hours ago

There is no single UI framework in VST. The plugin API only has interfaces for creating/destroying/resizing a GUI window. You are not required to use VSTGUI.

CapsAdmin

10 hours ago

For context, the variation in UI between VSTs is pretty large and tend to be very creative, much like UI in games.

junon

9 hours ago

Correct, it just hands you native handles. What you do with them is up to you.

JUCE is a popular UI framework (at least it was 10 years ago). But I've seen people put electron apps somehow into a VST.

pjmlp

7 hours ago

Oh man, this is really starting to look like a plague.

And yet here we are discussing the value of using C++ vs other languages for real time audio processing.

junon

9 hours ago

Audio is often processed on a separate thread than the UI. If memory serves (been a while) there's the UI portion and the audio engine portion of most VSTs, which can be booted together or independently. So threading is very important.

unwind

9 hours ago

Yeah, I realized that once I finished writing my comment, that it might be about communicating with the UI since UI toolkits are usually not thread-safe enough. Thanks.

duped

5 hours ago

Some background is needed for the thread API

The basic threading model for plugins is the "main" and "audio" threads. The APIs specify which methods are allowed to be called concurrently from which thread.

There is also a state machine for the audio processing bits (for example you can guarantee that processing won't happen until after the plugin as been "activated" and won't go from a deactivated state to processing until a specific method is called - I'm simplifying significantly for the VST3 state machine).

The "main" thread is the literal main/UI thread of the application typically, or a sandboxed plugin host running in a separate process. You do your UI on this thread as well as handle most host events.

Plugins often want to do things on background threads, like stream audio from disk or do heavy work like preparing visualization without blocking the main UI thread (which also handles rendering and UI events - think like the JS event loop, it's bad to block it).

The threading model and state machine make it difficult to know where it's safe to spawn and join threads. You can do it in a number of places but you also have to be careful about lifetimes of those threads, most plugins do it as early as possible and then shut them down as late as possible.

The host also has to do a lot of the stuff on background threads and usually has its own thread pool. CLAP introduced an extension to hook into the host's thread pool so plugins don't have to spawn threads and no longer have to really care about the lifetime. VST3 is copying that feature.

When you see annotations on methods in these APIs about "main" vs "any" thread and "active" etc they're notes to developers on where it is safe to call the methods and any synchronization required (on both sides of the API).

If it sounds complicated that's because it is, but most of this is accidental complexity created by VST3.

sagacity

12 hours ago

That's very interesting news. Definitely brought on by CLAP as others have mentioned, but it's interesting to see how this evolves. VST is a pretty complicated standard to support whereas CLAP is much simpler, although the former is much more widely used.

coldtea

11 hours ago

Like 1 in 200 plugins supports CLAP, where 100% support VST, so if they can do it more easily and with less licensing burden, and even have some community contribution, that would be big.

It will be a while, if ever, before most plugins get the CLAP (pun intended).

revision17

an hour ago

Some cool ones do support CLAP, such as:

    - Surge XT - open-source synthesizer with literally 10k presets built in: https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/
    - TX16Wx - free for non-pro use soundfont sampler: https://www.tx16wx.com/

While they may not do everything, to me as a novice, those two do cover a lot of ground for free.

duped

5 hours ago

Most plugins don't use these APIs directly, they rely on wrappers like JUCE. Once JUCE supports CLAP the plugins will follow. That should happen in the next year.

The bigger problem are hosts. While Apple and Avid will probably never support CLAP, everyone but Ableton does. They move slower than the rest of the industry (taking a decade or so to implement VST3). Which is odd because CLAP is significantly easier to use from both the host and plugin side.

That said, you can wrap a clap plugin as a vst3 or AU today. It's probably the lowest friction way to do it to be honest.

mycall

9 hours ago

CLAP might be similar to AU in plugin support which is pretty common too.

coldtea

9 hours ago

CLAP is nowhere near close to AU in adoption.

Almost all VST plugins have an AU version (like 80%-90% or so, and 99% of the major ones).

Almost no VST plugins have a CLAP version (like 1%-5%, and that's charitable).

mycall

7 hours ago

I know it isn't nowhere near in adoption NOW. I meant it shows there is room for another format and AU is a good example of how another format can make inroads.

hypertexthero

2 hours ago

If someone at Yamaha is reading this, could you please release a firmware update for the Yamaha Reface CP so that the toy piano setting plays the hidden grand piano sound instead?

To get the hidden piano sound:

1. Turn Reface CP off.

2. Turn piano sound knob so it rests in between any two settings.

3. Turn Reface CP on.

The Reface CP is one of my favorite small keys piano instruments, and I got one specifically for the hidden piano sound, but it’s annoying to have to go through the above steps and I’m not experienced enough to mod the circuitry.

odiroot

10 hours ago

Most probably a response to CLAP gaining popularity. But they buried a lede with Wayland support. This puts VST3 ahead of CLAP in that regard.

lateralux

5 hours ago

I’d really like to see more plugins available in the LV2 format for my Ardour RT DAW. Also, a quick recommendation : LSP (Linux Studio Plugins) an excellent collection of several open source plugins supporting CLAP, AU, LV2, VST2, VST3, LADSPA, and a standalone Jack versions https://lsp-plug.in/

codedokode

12 hours ago

Before VST3 code was under GPL3 license and GPL2 software (like LMMS) couldn't use it.

Also the license change could be caused by competition from CLAP which is very openly licensed.

dramm

10 hours ago

Well done Steinberg/Yamaha.

At the same time Steinberg also open sourced their ASIO audio hardware interface standard but under GPL3. GPL2 here would have made more sense to me to align with the Linux kernel GPL2 only licensing. So why GPL3? Other commenters here have mentioned OBS, and OBS is "GPLv2 or later" so sure that works for them. Not being GPL 2 and missing on the Linux kernel just surprises me.

I have been using the nice cwASIO (https://github.com/s13n/cwASIO) re-implementation of the ASIO SDK, it's MIT licensed. https://github.com/s13n/cwASIO. It's nice there just to see something more up to date than the ancient ASIO SDK documentation. I would love to see the Steinberg ASIO SDK updated and improved, if you are listening Steinberg folks: nobody cares about the history of ASIO on Macs or Silicon Graphics Workstations, just dive in and get deep into the weeds of ASIO on Windows, and include lots more sample code, especially covering the ASIO device enumeration mess on Windows.

junon

9 hours ago

Wow, after all these years. This is a very Good Thing. You could get access to it before but you had to sign a very long agreement and it was always a PITA.

Steinberg is only going to benefit from this, I think.

squeaky-clean

3 hours ago

Since I never agreed to the VST3 SDK terms, which required you to give up your license to VST2, does this mean I can finally make VST3 plugins without losing the ability to publish VST2?

Benanov

3 hours ago

You'd have to use this version (not sure if they back-licensed old versions) but MIT would mean you wouldn't have to agree to that draconian licensing.

radarsat1

8 hours ago

Oh wow, finally! They should have done this 20 years ago but this is awesome news.

lolive

3 hours ago

Can anyone fluent with all this tell me whether that will make the usage of Arturia [zillion of] plugins trivial in Linux distros?

999900000999

4 hours ago

This is fantastic.

Audio programming is still low level and difficult, but I'm looking forward towards vibe coding some experiments with this.

I like to work privately on my open source projects, and then push it to a public repo after deleting my git history ( for the public repo anyway).

brulard

8 hours ago

No more takedown notices for including legacy VST SDK in your github project? Wait, mine was 2.4, so I guess steinberg would still chase me down if I hadn't complied already.

matkv

11 hours ago

Having only used VSTs but never even looked into how they're actually built - what does this now mean in simple terms? Did you need a specific closed source framework to build them or something like that? What has changed now?

cdavid

11 hours ago

You had to accept some license terms before you could download the VST SDK. When linux audio started to get "serious" 20 years ago, it was a commonly discussed pain point.

Concretely, it made distributing OSS VST plugins a pain. Especially for Linux which generally will want to build their packages.

TonyTrapp

10 hours ago

Note that his was the VST2 era. VST3 was commercial license or GPL 3, which was an improvement, but only slightly, because it excluded open-source software released under the GPL 2, and also MIT/BSD/whatever-licensed software couldn't use it (without effectively turning the whole software into GPL-licensed software).

The real value IMHO of github is the issue tracker and the visual diff/display of PR changes.

crispinh

12 hours ago

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45665752