CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin) - new open plugin format

Discuss anything related to audio or music production.
anttimaatteri
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:08 pm

Re: CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin) - new open plugin format

Post by anttimaatteri » Sat Aug 13, 2022 1:41 pm

i already use it and it works like a charm

in bitwig studio

so ableton better hurry and stop that "discuss" mentality.

anttimaatteri
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:08 pm

Re: CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin) - new open plugin format

Post by anttimaatteri » Sat Aug 13, 2022 10:10 pm

Tarekith wrote:
Thu Jun 16, 2022 7:58 pm
The Clap is a nickname for a Sexually Transmitted Disease, commonly called STD here in the US.

VST+STD= VSTD
vst is the acronym for viral shredding time since decades

so what...
Last edited by anttimaatteri on Sat Aug 20, 2022 1:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

fishmonkey
Posts: 4478
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:50 am

Re: CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin) - new open plugin format

Post by fishmonkey » Sun Aug 14, 2022 2:48 am

anttimaatteri wrote:
Sat Aug 13, 2022 10:10 pm
Tarekith wrote:
Thu Jun 16, 2022 7:58 pm
The Clap is a nickname for a Sexually Transmitted Disease, commonly called STD here in the US.

VST+STD= VSTD
vst is the acronym for vial shredding time since decades

so what...
um, it's a joke.

Machinesworking
Posts: 11416
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 9:30 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin) - new open plugin format

Post by Machinesworking » Sun Aug 14, 2022 11:01 pm

Trevbo wrote:
Sat Aug 13, 2022 8:15 pm
don't really need another format to clog up the browser to be honest.

i rather just have VST and not some plugins with the CLAP and not on VST
So this begs for an explanation. VST 3 has finally been widely adopted, after 15 years, that's right, it took 15 freaking years for developers to cave in because Steinberg basically made it a complete mess to port to from VST 2. The reason for adoption are not because anyone wants to, but because Steinberg are forcing the change on M1 Macs, they do not allow new licenses of any kind for VST 2 so going forward no one has any choice. All this translates into VST3 being basically the least stable platform right now, if there's going to be an issue with a plug in and you're using the VST3 version, then switching to the AU or VST2 version will probably fix it.

This finally woke up the development community to the inherent insanity of letting standards be implemented by companies with vested interest in making the plug in standard specifically around the idiosyncrasies of their DAW or OS etc. So right now we have VST3, AU and AAX, in the future it's likely we have CLAP only, and maybe wrappers for AAX etc. Basically in the future, CLAP will standardize plug in development, and plug ins will have less likelihood of being unstable based on things like Ableton, MOTU, Prosonus etc. having to reverse engineer future VST4 hosting among other things.

Slightly annoying for the end user at first but in the long run something that should have happened 20 years ago when Apple first started talking about Audio Units because DAWs like Logic implemented plug ins in a way that made it a constant issue for then Emagic to work with VST. Now we're seeing cross platform developers equally upset at Steinbergs shenanigans.

jlgrimes
Posts: 1773
Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2007 1:55 am
Location: Atlanta, Ga

Re: CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin) - new open plugin format

Post by jlgrimes » Sun Aug 21, 2022 5:07 pm

Machinesworking wrote:
Sun Aug 14, 2022 11:01 pm
Trevbo wrote:
Sat Aug 13, 2022 8:15 pm
don't really need another format to clog up the browser to be honest.

i rather just have VST and not some plugins with the CLAP and not on VST
So this begs for an explanation. VST 3 has finally been widely adopted, after 15 years, that's right, it took 15 freaking years for developers to cave in because Steinberg basically made it a complete mess to port to from VST 2. The reason for adoption are not because anyone wants to, but because Steinberg are forcing the change on M1 Macs, they do not allow new licenses of any kind for VST 2 so going forward no one has any choice. All this translates into VST3 being basically the least stable platform right now, if there's going to be an issue with a plug in and you're using the VST3 version, then switching to the AU or VST2 version will probably fix it.

This finally woke up the development community to the inherent insanity of letting standards be implemented by companies with vested interest in making the plug in standard specifically around the idiosyncrasies of their DAW or OS etc. So right now we have VST3, AU and AAX, in the future it's likely we have CLAP only, and maybe wrappers for AAX etc. Basically in the future, CLAP will standardize plug in development, and plug ins will have less likelihood of being unstable based on things like Ableton, MOTU, Prosonus etc. having to reverse engineer future VST4 hosting among other things.

Slightly annoying for the end user at first but in the long run something that should have happened 20 years ago when Apple first started talking about Audio Units because DAWs like Logic implemented plug ins in a way that made it a constant issue for then Emagic to work with VST. Now we're seeing cross platform developers equally upset at Steinbergs shenanigans.
Now that you mention it Ableton has gotten more unstable over the years, I wonder if it has less to do with Ableton and more with my adoption of VST3 formats as Ableton is usually pretty stable with native devices.

That said most VST3's seem to work well but every now and then I get a crash, but I remember a time when crashes in Ableton was more rare even with VSTs but I think they were VST2's. I just rooted it to using unstable plugins as even some VST2s were buggy (usually old unsupported free ones, or developers known for buggy releases).

I heard alot of developers gripes with VST3 was the documentation was more obtuse on how to do things (my guess was to allow Steinberg to have an "edge"), but what is a surprise is my few Yamaha (Steinberg) VST3's are some of the more unstable VST3's over other developers which is pretty odd.

I hope CLAP proves to be a success, but it nonetheless will be a slow adoption rate as plenty of new standards have came over the years at a very slow adoption rate (eg USB4.0, Midi 2.0, and now CLAP). My guess is whatever standards come out, it needs to be pretty easy to convert or has way too many advantages over the former standards to not ignore.

I think most new standards are fairly complex and probably are too different from VST2's or 3's as a good chunk of Ableton's codebase was designed to support VST standards and would most likely require massive code rewrites to just adopt from the start.

Machinesworking
Posts: 11416
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 9:30 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin) - new open plugin format

Post by Machinesworking » Mon Aug 22, 2022 3:43 pm

jlgrimes wrote:
Sun Aug 21, 2022 5:07 pm
I think most new standards are fairly complex and probably are too different from VST2's or 3's as a good chunk of Ableton's codebase was designed to support VST standards and would most likely require massive code rewrites to just adopt from the start.
Mostly plug ins without GUIs are all the same, i.e. they don't need special instructions to be flanger in AU or VST etc. MIDI and the GUI on the other hand is different, one of the changes in VST3 is MIDI that even from the plug in developer stand point is a PITA. I'm just an end user so I've glommed most of this from developers talking online, but Ableton more or less have to reverse engineer VST plug in hosting, the one advantage of AU was that Apple had good host documentations whereas Steinberg do not, obviously the disadvantage of AU is one platform only. So Ableton implementing CLAP should be light years easier than VST3, even with existing VST2 frameworks in place.
I heard alot of developers gripes with VST3 was the documentation was more obtuse on how to do things (my guess was to allow Steinberg to have an "edge"), but what is a surprise is my few Yamaha (Steinberg) VST3's are some of the more unstable VST3's over other developers which is pretty odd.
So this all brings up the other point. This isn't actually odd at all. Steinberg likely specify in their own plug ins badly documented features that work great in Cubase, but not so great in Live and the rest, because again the hosting documentation isn't that great. To be fair the reason AUi's don't send MIDI out is because Apple implemented MIDI out from AUi's in a way that works only with "inline" AU's or MIDI plug ins. So something like BlueARP the great free arpeggiator doesn't work as an AU in anything but Logic and oddly enough Unify, which hosts AU's inline as MIDI plug ins. [IMO this is an inferior method, because if it's a drum machine like Atmos, Maschine etc. it does not make sound as a MIDI plug in] CLAP should solve this stuff, I have forgotten to test it as a MIDI out source, actually don't thing any plug in has come out yet that can do that?

Anyway, point is, CLAP solves all the nonsense that happens with platform of host controlled plug in formats, so in the end it will be more stable and better all around, truly cross platform and easier for hosts like Live to implement.

Scoox
Posts: 244
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2019 3:14 am

Re: CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin) - new open plugin format

Post by Scoox » Tue Sep 20, 2022 9:31 am

Dropping by just to show my support for this new standard. We live in a world where it's difficult to replace ancient and poorly designed standards, and I'm grateful that U-he and Bitwig, two small but well-known and very influential companies thanks to the quality of their products, have gone out of their way to make CLAP happen.

Just to throw an idea on the table, it would be the cherry on the cake if someone made a VST-to-CLAP wrapper so users could continue using legacy 32-bit and 64-bit VST 2.x and 3.x plugins under the new format. Obviously there would be limitations since CLAP is a superset of VST but, even so, it'd be highly desirable.

lord of xannode
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Nov 11, 2022 5:31 pm

Re: CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin) - new open plugin format

Post by lord of xannode » Fri Nov 11, 2022 5:33 pm

Would absolutely love to see CLAP support in Ableton. Some of the top-tier plugin developers are already releasing CLAP versions (u-he, TAL, and others). It'd be great to be able to use these plugins in Ableton in the future.

For those that are complaining about "something else cluttering the browser": You don't need to install CLAP plugins if you don't want to. But let the people that want to use CLAP use CLAP. CLAP is the future and I am looking forward to ableton adopting CLAP support hopefully sooner than later

Scoox
Posts: 244
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2019 3:14 am

Re: CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin) - new open plugin format

Post by Scoox » Sun Nov 13, 2022 12:51 pm

lord of xannode wrote:
Fri Nov 11, 2022 5:33 pm
CLAP is the future and I am looking forward to ableton adopting CLAP support hopefully sooner than later
It would be great if all DAWs would support a common, open-source, standard like CLAP. Having to support multiple standards is a hassle for developers.

zeroblackstar
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jan 13, 2022 7:27 pm

Re: CLAP (CLever Audio Plugin) - new open plugin format

Post by zeroblackstar » Mon Jan 02, 2023 2:27 am

Scoox wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 9:31 am
Dropping by just to show my support for this new standard. We live in a world where it's difficult to replace ancient and poorly designed standards, and I'm grateful that U-he and Bitwig, two small but well-known and very influential companies thanks to the quality of their products, have gone out of their way to make CLAP happen.

Just to throw an idea on the table, it would be the cherry on the cake if someone made a VST-to-CLAP wrapper so users could continue using legacy 32-bit and 64-bit VST 2.x and 3.x plugins under the new format. Obviously there would be limitations since CLAP is a superset of VST but, even so, it'd be highly desirable.
CLAP support would be great, also a wrapper for older plug ins would be amazing as there's some great software out there which is not going to get updated anytime soon.

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