Okay, I’ll indulge in a little NAMM-related chatter, albeit of a particularly geeky nature. I speak of Steinberg’s announcement of the VST3 spec for plugin developers. Hey, upgrade, you think. And just look at all those cool new features.
Well, read this thread. Seems a lot of developers are less than thrilled about having to completely redevelop their software for something that doesn’t bring them any real advantage. In fact, I think it’s safe to say, that Steinberg’s behavior towards independent developers over time has been shoddy if not outright hostile.
The question remains, will anyone outside of Steinberg sign up. Chris Randall thinks that Ableton is major factor in whether it gets accepted, and that makes sense to me, as they are the other cross-platform host with any significant user-base/market-share. If they do, it will be interesting to see who could withstand the storm. Though I do wonder if Ableton has any vested interest in switching over. And Cakewalk by Roland? Who knows now, ’cause let’s be honest, it would seem wither goes Roland so goes Cakewalk. But I can’t imagine their coders are thrilled about having to accommodate a completely different layer of abstraction between the host and the plugins.
I’ll take it from observation and the knowledge of people who, you know, actually code (when they’re able to dumb it down enough for me grasp) that this is potentially a huge pain in the ass to everyone but Steinberg and, more or less, their users. And that can’t be a good thing. Especially for us who are more interested in the fringe of software. From my POV it does seem Stein-aha is preparing to lock up the standard in their favor. But, really, I don’t know shit. However, how many more VST2.4 Steinberg commercial plugins do you think we’ll see?
Honestly, I wasn’t even aware of the VST3 spec until it was announced, other than some vague rumblings around the interwebs. (Are we saying that seriously or ironically these days? It’s hard to tell.) And I’m huge geeky trainspotter. But I’ve long since advocated the advantage of getting DSP & instrument plugins out from under the shadow of one company, no matter how you find their business practices. An open standard that had *wide host support* could mean better code and less time spend downloading updates and figuring out why X combination of host/plug cause things to crash. A fresh API written to be as agnostic as necessary would give developers a realistic target to hit.
But *wide host support* is no small hurdle. I suppose Randall’s vow to dance naked on the ‘Tube is his way of saying “never.” The optimist in me likes to see shit like this happen. The realist knows that everyone wants to be the one to establish the standard, to be “right” - to hold the keys that everyone else has to “borrow.” The populist in me wants to see an sandbox where everyone gets to play and we reap the rewards. Again, the realist knows everyone wants to be, well, king of the sandbox.
It seems to me that for the idea to get any traction, someone/group need to get pretty motivated and act pretty selflessly. And, quite possibly, need a charismatic leader. In theory, couldn’t someone or a small group of coders whip together a really rough API that roughly conforms to VST2.4 and release it under an appropriate license? Then everyone else can have at it? Get one or two adventurous hosts (eXT, whatever that new tracker that was just upgraded for multiple platforms) to include the API. Can an AU/VST wrapper be released as open source? Because that might be pretty necessary for the short term: a good AU and VST2.4 wrapper that would be open to developers to use directly. So, on top of that, developers need to be sold on that API which means a good SDK sooner rather than later - and an SDK that can easily port over to existing standards, right?
Anyway, blah, blah. Point being, yeah, that’s a hell of a lot of ifs, ands, and buts. The realist in me says, it’s a cool idea but it’s never going to happen. The populist still likes to dream.
Could VST3 be the final straw in a long line of relative indignities inflicted upon developers over the years? If the reaction and apparent outcome of that thread are an indication, then quite possibly. But a lot of stars have to line up or someone is going to come up with a really fresh idea.
Sometime last year I wrote about how I had once owned a Moog MG1/Realistic Concertmate. It’s not just that I had no idea what it was or barely used it while I had it, or even that I sold it to some friends for like fifty bucks - it’s that of all the crap I’ve hung onto over the years I had to get rid of that. And every once and a while something comes along to remind me how misguided I was at certain points in my life.
