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.

The final top 3:

1. Elements of Nature
2. hypercyclic
3. The Element of Surprise

In 2006, 3 of the 4 I singled out were the top 3 placers.

This year, I’m batting 3 out of 3!¹

A keen eye for quality and innovation? An influential opinion among the members of KvR? Or am I merely some sort of idiot savant?

I suspect it has something it has something to do with this², but there’s no way to back that argument up without sounding like a complete jackass.

But, obviously, I believe three very worthy digital contraptions were awarded their due. Not the order I would have put them in, but why quibble?

Anyway, some morning-after notes:
Because of my recent adventures in system maintance none of my initial downloads got beyond a 2nd chance. So, yes, I may have overlooked some gems, but apparently I was pretty damn close.

It’s interesting that a SynthEdit plug took the top spot. And the 3rd spot. I would have thought that the cross-platform plugin would have drawn in votes the SE plugs couldn’t get. Then again, hypercyclic’s genius isn’t quickly apparent: it’s a MIDI tool, a smart and unusual MIDI tool and one that benefits from strong host MIDI-routing, but not as gee-wiz apparent as a snyth or DSP.

About the SynthEdit plugs. It’s great that this development environment is out there and lets some real artists do some fine work. We now have access to all sorts of plugins that commercial developers wouldn’t come up with on their own. But its bugs are becoming more and more limiting, for both the developers and the users. Even if te SE developer releases a new version which fixes the dual-core bugs that apparently plague it (I haven’t had my dual-core long enough to encounter this myself) and the “all notes off” bug, that leaves a lot of plugins out there that were created on the old version that need to be recompiled. Nevertheless, this is a real victory for the necessity of VST development platform that is available to the enthusiast as well as the more serious coder.

As rekkerd says “…it is a well deserved win. xoxos has released tons of cool freeware plug-ins over the last few years, more than doing his part in the community.” It’s a cool idea, thoroughly executed, though it’s actual long-term usefulness is still a question. Kudos to Ugo for his exploration of simplicity in the creative process. And cheers to the hypercylic devs for giving me a tool I look forward to exploiting more fully.

^{1Look below the list, in the notes, at the bold text; the bold formatting was inserted at the time of writing.}

^{2The link is to a google lecture on the paradox of choice. Watch it while thinking about your workflow, your plugin folder, all the things about you current setup that you think could be better. Really, it’s enlightening.}