Clap: The New Audio Plug-In Standard
This highlights a big problem in the world of music and audio software: everyone likes the idea of standards, just so long as they control the standard. And while this problem no doubt exists in other domains, it's painfully apparent in music and audio applications because the market is too small.Clap won't succeed longterm because of many of the factors outlined in so many of these posts. Notably, Apple aren't going to support it in Logic because Audio Units work just fine, and AUv3 spans both iDevice and Mac markets. Steinberg almost certainly won't support it; they aren't even allowing VST 2.4 plug-ins to run in the Apple Silicon version of Cubase -- and this isn't for technical reasons. Ironically, Steinberg have been trying to push VST 3 since the release of Cubase v4.1 back in 2006, and it's still a giant pain 16 years later. If you look back at VST 1/2, part of the allure was the simplicity of the API; VST 3 tried to change the game too much towards MVC given that it looked at the time you might want to run the processing part of the plug-in on a different system than the user interface part.Pro Tools doesn't get a mention in this thread, for the most part, but for better or worse it remains something of standard in audio post-production in the US. AAX isn't a bad re-imagining of what what RTAS/TDM-based plug-ins pre v10, and Avid aren't going to relinquish any control to third parties. Not least because the need for AAX (such as it is) resolves around support for the company's hardware control surfaces. EuCon was originally envisaged as an agnostic hardware controller protocol by Euphonix, but Avid purchased Euphonix, released the S6 and associated controllers and made EuControl into something of a tolerated illegitimate child.Plug-in developers will have to follow the money, and I would to see the results of a survey correlating money spent on plug-ins based on the main host software used. My guess is that Pro Tools AAX on the Mac probably is the most lucrative, followed by Cubase and Logic. Depressing, but for all the moaning musicians tend to indulge in regarding fair compensation against any company they feel exploited by, there's a reason why music and audio applications and plug-ins remain the most heavily copy-protected software.I don't know of anyone who's ever ditched their host application because of a plug-in format, and I highly doubt the CLAP is going to harm Apple, Steinberg, and Avid in the longterm.