I thought this was an interesting message, of some relevance for the discussions we've had over ALSA and JACK etc. I would also recommend
http://www.linuxpower.org/display.php?id=216 which is a really good and insightful article on pitfalls with the development of SGI's dmSDK API (mostly video focus, but some mention of audio, and lots of relevance to audio). --p ------- Forwarded Message Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 08:07:10 -0800 To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (VST PlugIns) Subject: [vst-plugins] Re: VST DirectX Plug-in Wrapper Yes, there's a substantial difference. DirectX is far more flexible, which seems to translate into a substantial weakness rather than a strength. It's baroquely complex, and rarely does what it should, as anyone will tell you who has ever tried to build a connection graph. DMOs only partially address the problem. DirectX's format flexibility also seems to be a liability. In practice, the file filters don't work (the MP3 decoder, for example connects only sporadically, and other decoders have well known bugs that crash systems when you try to do simple things like enumerate or use installed audio filters), so claims of superior handling of compressed files fail in actual practice. The fact that DirectX supports, and actually has a significant preference for integer formats is also a huge liability. Better just to dictate the use of floating point (as VST does) and avoid the issue altogether. Also significantly missing from the DirectX suite is synthesizer support. Although the Microsoft DDKs do occasionally provide sources for DirectX synthesizers, the current versions in the DDK do not work with any known application (not even Direct Music Producer). Cakewalk's DXi extensions do address the problem, but really, the olnly similarities between DirectAudio and DXi is that both are based on COM. Strictly speaking, the Microsoft DX standard is all but useless for sequencers, and provides no real support for synths. VSTs do seem to have design restrictions that are annoying. But frankly, most of these restrictions occur in areas that DX/DXi has fumbled badly anyway. I see the trade-off as follows: both do more or less the same thing, although DirectX is baroquely complex and rarely does what it should. VST is less flexible, but, being purpose built, does exactly what it needs to and no more in a reasonably capable manner. Since I'm fluent in both COM and device driver design and implementation on the Windows platform, I feel that I'm competent to declare authoritatively that DirectX's baroque complexity isnt' a skin deep problem: it comes about from insane overdesign that tries to bring together three separate applciations (audio streaming, game development, and audio production) into one framework -- something that should never have been attempted in the first place. imho. Subseqent band-aids that Microsoft has delivered which are supposed to address the design insanity (like DirectMusic, and DMOs) seem to complicate things more than they help, without actually consistently delivering the one feature that everyone would really like: low latency audio. In short, VSTs are far easier to implement that DX-anything. And VSTs tend to do what they are supposed to do -- unlike DX-anything. _______________________________________________ Alsa-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel
