On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 10:18, Steve Harris wrote: > On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 11:45:53 +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: > > VST plugins tend to be rather complex, offering tons of features and > > eyecandish GUIs, while LADSPAs usually offer limited functionality, no > > GUI at all(hosts usually provide simple ones to control the parameters). > > But what's interesting is that each LADSPA plugin usually implements > > exactly one type of DSP technique, for example, an oscillator, or a > > delay. This basically leads to a situation where a certain DSP technique > > is 'isolated' in a separate plugin. > > I think thats down to two factors (and its not a good thing) > > 1) LADSPA developers are few in number and short in time. The basics are a > good place to start.
The number of dsp developers isn't relevant. Besides - there's at least 5 devs i know of. The number will grow. > > 2) The lack of a UI standard makes complex plugins a bit pointless. Why do you need a UI standard for jack fx/synth clients? Does JAMin follow one such standard? You could do a virtually unlimited amount of UIs for exactly 1 fx/synth using IPC. > > There are a few counter examples (e.g. my VyNil plugin wraps a lot of > different bits), and infact if you look in many LADSPA plugins you will > see theres really more going on than there appears to be. According to my proposal, this shouldn't happen. :) > > [OT] - my canned plugin writing experience - all generalisations and IMHO > of course > > Time breakdown: 10% writing code, 10% maths and optimising, 80% tweaking > and tuning. See point 6) > > Fewer controls is better. Doesn't seem like if you look at the most successful VST(i)/DX(i)/RTAS/TDM/AI plugins :) > > Affordance, appearance and usability has as much affect on the perceived > sound quality as the DSP code (posivly and negativly). Some of this can > be achieved without a custom UI. Today we've got 100% Affordance, 0% appearance and 0% usability. :) At least the point that there's no unified affordance since each host implements it's own, makes the question of usability irrelevant. > > You mentioned JAMin - true that does use LADSPA plugins - but of the total > ammount of code the LADSPA plugins are a tiny fraction. I just reused them > because I hate fixing bugs in two places :) And? :) Points 5) and 6) Marek