vst-mac news • cooking with vst (and fresh herbs)
21-07-2003
muon tau updated to 2.0, that means we can add tau and15-07-2003
after the absynth 2.0 update has been released last week08-07-2003
adding audiounit version of m-tron.03-07-2003
there
is an 1.0.1 update for the cube synth.
that is a bit nasty but we cannot avoid it:
adding my own pluggo
plug-ins to the pluggo list finally:
ppg-control, xy-control,
combicontrol, and midifader.
we will not add good old dividerline vst to the lists because
we never did, but thats back online too.
i dont think of it as a plug-in, it is more a utility.
i must admit that "amount comparison chart"
sounds mad.
but somehow it fits to "supatrigga", "spectralcompound",
"delay lama", "enigmatron", "imp-oscar" or "robobear"
and
all this mad stuff, dont you think.
and somehow it looks funny, especially the third bargraph.
comment for 07-2003
where are they ?
we tried hard to get the OSX lists for VST and AU updated
and now they are almost perfect - not as perfect and complete
as the OS 9 list of course.
(many thanks in advance to everyone who notifies us about
missing audiounits or VST plug-ins.)
something i noticed when i went thru the latest entries in
the news pages is that there are definetly not much new
audiounits, about 2-5 per month.
so - where are they ?
half a year has passed since the last list update, now lets
count the available plug-ins :
VST OS 9 :
ca 950 - of which 160 are pluggos and 100 are DSP stuff.
VST OS X :
ca 445 - about 50% of OS 9 now.
audiounits:
ca. 90 - of which 15 are the outdated apple prototypes.
ok:
in the next weeks there are about 100 more audiounits
coming; apple, emagic, and eventually tc works.
but the tendency will remain.
pluggo OSX and native instruments VST OSX are
already waiting behind the door.
now i could start again making jokes about the audiounits
here but it is really no longer funny i guess.
one could think audiounits are an on the cutting egde
of happening music software history ... weren´t they
announced to be the one and only and the superior OSX
audio plug-in format ?
the reason for our (and i dont exclude myself here)
big disappointment with the number of existing audiounits
has a reason.
and this reason is not that third party developers would be
all conservative ignorants, or too stupid to get the basics
of the audiounit development kit.
the reason is that apple marketing is identical to
microsoft marketing today.
they are making people go crazy with socalled facts which
are only random pipedreams of hyperactive pen-pushers
when you have a closer look at things.
these announcements of apple marketing have nothing to do
with the things which are going on in the developer crews.
the guys at apple, including those from emagic, are splendid
programmers and they have made superb audiosoftware in
the past, from supercollider to exs sampler.
but they can not do wonders.
when they said they have a porting sdk which lets you
convert any existing VST plug-in into an audiounit within
two hours i did not believe that from the first time i heard it.
it _can not be true, tell me what you want.
now, 9 months later, there are more third party porting sdk
add-ons or wrappers than there is stuff from apple usable
and used.
many companies expected to have audiounits already running
today, it is july now and according to the announcements we
should have akai, waves, tc works, the very first NI´s, and
even steinberg x-phraze audiounits.
all that and more was announced for march-june but it is
not there as of today.
one could see certain sample players called ".audiounit"
or ".bundle" instead of ".component" which means they
wont load in some apps, and you could see certain virtual
analog synths where the installer from the golden master
CD ready for distribution was installing a f*cking folder instead
of a component in your AU folder when you are not root.
(on the phone this company didn´t like the idea to tell me
how many copies of their audio-unit-only software they
have sold already, hehe ... i recommended / asked them
to make a VST-i version that i can use it too and become
their customer)
you could read at apple websites last november that only
audio units can do the multichannel thing.
fact is 1.) multichannel is new for audiounits since the
WWDC 2003.
fact is 2.) you can have 5.1 and 8 channel VST plug-ins
with performer, logic, nuendo or max for 2 years, and
almost 3 years on windows-VST. not to mention TDM.
you could read and hear about audiounits and their
fantastic standardised scheme for saving and loading presets.
the truth is, that months later they had not even _any
standard way of saving presets, but only started slowly
to think and discuss about what presets could look like.
loading and saving presets, initialisation on load and stuff
like that are until _today one of the biggest problems for
host application programmers.
you could read about audiounits they would behave
identically in all hosts. that would be one of the improvements
over VST and other last century technology.
and now it is getting quite interesting - lets look at some
audiounit host programs :
logic audio - by apple, the maker of audiounit.
logic can host all types and formats of audiounits.
soundtrack - by apple, the maker of audiounit.
this otherwise cool little program can only host _stereo
plug-ins, dont ask me why.
there is no known VST host which could not open
mono-only VST plug-ins.
final cut pro - by apple, the maker of audiounit.
wow cool, audio plugins in a movie cutting app, can
i eventually avoid buying protools in the future ?
forget it.
final cut pro can only host _mono audiounits, and, it
is getting worse; it does not support custom user
interfaces so you are limited to some ugly default
sliders, or to be exact, you are limited to some ugly
default sliders in case your plugin supports that, many
wont support it.
imagine you want to use your waves compressor, and
you can only use it in mono, and you have no access
to the preset menu and some of the buttons ...
may i determine that there is no known VST host which
can only use mono VST plug-ins or would not support a
custom interface.
these things gives me a strange feeling, and i am dead
serious when i say this.
this is the opposite of what they promised us about the
world of audiounits.
(there is no reason to mention that logic audio has chrashed
on the apple keynote presentation. sure, it is funny when
you are a cubase freak, but really, that could have happened
to everybody, and it did before.)
like i said, all that is only a matter of capitalistic marketing.
the technology and the people behind audiounits are
great, but dont believe any advertisements of some big
company when you really want to learn about stuff.
ask
other users. or better yet, check things out yourself.
when you are not already bored at this point you might
want to read this
article about the g5, or how apple calls
it, "the fastest computer on the world", written by our
friend a.h. .
you dont have to share _any opinion in an article to
decide if the facts brought up in it are the truth ... or
just marketing ...
your apple-lover
roman
("never believe me anything !
i am getting paid by steinberg and dell to do this !")
