The Simple Audio Plug-in Specification

jwatte's picture

The Simple Audio Plugin Specification
Preview release 2009-01-14
Jon Watte (jwatte @ kvr forums)

This book/forum intends to describe the development of the Simple Audio Plugin Specification (SAPS for short), which serves two purposes:

  1. It allows plug-in developers to develop for one API, and host in a number of different hosts. The target APIs for support are:
    • VST: Mac and Windows
    • DXi: Windows
    • AudioUnits: MacOS X
    • LADSPA: Linux
  2. It allows host developers to load plug-ins using a simple, pre-developed library, which is intended to leave nothing un-specified, and thus greatly reduce the compatibility problems that plague audio plug-ins in general.

Clearly, the API isn't done yet. However, this development was sparked by an initial proposal posted on KVR Forums on 2009-01-11, and has generated a lot of good feedback that is going into the future design of the API. On this site, you can browse the current state of the API, the specification, and available source code. Because this is a work in progress, it may update at times, so please check back every once in a while, or register for the forums and subscribe to content update notifications or the RSS feed.

If you have comments, please post them in the KVR DSP/plug-in development forum at kvraudio.com: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=33

This project will either die a silent death, or it will be powered by the community, so if you're interested in this topic, please contribute!

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simpleplugin-20091114.zip11.1 KB

Comments

Did anything further happen with this?

..just curious, really :-)

jwatte's picture

No. It turns out, everyone

No. It turns out, everyone who wants something different than VST or DXi, doesn't want "something different" as much as they want "their own brand of different." Thus, while there is a fair number of developers who could go for something different, they would only do so if it was their kind of different, and there can't be any consensus on any one direction.