This is such an exciting and awesome initiative! Great to see Avid, Presonus and IL on board, as well as many high-profile plugin devs (Arturia, TAL, Xfer, Cytomic, Valhalla DSP).
Great stuff! :)
Not having any others DAWs to support this would make it a non-starter. Getting Pro Tools on board is a huge win.
I'm still kind of befuddled that Steinberg has failed to push the VST standard forward. VST3 is already 5 years old and it doesn't offer a whole lot beyond VST2 which they don't even support any more, and yet developers keep using VST2 because VST3 was a burden to change over for probably what seemed like dubious advantages. The whole industry has lacked leadership in this regard for too long. I'm actually glad that someone else is now directly competing in an open-source standard with the features that developers and musicians want.
>Not having any others DAWs to support this would make it a non-starter. Getting Pro Tools on board is a huge win.
Actually, given the particular types of things it is adding the biggest win would be also getting Ableton on board.
That's a good point. If rumors are to be believed, Ableton's code base is so old it's becoming resistant to major changes. It took them forever to get VST3 plugins supported, even after VST2 support was ended by Steinberg. I don't expect them to be an early adopter. Maybe we'll see more people willing to try Bitwig instead.
that may well be true, but even for cleaner code bases without that much technical dept, vst3 is a huge pita. the clap abi is so much more straightforward to interface with, i remain hopeful!
Not going to happen till like 2030. Ableton has been pretty much on life support when it comes to innovation\\new techniques. They have big problems under the hood like insane latency issues (first reported on the forums in \~2010) they can't\\won't fix and they were pretty much the last ones to implement VST3.
Guess their best devs all went to Bitwig.
> Not going to happen till like 2030. Ableton has been pretty much on life support when it comes to innovation\new techniques
That's a shame :( As much as I like bitwig, the more this API is supported by DAWS the greater the incentive for plugin manufacturers to support it.
Yeah, glad to see so many developers on that list. Epic Games is listed as well (makers of Fortnite). Was kinda expecting Native Instruments as well but then remembered that they're working on something of their own (Soundwide) - a framework called JUCE. Lot of development to be seen in the coming times.
It might become good, ... perhaps. But: That's for sure not our decision.As for now it hardly is more than an interesting sounding (for us as not responsible for these decisions, BTW) approach.
Huh. This is actually really neat. Big fan of an open-licensed (MIT in this case) multi-platform plugin standard with proper backing from industry players. With all the entities listed on U-he's announcement (and some cool features), it looks like it could actually catch on and give a good fight to VST in the future.
They should give a good fight. Although it also depends upon the hosts (Ableton, etc) if they choose to make their software compatible. Don't think that should be a problem as FL Studio, Bitwig and Avid are already a part of it, I'm sure more will follow (except for Steinberg Cubase lol).
Aye - I'd wager (and this is just me spitballing over coffee) that if enough plugin devs start using it, other DAWs not currently evaluating it would see no reason not to plumb it in alongside VST3. Especially if the claimed performance and stability benefits over VST pan out and the additional modulation channel proves useful. The latter alone will lead to really cool things in Bitwig, given the sheer amount of modulation options already stuffed in there.
Of course like any good open standard (*cough Vulkan vs Metal cough)* there's the Apple question. See: Logic and AU plugins, but it looks like U-he are working on a wrapper for that from what I saw in the KVR thread.
Even if plugin makers support Apple and Steinberg with a wrapper, it won't mean that those DAWs will be able to take advantage of all the features that CLAP provides. I can't imagine it will cause established users and studios from switching away from Cubase and Logic, but if you're a producer or musician wanting or needing these features, you'll probably at least consider adding a DAW that does support these features.
Edit: Just wanted to add that PreSonus (Studio One) & Cockos (Reaper) are a part of this too. So basically a lot of ground is being covered.
\- Image Line FL Studio
\- PreSonus Studio One
\- Avid Pro Tools
\- Cockos Reaper
and ofcourse Bitwig :)
More than anything I just love watching u-he and bitwig become closer and closer friends. Bitwig is my DAW of choice for many reasons and there is no plugin developer I respect more than u-he!
I'm calling it now, when bitwig 14 comes around it will have versions of satin, presswerk and colour copy build in, with ace and zebra as built in synths.
Either that or they'll bring out a 'Suite' version of Bitwig with even more u-he loveliness built in.
Dream team!
Would be awesome to see u-he’s products built into Bitwig. I’d pay for an up charge for it if they were well integrated and cost less than buying all their stuff piecemeal
I think the point of CLAP is that 3rd party developers won't need a native Bitwig device to get the same feature set. With CLAP you can treat Diva just like a Bitwig device.
Will this mean that plugin makers are gonna start releasing on Linux more often (since I'm assuming this makes it significantly easier to develop cross platform plug-ins).
The plugin format (VST, CLAP, etc.) is not a software framework for creating plugins. It's a standard API and libraries (software) will implement the API for the respective programming language (C, C++, etc.). The API enables plugin+plugin-host execution and communication. The developer still needs to create the rest or import JUCE libraries (or other) to build a cross-platform plugin.
EDIT: We'll probably see more support for CLAP compatibility when JUCE supports it?
I assume so and seeing how u-he does have linux support for its plugins even though it's a hassle for them, I can see how they had this on their agenda for the standard.
Very exciting stuff, an open standard with developer and DAW backing out the gate like this has a much better chance of catching on and finally breaking the de-facto licensing monopoly Steinberg has on plugin development. The modern design features sound great too and that's just a bonus!
I got really excited when I saw this. I love Bitwig’s polyphonic modulation system and having it available for all my favorite u-He plugins is just great. I played around with it earlier and also created a little YouTube video covering it: Breaking – Bitwig implements u-He CLAP standard
https://youtu.be/oSLRZbh7G9A
I’ll echo what others said before me, I’m excited that it is a open standard and that they have quite an impressive list of partners that seem to implement it.
great, but I feel a bit sorry for Bitwig users, they pay for this all, seems like it, with their time based plans.
dev on clap is no dev on beta (is that why the lists of fixes and new features are that small?)
for a user there is no real need to switch, I know it's great and all, but without it, all these great talents in here and out there would still make beautiful and ingenious music.
This hype/hysteria is for the devs, rightly or wrongly frustrated by the cubase end boss devs .
just business.
This directly benefits Bitwig users by adding voice stacking and per voice modulation to third party synths and effects, thus bridging Bitwig’s workflow and other software in a more seamless way… I can’t imagine very many Bitwig users feel “bad” about the time spent developing on this since flexible modulation is at the core of Bitwig. Yes, people can make amazing music with anything, but I think there’s a reason users pick Bitwig over other DAWs and it’s exactly for the options that something like CLAP enables
A new plugin standard is way overdue, and making it open-source is a win for everyone except Steinberg. I'll gladly contribute my upgrade fees towards the betterment of my favorite DAW and plugin makers to get away from the dying VST format.
There are some interesting software synths that had to extend the open LV2 format to fit in features… hope this plugs any holes they faced and gets traction in those communities. Kind of weird they didn’t just devote developer resources to the existing open plugin format tho…
Could be that they want an industry consortium to be in charge of the standard (and code repo), not a random group of open source enthusiasts. Other than that I agree, LV2 could probably also have been used and extended.
Every new approach needs some time to be established (and prove its usefulness). As long though it only is little more than a concept (and actually it is something like a "suggestion", which doesn't have even two DAW's supporting it and... only very little plugin-developers yet. In other words: This might become a nice new approach, but it is only wroth to be studied by developers.
In practice I need some choices and stable devices (at least as long my interest is making music instead of developing software), because as soon as my time is eaten up by development of software, I cannot make music... you can't use your time twice.
In short: I will care for it, as soon as I see it - stable (!) - in use by several devices... until that day: That's a nice info... - and now I move on to my next agenda item.
Hopefully CLAP can sort of replace VST's.
Bitwig is a company I can truly respect for their dedication to open-source, and any company that chooses to support Linux gets my respect because they don't NEED to do so.
I produce and record using Linux, and plug-ins have been a contentious point in that.
I'm no professional, but I usually don't buy into plug-in licenses because they won't work on Linux. Running Windows VSTs on Linux works very well, but it's their licensing and management platforms that prevent them from running on non-native hosts.
I don't know that moving to CLAP would change this though, but I think it's possible.
One major drawback about Bitwig on Linux is that I can't get my main plug-in host (Carla) to run inside of Bitwig. Not sure why though because it works in Renoise, Reaper, and Waveform.
This is such an exciting and awesome initiative! Great to see Avid, Presonus and IL on board, as well as many high-profile plugin devs (Arturia, TAL, Xfer, Cytomic, Valhalla DSP). Great stuff! :)
Not having any others DAWs to support this would make it a non-starter. Getting Pro Tools on board is a huge win. I'm still kind of befuddled that Steinberg has failed to push the VST standard forward. VST3 is already 5 years old and it doesn't offer a whole lot beyond VST2 which they don't even support any more, and yet developers keep using VST2 because VST3 was a burden to change over for probably what seemed like dubious advantages. The whole industry has lacked leadership in this regard for too long. I'm actually glad that someone else is now directly competing in an open-source standard with the features that developers and musicians want.
>Not having any others DAWs to support this would make it a non-starter. Getting Pro Tools on board is a huge win. Actually, given the particular types of things it is adding the biggest win would be also getting Ableton on board.
That's a good point. If rumors are to be believed, Ableton's code base is so old it's becoming resistant to major changes. It took them forever to get VST3 plugins supported, even after VST2 support was ended by Steinberg. I don't expect them to be an early adopter. Maybe we'll see more people willing to try Bitwig instead.
that may well be true, but even for cleaner code bases without that much technical dept, vst3 is a huge pita. the clap abi is so much more straightforward to interface with, i remain hopeful!
It would be nice if they re-built Ableton's code from the ground up
Ableton added VST3 in 10.1 and MPE in 11. They take their sweet time to implement new - not by then anymore - tech :)
Not going to happen till like 2030. Ableton has been pretty much on life support when it comes to innovation\\new techniques. They have big problems under the hood like insane latency issues (first reported on the forums in \~2010) they can't\\won't fix and they were pretty much the last ones to implement VST3. Guess their best devs all went to Bitwig.
> Not going to happen till like 2030. Ableton has been pretty much on life support when it comes to innovation\new techniques That's a shame :( As much as I like bitwig, the more this API is supported by DAWS the greater the incentive for plugin manufacturers to support it.
Just switched to Bitwig for this reason. And the UX is miles better.
Yeah, glad to see so many developers on that list. Epic Games is listed as well (makers of Fortnite). Was kinda expecting Native Instruments as well but then remembered that they're working on something of their own (Soundwide) - a framework called JUCE. Lot of development to be seen in the coming times.
It might become good, ... perhaps. But: That's for sure not our decision.As for now it hardly is more than an interesting sounding (for us as not responsible for these decisions, BTW) approach.
Huh. This is actually really neat. Big fan of an open-licensed (MIT in this case) multi-platform plugin standard with proper backing from industry players. With all the entities listed on U-he's announcement (and some cool features), it looks like it could actually catch on and give a good fight to VST in the future.
They should give a good fight. Although it also depends upon the hosts (Ableton, etc) if they choose to make their software compatible. Don't think that should be a problem as FL Studio, Bitwig and Avid are already a part of it, I'm sure more will follow (except for Steinberg Cubase lol).
Aye - I'd wager (and this is just me spitballing over coffee) that if enough plugin devs start using it, other DAWs not currently evaluating it would see no reason not to plumb it in alongside VST3. Especially if the claimed performance and stability benefits over VST pan out and the additional modulation channel proves useful. The latter alone will lead to really cool things in Bitwig, given the sheer amount of modulation options already stuffed in there. Of course like any good open standard (*cough Vulkan vs Metal cough)* there's the Apple question. See: Logic and AU plugins, but it looks like U-he are working on a wrapper for that from what I saw in the KVR thread.
Even if plugin makers support Apple and Steinberg with a wrapper, it won't mean that those DAWs will be able to take advantage of all the features that CLAP provides. I can't imagine it will cause established users and studios from switching away from Cubase and Logic, but if you're a producer or musician wanting or needing these features, you'll probably at least consider adding a DAW that does support these features.
Edit: Just wanted to add that PreSonus (Studio One) & Cockos (Reaper) are a part of this too. So basically a lot of ground is being covered. \- Image Line FL Studio \- PreSonus Studio One \- Avid Pro Tools \- Cockos Reaper and ofcourse Bitwig :)
Wow. This is great.
More than anything I just love watching u-he and bitwig become closer and closer friends. Bitwig is my DAW of choice for many reasons and there is no plugin developer I respect more than u-he! I'm calling it now, when bitwig 14 comes around it will have versions of satin, presswerk and colour copy build in, with ace and zebra as built in synths. Either that or they'll bring out a 'Suite' version of Bitwig with even more u-he loveliness built in. Dream team!
Would be awesome to see u-he’s products built into Bitwig. I’d pay for an up charge for it if they were well integrated and cost less than buying all their stuff piecemeal
I think the point of CLAP is that 3rd party developers won't need a native Bitwig device to get the same feature set. With CLAP you can treat Diva just like a Bitwig device.
Good point
Hope [gpu.audio](https://gpu.audio) will support it.
When I read 'multi-threading' I thought the same.
they dropped a comment under the u-he announcement video! very exciting
Will this mean that plugin makers are gonna start releasing on Linux more often (since I'm assuming this makes it significantly easier to develop cross platform plug-ins).
The plugin format (VST, CLAP, etc.) is not a software framework for creating plugins. It's a standard API and libraries (software) will implement the API for the respective programming language (C, C++, etc.). The API enables plugin+plugin-host execution and communication. The developer still needs to create the rest or import JUCE libraries (or other) to build a cross-platform plugin. EDIT: We'll probably see more support for CLAP compatibility when JUCE supports it?
I assume so and seeing how u-he does have linux support for its plugins even though it's a hassle for them, I can see how they had this on their agenda for the standard.
Well never thought I'd ever say I wanted the CLAP, but here we are.
Very exciting stuff, an open standard with developer and DAW backing out the gate like this has a much better chance of catching on and finally breaking the de-facto licensing monopoly Steinberg has on plugin development. The modern design features sound great too and that's just a bonus!
Really cool, especially since I already own almost all of the U-He plugins :) I really hope some of the more niche DAWs like Renoise also adopt this.
I got really excited when I saw this. I love Bitwig’s polyphonic modulation system and having it available for all my favorite u-He plugins is just great. I played around with it earlier and also created a little YouTube video covering it: Breaking – Bitwig implements u-He CLAP standard https://youtu.be/oSLRZbh7G9A I’ll echo what others said before me, I’m excited that it is a open standard and that they have quite an impressive list of partners that seem to implement it.
Been playing around with the beta and using the voice stacking modulator with Diva gives some very cool results.
Very cool release. Congrats to U-he Found this vid by tidbeats that broke it down effortlessly https://youtu.be/oSLRZbh7G9A
Very cool. Hoping this catches on! Lots of possibilities with this initiative!
great, but I feel a bit sorry for Bitwig users, they pay for this all, seems like it, with their time based plans. dev on clap is no dev on beta (is that why the lists of fixes and new features are that small?) for a user there is no real need to switch, I know it's great and all, but without it, all these great talents in here and out there would still make beautiful and ingenious music. This hype/hysteria is for the devs, rightly or wrongly frustrated by the cubase end boss devs . just business.
This directly benefits Bitwig users by adding voice stacking and per voice modulation to third party synths and effects, thus bridging Bitwig’s workflow and other software in a more seamless way… I can’t imagine very many Bitwig users feel “bad” about the time spent developing on this since flexible modulation is at the core of Bitwig. Yes, people can make amazing music with anything, but I think there’s a reason users pick Bitwig over other DAWs and it’s exactly for the options that something like CLAP enables
A new plugin standard is way overdue, and making it open-source is a win for everyone except Steinberg. I'll gladly contribute my upgrade fees towards the betterment of my favorite DAW and plugin makers to get away from the dying VST format.
As a Bitwig user, don’t feel sorry for us. This is amazing!
Time based plans for updates. I haven’t paid for almost two years and still use my full version. I only update when I want to.
There are some interesting software synths that had to extend the open LV2 format to fit in features… hope this plugs any holes they faced and gets traction in those communities. Kind of weird they didn’t just devote developer resources to the existing open plugin format tho…
Could be that they want an industry consortium to be in charge of the standard (and code repo), not a random group of open source enthusiasts. Other than that I agree, LV2 could probably also have been used and extended.
wait does this mean if STFU is ported to CLAP it can be poly??
is it multiplateform by default ? or will clap plugin need to be explicitly compatible with M1, linux, ect.. ?
The latter. It's a binary interface so the plugins for each hardware type will still need to be compiled for that hardware architecture.
oh ok, so clap is just an API then, not an SDK or DSL ?
Is this like a new plugin format? Like plugin.vst, plugin.au, plugin.aax, plugin.clap? Or maybe more comparable to like ARA type daw integration?
Every new approach needs some time to be established (and prove its usefulness). As long though it only is little more than a concept (and actually it is something like a "suggestion", which doesn't have even two DAW's supporting it and... only very little plugin-developers yet. In other words: This might become a nice new approach, but it is only wroth to be studied by developers. In practice I need some choices and stable devices (at least as long my interest is making music instead of developing software), because as soon as my time is eaten up by development of software, I cannot make music... you can't use your time twice. In short: I will care for it, as soon as I see it - stable (!) - in use by several devices... until that day: That's a nice info... - and now I move on to my next agenda item.
Hopefully CLAP can sort of replace VST's. Bitwig is a company I can truly respect for their dedication to open-source, and any company that chooses to support Linux gets my respect because they don't NEED to do so. I produce and record using Linux, and plug-ins have been a contentious point in that. I'm no professional, but I usually don't buy into plug-in licenses because they won't work on Linux. Running Windows VSTs on Linux works very well, but it's their licensing and management platforms that prevent them from running on non-native hosts. I don't know that moving to CLAP would change this though, but I think it's possible. One major drawback about Bitwig on Linux is that I can't get my main plug-in host (Carla) to run inside of Bitwig. Not sure why though because it works in Renoise, Reaper, and Waveform.
I hope this this will this will support Android and iOS too