Audiounits, the beginning of the end! Options

[damann]

I love X so much these days, 9.2 already seems ancient.
CoreAudio and CoreMidi seem to have genuinely provided an
inspiring future for developers, Emagic, Steinberg, in fact, apparently
every developer on our wish list!
I've heard recently that CoreAudio has a native plugin framework that
seiously out-runs ASIO or any of the 3rd party stuff by Digi, Motu etc.
AudioUnits: a direct replacement, with 1ms latency reported, already implemented by Emagic, 100% cocoa, a potential industry standard in the making!
i've already backed up my 4.8.1 logic folder to CD, DVD, AND firewire drive 'cos i just know that VST etc are ultimately doomed.

this experience, although slow, will be the equivalent of completely replacing a studio and it's equipment in order to stay current.
of course there are carbon versions of a lot of the best plugins around
but this is more a question of support from OS & developers for VST etc!

[lepetitmartien]

Drool
Drool
Drool
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One nation under a groove would be great!
The end of this plugin nonsense (well, I can dream…) But it'll need rewriting for host (in the making) and plugs (one day…it's the sound of silence right now)

[jray]

I agree - the wait is going to be way worth it. This will make software development cheaper in the long run, hopefully paying dividends to us the users: more for less.

[Francois Déchery]

If Apple reach the goal (making a new standart), and they may be abble to do it, this would certainly help to get an amazing plug-in choice, because when a developper will release a plug-in he wont have to choose if the plug will be VST, MAS, Premiere, TDM, RTAS, AS, Logic.
He will just have to concentrate about the plug-in, not the commercial-marketing stupid issues...

Also, this will also let independant developpers to faslty get the Developpement kit, and to release excellent freeware or shareware...
Did you ever see a freeware TDM or RTAS plug-in?

For example Polyfractus/Dragan, who makes amazing plug-ins on the VST platform, would be more than happy to release it under TDM environnment, but he never succeed to get the needed Developpement kit from Digi....
A new standart would solve all theses things..
But will digi/steinberg/motu follow it, or will they continue to promote their formats? Time will tell!

[jray]

Check out:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/audio.html

Here's a quote -

"Apple includes several Audio Units in Mac OS X, including a Velocity Engine-optimized reverb and a sample rate converter. Apple will release additional Audio Units in the future...Mac OS X includes a Velocity Engine-optimized Virtual Instrument compatible with the industry standard DownLoadable Sounds (DLS) format. The Mac synthesizer provides applications with high quality, low latency sample playback as well as control for filters and envelopes."

Finally - serious DLS support. This will be important for gaming and who knows...maybe it gives Virtual instrument makers a good leaping off point to make their own cheap samplers. If Core Audio's engine is as good as they say it is, why would you write your own? [read the part about M-Audio finding latencies of only 1 ms] It then becomes an issue of tools and feature sets. I know it's not as simple as all that (you still have to know Core Audio well enough to get this kind of performance) but it's only a matter of time before there are just gobs of cheap choices for audio developers.

[damann]

thanks for the info guys.
i'm beginning to see life through aqua tinted glasses now, it looks beautiful!
soif, is codewarrior capable of developing for cocoa? obviously the x developers kit is necassary, but i'm thinking quite seriously about this.

you know, as they say, you can't halt the march of time...

[Francois Déchery]

soif, is codewarrior capable of developing for cocoa?

oups not .
i would have to learn C++ (i guess) to be able to developp Cocoa apps.
But at this time, i've learn enough about PHP/mySQL to start learning a new language...

But Polyfractus allready knows C++ and i'm sure he plans to realease Cocoa apps... may be something soon

[deleted]

Yes, like Soif, i hope all this will unify the plugin market, around an OPEN format, that every develloper could use FREELY.
OS X kernel is open source, so, why not?

I just hope that third party devellopers will release FREE upgrades to their plugins, to support this new native format. At least, at a minor price.
But i'm probably dreaming, in some ways.
Mac OS X is NOT Linux
Bye.

[damann]

adc is definitely not free!
the basic "x" kit is only $20, but all other sdk's are $700-$1200.
codewarrior does support cocao, and it is of course a "c" derivation.
$700 for codewarrior and a further $700 for apples' cocoa sdk will buy you into audio unit developement.
only dragans' knowledge to accumulate and we're winning...
m£r!e!

I like the potential of AudioUnits and MusicDevice. It looks like Apple is SERIOUS about Audio again. I hope Logic OS X supports both VST and AudioUnits. Give me choices and I'll be happy.