[hules]

It is not intended to harm Apple or Steinberg, the aim is to be less dependent of them by having a free and non-bloated common plugin api that has basically all the features of VST/AU/AAX/LV2 etc. All these proprietary apis can then be addressed with a bit of wrapping code when needed.

Right now, the de-facto most important standard is VST3, which is owned by Steinberg/Yamaha who can decide to revoke the license of any developer at their will. They have shown these last years that they can be really aggressive with their license. If clap takes over, then they won't have the same position of power on audio developers. This is good for the industry.

Even if there wasn't this licensing issue with VST3, none of the current plugin formats deserve to be the "default plugin format" , they are all terrible: very large codebases, bloated architectures, c++ api, unclear threading specifications... (exception: VST2 which is simple, with a c api, but Steinberg is not allowing it anymore for new developers).

[markofthew]

I'm not sure how you become less dependent on Steinberg or Apple by promoting another standard that really needs them to support it to fulfill its logical destiny. If Steinberg can revoke a developer's license at will (I've never heard of them actually doing this, though, although I'd love to know examples of such behaviour) they could therefore do just that if they smell any wrapping code needed to bridge into the VST domain. Avid used to, for example, although I don't know if it's still the case, have a clause in the developer's agreement that prevented RTAS/AAX host plug-ins... I guess I'm old enough to remember when FXpansion! had such a plug-in to host other formats within another.

I do agree with you on the state of the current plug-in APIs. But unless CLAP plug-ins are hosted natively, they will still have to piggy back on top of all the crud you describe. So unless a product comes out that truly takes the lead away from Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, et al... I feel like this is going to be a massive uphill struggle. Plug-in developers will gravitate towards where the money is; and unless users place serious pressure on Apple (that thought is amusing in and of itself!), Steinberg, and so on... It's hard to see CLAP making a dent. On the other hand, if it aims to replace JUCE as the intermediary development platform to make life easier for developers, that could be good. Although, that would seem to diminish the long term goals...

So if you need users to apply pressure on large companies, you're doomed. Even famous Cubase users like Hans Zimmer aren't going to get onboard this fight, despite his close relationship to Urs.

[Hemospectrum]

CLAP does not need to supplant all other plugin formats to succeed. Its real goal (arguably more ambitious) is to expand the set of features in the "least common denominator" of plugin formats. To do that, it only needs to win a race with one other format, which, as it happens, is officially already dead.

Plugin developers don't just pursue the largest revenue streams. They also try to take the lowest-effort paths to those markets. CLAP is carefully designed to be a low-effort path for porting old plugins to an SDK compatible with modern feature sets, which can then be automatically wrapped in comparable formats such as VST3. There are other such SDKs, such as JUCE, but they almost all require a much larger investment of effort to work with old codebases. The fact that CLAP also specifies a well-defined plugin format further enables developers to write automatic test suites, or adapt such test suites that were originally designed for other formats. In a certain subset of the market, CLAP has already been adopted for these reasons, and as far as its creators are concerned, it has therefore already accomplished its goals.

As you suggest, there is a certain possibility that Apple or Steinberg would somehow prohibit the use of third-party SDKs in plugin development, but in reality this would be an absurd thing to try. It would accomplish nothing, alienate the entire market, and promptly result in a flurry of lawsuits and perhaps even an antitrust investigation.

[fxtentacle]

In my opinion, the defacto standard is JUCE which wraps VST/AU/AAX

[BizarroLand]

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/