 Hey, I'm Anfa. In this video, I want to talk about open source audio plugin formats. What are they? How do they differ? Most importantly, which one is the best? Introduction If you have any experience with computer-based music production, you're probably familiar with a few proprietary audio plugin formats like VST, AU, RTAS or Aax. Many people don't know, there are also a few open standards, which are obviously mostly supported by open source host programs. I used to use VST plugins back when I was using Windows, but when I switched to Linux, I decided to also forget about proprietary plugin formats and just learn the native stuff. Here they come, Latspa. In the year 2000, the first open audio plugin format was released. It was called Latspa, which is an acronym for Linux Audio Developers Simple Plugin API. The API might be simple, but the name isn't. For context, Steinberg's VST was initially released in 1996 and version 2, the most widely used one so far, in the year 1999. Latspa came one year later. Latspa plugins are only effect processors, so they take mono or stereo audio on input and give back audio on output. No custom GUIs, no MIDI and no advanced stuff, very basic, but also very easy to work with from a developer standpoint. If you want to pick up DSP programming, Latspa is probably the easiest way to go. Latspa plugins are still widely available and widely supported, probably mostly thanks to their simplicity and the fact that for four years that was the only open standard available. As I mentioned before, every Latspa plugin will use a generic user interface created by its host. These don't look fancy, but the looks shouldn't deceive you, as many of the Latspa plugins sound excellent and do their task very well. If you come from the world of VSTs, like I did, you'd expect every plugin to have its own look, and Latspa plugins don't have that. An upside to this limitation, however, is that it forces you to listen to what the plugin is doing. DSSI In 2004, the next open plugin standard came around under the name DSSI, or Dizzy, as the developers intended it to be pronounced. That stands for disposable soft synth interface. Even though that was already 15 years ago, I think it's not fully disposed of just yet. It's based on Latspa, but is focused entirely on instrument plugins, as the name suggests. It allowed for creating custom graphical user interfaces, which were a thing in VST for 8 years already at this point, but hey, it's progress. So we have simple audio effect plugins. We have instruments with custom graphical user interfaces, but there's still a lot of things missing. Enter LV2. LV2 was introduced in 2008. The name stands for Latspa version 2. The LV2 format is the most recent, most modern, and the most useful one. I have even heard some programmers say that it's a better standard than VS2. LV2 incorporates the best elements from both Latspa and DSSI plugins. Being a perfect replacement for both. And then some. LV2 supports everything we need. Custom graphical user interfaces, audio, MIDI, and control-voltage signal processing, any number and combination of input and output ports. Many, many smaller, awesome features that only programmers will understand. And it's extensible. What does that mean? The core of LV2 is very simple, not much more complex than Latspa was, but you can add extensions onto this core to make anything possible with LV2 plugins. An example? Ardors inline displays. These are small rectangles that the plugin can draw on even when its window is not open. This way, the plugin can communicate what it's doing at all times. And the user can see that right in the mixer strip. Many modern LV2 plugins support the inline displays. And I find them really useful at times. However, the beauty of LV2 is any host that doesn't support the inline displays extension, because they are pretty specific to order right now, can simply ignore that part of the plugin. And everything else just works. I personally tend to use LV2 plugins the most. If something isn't available in that format, I'm gonna use Latspa or Linux VST plugins. Linux VST? What is that? Oh, I'll come back to that later, okay? That. Now there's one more plugin format that is way different from anything else that I've covered in this video so far. It's called VAMP. It was developed at the Queen Mary University of London and published in 2006 by the guys who made Sonic Visualizer, I guess. Great program for investigating audiophile contents. The VAMP plugins are not used to make or modify audio or MIDI data. They are solely used to analyze sound and extract its features. A well-known audio editor called Audacity uses VAMP plugins. They are also used within Sonic Visualizer itself, of course, and an open-source DJing program called MIX, which uses them to analyze the music library regarding tempo and key of the songs. So VAMP plugins are not that useful for music production, at least not directly. Linux VST. So regular VST plugins are compiled for Windows, and to use them with Linux, you need to use WINE, the Windows non-emulator. But with Linux VST plugins, no wine is involved, as the binaries are built specifically for Linux. Is Linux VST a truly open standard? How does that work? Why is the sky blue? Final words. To sum it all up, Latspa is the oldest format, and it's dying. DSSI is an iteration on that, and it's almost dead. LV2 is awesome, and it's the present and the future of open-source audio plugin formats. If you'd like to learn more about this stuff, I can recommend an hour-long talk by FalkTX about the various audio plugin formats and their in their workings. That talk was both a great resource and an inspiration for me in making this video. That's all I have for today. What do you guys think? Are you using open plugin formats, or are you on the proprietary side of things? Or maybe stuck in the middle? Have you got tricked into looking at sounds and not listening? Anyway, thanks for watching. And I hope this video was worth your time. I also want to thank everyone who supports my work financially. These people make it possible for me to make videos like this one. If you'd like to join them and help keep this show going, please go to patreon.com slash ANFA or liberapay.org slash ANFA. Now go and make some music.