[cw-discuss] Crossover - VST plugin support?

[JJB]

Mark,

VST Licensing is simple: you put "Made with Steinberg VST Technology"  
in the About box, and you don't use the tech in ways that would make  
Steinberg look bad, or hurt people. No licensing fees are necessary.

http://www.steinberg.de/532+M52087573ab0.html

That is why there are so many 3rd party VST plugins and VST is still  
the major standard.


One most important point: running a VST host under Crossover and  
somehow connecting the output to OS X is and will always be annoying  
to all but the most technical users.

Jeremy's suggestion of making the whole process transparent to the  
end users is much more marketable. That will make the difference  
between a solution that works for nerds-only vs a solution that works  
for all musicians and audio engineers.


I see the commercial potential here as quite good for the following  
reasons:

As it stands now, I have put Jeremy in touch with FXPansion's  
developers, who see great commercial potential in this enterprise, as  
VST wrappers is their primary business.

Solving this problem opens the field of Windows VST plugins to both  
Mac users and Mac Protools users, and users of AU only hosts. Since  
there are literally tens of thousands of VST plugins for the Windows  
platform, I think the potential for both end user interest in using  
the technology, and for developers who would like to offer their work  
to the Mac platform but do not want to learn to develop for  OS X, is  
very good.

The work that needs to be done in order to make this happen will be  
good for all users of Crossover, not just Pro Audio users, as it  
appears it will be dependent on further development of Quartzdrv.  
That alone is primarily what has prevented FXpansion from doing this  
project themselves.  Since this is going to happen anyway this year,  
I don't think you need to worry about resources being drained from  
other more worthwhile projects.


Also, I would like to point out that some companies have already  
solved most of the VST on Linux issues:

http://www.museresearch.com/

http://www.plugzilla.com/

These are both custom linux boxes that do nothing but run VST  
plugins. Receptor is compatible with most plugins (various tricks may  
be needed to get certain ones to run however).


As far as your suggestion, to simply focus on running one VST Host,  
that is not a bad idea.


As I noted, I have MiniHost working, so far, pretty well under Crossover

In order to make it **useable**, all I need is MIDI input from OS X  
to Crossover / Wine.

To make it **useful**, I need much lower audio latency.

So no matter what approach is taken, some serious development work  
may be necessary

Joel