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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

The problem is:

Logic has Apple's own AU, wont accept others.

Cubase has Steinberg's own VST, wont accept others.

And Live (which supports both AU and VST) has a "feud" with BitWig (which was started by ex-Ableton staff), so unlikely to accept Clap.

So, what does this leaves us with? BitWig, maybe Studio One, and some even smaller players?

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I don't think Ableton is that petty. They'll back this if they think they stand to gain something from it. And given the mess that the other plugin standards are I think the value proposition is clear.

Why would they want to support a third standard? More support headaches for little gain is not generally what software developers desire.

Actually 3 standards, AU, plus VST2 and VST3 which have different APIs.

One of the advantages of CLAP would be Midi 2.0 support. But given that VST3 recently released support for Midi 2.0, that's a fair question.

Possibly 4 now, Live recently announced beta support for AUv3

Because AU is non-existent on Windows, and Steinberg these days controls VST with only its own interests in mind, not those of the wider industry.

It's not just a new standard. CLAP plugins work better than their VST counterpart. They do more. Polyphonic CC modulation is a very fundamental upgrade Live could really have that would still fit its modular strip UI paradigm and justify even more its Push hardware. It would even reduce the gap with Bitwig. Project portability is also extremely desirable for Ableton, who is looking at mobile as a new platform. All the actors are Berlin-based companies located about 30min from each others, knowing each other very well. There is hope.

>It would even reduce the gap with Bitwig

What gap? Most producers just use Live.

Reaper maybe https://github.com/schwaaa/clap-imgui

Which is not the small player it seems to be.

Indeed, REAPER is surprisingly prominent in video game audio.

Also developed by u-he thats one big player in plugin synth world already. If CLAP solves issues plugin devs have and maybe makes plugins better than customers will demand support.

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