[music-dsp] How to make your wave-editor use and recognise DirectXplug-ins

[Amarpreet Basi]

Its that time for me to expose my ignorance of these matters yet again -- could you point me to any links on development of VSTI plug-ins (and how to make an application recognise and use them)? I did a cursory google on this matter but it was a fruitless search.

I take your points onboard about the negatives regarding DirectX, although I was encouraged about the relative ease of the interfaces of DirectX plug-ins. It seemed as if they just needed a Process() function to work their magic on the audio. Is it this easy with VSTI plug-ins?

Thanks.

>>> vjohnson at computer.org 02/24/05 18:50 PM >>>
>
>
>Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 13:34:14 +0000
>From: "Amarpreet Basi" <A.S.Basi at warwick.ac.uk>
>Subject: [music-dsp] How to make your wave-editor use and recognise
>	DirectX	plug-ins
>
>Hi, 
>
>I've got a homebrew wave-editor app more or less running and was considering making it open source. The great advantage, as I see it, of doing that would be to allow other guys to plug-in modules that they've written. I was investigating the DirectX route. I read the following helpful article on making a DirectX plug-in: 
>
>http://members.tripod.com/acmerock/tech/DXi2Tutorial.htm
>
>It discusses how you after building a plug-in you can get apps like Cubase to recognise them and use them. What I would like to know is how would I achieve this for my own program? 
>  
>


I just spent a couple of months with a background task of supporting 
DirectX plug-ins (DirectSound DMOs) in Audacity (audacity.sf.net). I 
watched as successive releases (October & December 2004) of the DirectX 
SDK removed features, sample code, & documentation about DMOs. They have 
now made it explicit -- in the Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 SDK Update 
(December 2004) release notes: "Microsoft DirectInput, Microsoft 
DirectSound and Microsoft DirectMusic are in maintenance mode and will 
continue their current status until new technologies in these areas is 
made available." Besides showing that they need a grammarian to review 
their release notes ("technologies... is"!), this makes it clear that 
DirectSound is toast, stale toast.

So, in short, don't do it. I think VST is the way to go. We'd do so with 
Audacity except it's OSS and that's a problem with the VST license. 
There are rumors Steinberg is going to change the license to obviate 
that problem, so we're currently waiting hopefully. But if the license 
isn't a problem for you, there are *tons* more VST plug-ins than 
DirectSound DMOs. Audacity also supports LADSPA, which *is* OSS.

-Vaughan
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