Is this the right direction?

[faithful]

This is my first post in this forum. (This place is really starting to take shape ) I would like to talk about the future of the "native" DAW. Specifically how this new crop of DSP cards will impact and improve the native experience. As you know, a whirlwind of manufacturers are soon to release their own DSP cards (i.e. TC, UAudio, etc.) but these cards seem to only run their proprietaryplug-ins(or possibly others who decide to develop on their platform) via "seemless integration" into existing platforms like VST and MAS. I understand this will be an improvement over the current situation and will certainly give the consumer more options, but is this the direction that plug-in developers need to take? Should DAW manufacturers develop their own DSP cards to supplement their software? How about generic DSP cards that will speed multiple existing formats i.e. MAS, DX, VST? Your thoughts are appreciated. Thanks

 

[Ang1970]

Some interesting questions Jason. I'd like to answer some of them, but unfortunately all I have is more questions.

As you mentioned, would it be more beneficial to get everyone to use a common type of format to port in and out of standardized dsp cards? Or would that be too restrictive? Maybe it's better to allow each company the freedom to generate completely new ideas without getting bogged down with "how am I gonna make this run on the other guy's card?"

Digidesign took this to the extreme, proclaiming that they were the "standard" and everyone would have to go through them. Did that make it more difficult for developers to implement their ideas, having to cater everything to TDM? Does it even make a difference if you're writing for TDM or DirectX or VST etc? Is any format inherently easier to write good code for? (Clean, uncluttered, less buggy, smooth flowing, less artifacts, etc.) Is it possible the best format is the one that hasn't been invented yet?

Maybe we should get some programmers in here.