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On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 12:49 PM, andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk> wrote: > perhaps there's more than one side to this, > what a big company says can be a bit misleading, > and what's more, > they're saying through their publicity department. > > (and of course, I have slight reason to believe that you have an interest > in software that is produced by small time independent developers :-) > I have some personal experience of what validation/certification means > from my business software. The checks that are done aren't to do with > "bad coding" directly. The applicant has to prove that they are a > "bona-fide" company, they have to provide documents from their business. > That *is* a way to weed out *some* problem software, but it's > no guarantee, and it's a barrier to small time developers, whether > or not that's the intention. > > Now, of course my experience is from the M$ side of things, but it just > isn't practical for Apple to do it differently by checking for "bad >coding". > It would cost a fortune, and would mean that developers would be > handing over their source code to be checked. > > > > As you'd be the first to acknowledge, there's a number of software > developers on this list who don't write crap > software, and they might not want to pay to go through some Kafkaesque > certification process. > > andy butler Since you answering to the list on things I'm not talking about in my posts, I'd like to try another post here to explain my point better: In particular I'm talking about the "Audio Unit Validator", a simple utility that has already been around for some four or five years. Together with a specification for the plug-in format this makes it easy for small developers to (A) check out how to program an AU that will be compatible with hosts etc and (B) bug check their work. Of course some people "cheat" and do not check their coding according to the format specification and then things may happen like this well known example of AU host sequencers sending out a command for plug-ins to empty the plug-in buffer before song start. Some AU plug-ins that are not programmed to detect this call may then, after a sequencer stop, start by throwing out the old audio buffer when called upon by a song start message. That's just one example of the practical benefit of having such a validating routine. We users can run the AU Validator utility and get immediate feedback on which plug-ins on our system that do not fulfill the AU specifications. This makes it easier for us users to put together a stable music system. And it saves us a lot of time. As you see I'm not talking about "what a big company says // through their publicity department" ;-). I'm talking about my own hands-on experience of working with software for making music. But I have also personally seen Apple affiliated developers taking personal contact with freelance third-party plug-in developers just to help them get on the track. So there is nothing like a "big company ignorant attitude" among OS X application developers. However, in the past OS X days Apple has done some goofy things, like not releasing AU specifications early enough for 3d-p dev's to get their stuff together on time for an upcoming major release - may be it a system upgrade or some big application. I suppose THAT may be what you have been hearing about? Yes, it sucks, and as you're saying it's related to the way those big companies have to work under the pressure of market competition; if you ever open up the doors to your development lab just a tiny bit the other big companies will immediately rip you off and take the revenue while you're own big company still has to pay the development costs (like in that classical Behringer example). Finally - when I refer to not wanting to use "crap" tools that waste my time, I don't mean that particular softwares are "crap". To me it's the situation that is crap, since it robs me of my time. But that's how it is and we have to live with it. We can't go back in time and politely ask Steinberg to provide better guidance and control of VST 3d-p development. Today lots of stuff that make systems crash are already out there. All I'm saying is that I don't have the time to deal with all that and that I now prefer another more time efficient method that is available. This has nothing to do with musical qualities of VST plug-ins. I decided to assemble the best VST plug-ins for Windows I could find, in order to replicate my favorite patches from the TC Electronics FireworX and Eventide Eclipse effect processor devices with the Mobius VST looper. This project came out successfully and the funny thing is that when Apple released MainStage I realized that what I had ben building with Windows VST's in Bidule was actually "my own MainStage for Windows". They are quite compatible, sound wise, but I would now prefer to use Apple's MainStage as the host because all of Logic's plug-ins are already there in-the-box. No need to fiddle around looking for new VST's and test them, because Emagic (now with Apple's financing) has already done all that work in order to provide me a stable sound design palette. -- Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen www.boysen.se (Swedish) www.looproom.com (international) www.myspace.com/perboysen