[ardour-users] [linux-audio-user] vst: emulate mac intead of win?

[Paul Davis]

> What I've always wondered is... why doesn't Steinberg just support
> linux?  Wouldn't it be easier for us who chose to go with the penguin?
> And wouldn't steinberg have an entire new market (linux folks).  

they don't believe the market is of any appreciable size. and they are
probably correct.

 
> In all honesty I have no idea what I'm talking about.  All I know is
> that in order to use vst plugins you have to emulate windows with
> WINE, or something to that nature.  
>  
> Isn't there some way that VST's could be used without the emulation of
> a different OS?

in theory, an audio plugin is just something that takes input data,
transforms it, and/or generates output data.

however, the difference between theory and practice is greater in
practice than in theory, so ...

in practice, an audio plugin comes with a GUI that is written using
the "native" platform's GUI toolkit and all of its assumptions and
requirements. in some cases, even the non-GUI parts of the plugin make
OS specific calls, even though they are not really supposed to ever do
this.

consequently, supporting the full range of VST plugins that exist for
win32/x86 really means supporting a sparse but extensive subset of the
APIs for win32, which basically means ... WINE.

--p