The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by David Polich »

I personally don't care how tough it is for developers to code for AU.
That's their job. Whether half-baked or not, AU is the Mac standard and
that's the format we need. If a plug-in or VI isn't available in AU format, then I'm not buying it.

You know the saying, "standards are great. We should have lots of them".
The multiple-format situation isn't going to change, anymore than the
multiple audio-format situation did.
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by Michael Canavan »

Lol! MIDI was the last time they all agreed on anything! and why we haven't replaced MIDI is a great example of how standards are hard to implement! :koolaid:

I just hope Apple gets AU up to speed soon. Logic 10 has got to be in the works so I assume like Steinberg does with Cubase, Apple will update AU spec along with a fresh Logic version.
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by mhschmieder »

Has the AU spec typically been updated with each Logic release?

Many manufacturers are announcing their support for AAX at AES this weekend -- especially high-end vendors (e.g. Softube).
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by Prime Mover »

Anyone have any inkling that MOTU might slowly phase out MAS? They've already re-coded all their their MW plugins to AU, as well as MachFive. They've obviously been able to establish a fairly reasonable dialog with Apple by this point. And, I might be wrong about this, but isn't AU free to license, unlike VST or RTAS, and TDM? If so, and they want to sell their plugins to non DP users, wouldn't it make sense for them to stop coding all their plugins in two different formats? It would be nice for users too, as many programs besides DAWs on the mac are AU compatible. I would love to use MOTUs plugins in some of those other environments, like Jambalaya and Adobe Premiere.
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by bayswater »

Prime Mover wrote:Anyone have any inkling that MOTU might slowly phase out MAS
That's the big question. MAS as a general standard has to be at end of life when it comes to plugins, although presumably still fine as a general audio engine. Does DP actually support AU? Or use the MAS AudioUnit Support bundle to connect AU plugins to the MAS system? And there are a lot of DP plugins that haven't been converted. Would be quite expensive for MOTU to go all AU with no noticeable difference to DP's feature and performance, and a potential for new bugs.
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by James Steele »

mhschmieder wrote:Many manufacturers are announcing their support for AAX at AES this weekend -- especially high-end vendors (e.g. Softube).
I understand that. Avid has cultivated a customer base that is used to paying much more for plug-ins that are in a format required for PT. Probably better profit margin for them than selling Audio Units to the proletariat. Sort of like when you buy a Mac version of a peripheral versus a PC version. You get soaked for the "Mac" version. :(
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by mhschmieder »

It was just a simple announcement of AES show news; nothing behind it.

I do wonder though what the licensing fees are for the various PT formats, given that the plugs often cost twice that of the native equivalent.

I'm guessing the vendors had a lot of lead time, but I wonder if some had more info than others, based on some tiering structure.

The bottom line is that AU seems more egalitarian when it comes to the Mac, even though I acknowledge some of the arguments for why VST should be the "default" for historical reasons.

Whatever the case, plug-in and VI vendors must be going through hard times right now, what with the economy and having to decide on prioritizing plug-in formats yet again.

Maybe AAX has enough in common with earlier PT formats that not a whole lot of code changes have to be made by the vendors. Sometimes it's just window dressing.

The main gist seems to be cross-compatibility between Native and DSP, which I don't think was possible before, so they might have felt there would be confusion if no re-branding.

I'd be curious to see specs on ALL of these formats, if anyone knows where they're published.

Also, I wonder how different it is to support UAD (Powercore is dead). There's also the float vs. integer issue that comes up in DSP land.

I wouldn't think the GUI code would need to be different for the most part, and the algorithms should be transferable unless dealing with integer vs. float. I'm just not sure how much of a plug-in or VI's code base tends to deal with the plug-in protocol itself.
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by Prime Mover »

bayswater wrote:
Prime Mover wrote:Anyone have any inkling that MOTU might slowly phase out MAS
That's the big question. MAS as a general standard has to be at end of life when it comes to plugins, although presumably still fine as a general audio engine. Does DP actually support AU? Or use the MAS AudioUnit Support bundle to connect AU plugins to the MAS system? And there are a lot of DP plugins that haven't been converted. Would be quite expensive for MOTU to go all AU with no noticeable difference to DP's feature and performance, and a potential for new bugs.
I wouldn't expect them to completely ditch MAS compatibility or re-code all their old plugs to AU, I guess what I'm sorta expecting is a decision to stop making new MAS plugins, and also to bundle the AU versions of the plugins that they've already made. AU seems to be a solid standard, I've never noticed any performance differences between it and MAS (granted, I don't have any plugins that are in both formats). MOTU seems to be accepting the fact that they lost the mac format war, some companies (AVID) would have outright refused to sell any of their plugins in a different format, but it's gone so far that MachFive isn't even offered in MAS format anymore.

Yeah, it's happening, the only question is, "when?"

On the other hand, maybe I'm looking at it incorrectly. They have to keep MAS support around for backwards compatibility, and there are many plugins they they would never expect to sell outside the DP bundle, so why bother coding them in another format? But I doubt we'll see any more "Masterwerks" (and ProVerb) level plugins in MAS.
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by Michael Canavan »

bayswater wrote:
Prime Mover wrote:Anyone have any inkling that MOTU might slowly phase out MAS
That's the big question. MAS as a general standard has to be at end of life when it comes to plugins, although presumably still fine as a general audio engine. Does DP actually support AU? Or use the MAS AudioUnit Support bundle to connect AU plugins to the MAS system? And there are a lot of DP plugins that haven't been converted. Would be quite expensive for MOTU to go all AU with no noticeable difference to DP's feature and performance, and a potential for new bugs.
Hmm? we're just guessing to a degree, but MAS is a catch all phrase I believe. MAS plug ins were designed to run in the Motu Audio System, but I'm sure there's a protocol for addressing the rest of the system that really isn't that different than the MAS Audio Unit Support Bundle.
There was a thread years ago at OSXAudio about whether developers were "wrapping" VST plug ins to get Audio Unit support, and really it's kind of a moot point. VST is a wrapper as well, the code for the delay, compressor, virtual instrument etc. is cross platform, the way you address that code is what makes it VST, AU or MAS. So since AU is pretty strict about it's coding (hence DP and Logic's Audio Unit checking features), you can't just take the GUI elements and hooks from VSTs and use them in an AU.

I would say MAS as a plug in format will go away, not as what MOTU call the audio engine of DP though; though I wouldn't count on MOTU making DP's internal plug ins AU's, more like embedding them ala Live and Logic's plugs.

I just hope MOTU and what's left of the Emagic Logic team get Apple to upgrade AU to at least VST's level soon. :mumble:
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by mhschmieder »

There's some complaining over at that OTHER forum about how many vendors are going to be charging "upgrade" costs to AAX from RTAS and other PT formats. I think a few vendors have already announced this; whilst others are absorbing the cost of development to port their plugs.

In the end, based on other discussions, it is starting to sound as though this whole move to AAX is about 64-bits and how they couldn't go there with the old protocols.

For reasons stated earlier, I'll leave it at that.
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by Shooshie »

I just got the upgrade to MachFive (M5.3), and I can confirm that they have eliminated MAS from it. It is now AU only. I used to be under the impression that at least some of its power was due to the MOTU Audio System, so either AU has incorporated those missing features, or M5.3 has downgraded some of its enormous capabilities. It will be some time before I can report on whether anything in version 3 is less than that of version 2.

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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by James Steele »

Shooshie wrote:I just got the upgrade to MachFive (M5.3), and I can confirm that they have eliminated MAS from it. It is now AU only. I used to be under the impression that at least some of its power was due to the MOTU Audio System, so either AU has incorporated those missing features, or M5.3 has downgraded some of its enormous capabilities. It will be some time before I can report on whether anything in version 3 is less than that of version 2.
The big difference is that you will have to use more instances of the plug-in if you need more than 16 independent instruments. MAS supported 4 banks I believe A,B,C,D each with 16 MIDI channels. AU spec does not support that, so in that rather obvious way, AU is a "downgrade"... but then I really don't see that as a big problem for most people.
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by ronjams »

Shooshi, after having the machfive 3 for I believe for about a month, To me the samples seem to be cleaner being played through version 3 and show better fidelity than in version 2. I can't really speak to the quality of sound in regards to MAS vs Au but I want to know what you think.
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Re: The impact of AAX (new ProTools 10 plug-in formats)?

Post by Shooshie »

James Steele wrote:
Shooshie wrote:I just got the upgrade to MachFive (M5.3), and I can confirm that they have eliminated MAS from it. It is now AU only. I used to be under the impression that at least some of its power was due to the MOTU Audio System, so either AU has incorporated those missing features, or M5.3 has downgraded some of its enormous capabilities. It will be some time before I can report on whether anything in version 3 is less than that of version 2.
The big difference is that you will have to use more instances of the plug-in if you need more than 16 independent instruments. MAS supported 4 banks I believe A,B,C,D each with 16 MIDI channels. AU spec does not support that, so in that rather obvious way, AU is a "downgrade"... but then I really don't see that as a big problem for most people.
That's what I figured. I just hadn't plowed into it yet, to see if that was the case.

Still, it's rare that I need even 16 channels from MachFive, what with all the other VI's that I have. It's really for specialty stuff, as I use it.

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