What are the pros and cons between VST3 (linux native) and LV2?

[digitsun]

Main disadvantages of LV2 - very steep learning curve. [...]

Thank for this valuable info @sadko4u (and thanks for LSP), but your comment and others are talking about developer issues, What about user/musician benefits? I ask about performance or benefits 'coz I look in the repos of KX that exist plugins with 2 versions: vst and lv2, so What version I may use? and, most important, Why prefer one over other?

[elcalen]

I look in the repos of KX that exist plugins with 2 versions: vst and lv2

Just to be clear, because the topic was phrased as VST3 vs LV2, many of the plugins in KXStudio available as VST are actually VST2. Which is again of course a whole other matter.

I'm really not an expert on this, I haven't compared plugins in multiple format nearly enough, but I would hazard a guess that, unfortunately, in a lot of cases it's probably down to the implementation of each individual plugin. And to complicate things even more, it also depends on the host, as well. One plugin might be buggy in one format, and work perfectly in another. And another plugin might be entirely the opposite... So... in the end you just have to experiment.

[sjaehn]

What about user/musician benefits?

Performance differences are small and mainly depend on the host implementation (as mentioned before). With one notable exception. The plugin scanning. If you have a big VST library (I only have some few), re-scanning may take a wile. LV2 re-scanning is much faster.

Another point is stability. Many plugins made for VST or made with primarily VST-generating tools and then ported to LV2 have been reported to be less stable or show more bugs for the LV2 version compared to the VST version. The opposite might be true if you try to port a native LV2 to VST. I think this is not a problem of the plugin format itself.

Anyway, some plugins (VST and LV2) may be problematic for a specific host. In the case of VST, these plugins may crash the host even on plugin-scanning. Thus a single bad VST plugin can make your whole plugin-collection unusable. Therefore, you have got a black-list where you can add the problematic plugin. You don't have this problem (and thus you do not need a black list) for LV2 as LV2 only scans description files and doesn't load executables on scanning. But problems with executables may still exist with LV2 on an other point. When they are loaded. This was (and still sometimes is) a problem for LV2 plugin UIs. A well known problem are incompatible libraries used in the host and in the plugin. An example for this is a GTK3-using host (like Reaper) and a GTK2-using plugin (like Calf). But still in this case the host can load an alternative plugin-provided UI (but I only know one example for multiple/alternative UIs) or provide its own simple generic UI.

Features. With version 3 VST came closer to LV2 and overtook it in some points. Like dynamic ports. On the other hand, LV2 has got its extensions like the MOD-GUI or the miniaturized inline display of Ardour.

Finally, it will be your decision what to take. It might be wise to take a VST(3) in one case and the LV2 in the other.

[robbert-vdh]

Don't forget that VST3 is just as extensible as LV2 is. The whole reason why it's design looks a bit weird on first sight is that it's built around this query interface, where an object can implement any number of interfaces and the host can just ask the plugin if it supports a certain interface. There are lots of non-SDK VST3 extensions out there. I think Ardour supports a few of the PreSonus extensions (although those have all been absorbed in the newer SDK versions), and ARA also exists as a VST3 extension (although ARA sadly still hasn't been open sourced).

[milkii]

Given LV2 uses an RDF syntax, that is, it's "semantic", i.e. it's "A collection of RDF statements intrinsically [representing] a labeled, directed multi-graph.", there are two things I want to mention;

An LV2 bundle can be used as a project save format. Ingen does this, and mod-host from MOD Devices copied that for it's 'Pedalboards' project save.

Also;

As it relates to the semantic web project, you can curl the specifications of an LV2 namespace by using an HTTP request header that returns the ttl version;

Code: Select all

curl -H "Accept: text/turtle,application/rdf+xml" http://lv2plug.in/ns/ext/lv2core
curl -H "Accept: text/turtle,application/rdf+xml" http://lv2plug.in/ns/ext/atom

etc/.

JSON-LD is also a semantic syntax, but there's no C parser yet.