I know that there’s quite a difference between these technologies. But according to their FAQs, VCV plans to release a paid plugin version. After the VST2, they think about releasing VST3/AU/AAX/LV2 as well.
VCV Rack can be fully considered a DAW itself rather than a “synthesizer plugin”, so Rack is a standalone application. However, due to overwhelming user demand, a new product called VCV Rack for DAWs will be available as a 64-bit VST2 plugin for around $99 shortly after Rack v2 is released. VST3/AU/AAX/LV2 versions might be released afterwards, but this is not yet confirmed. All Rack v2 plugins will be compatible with the plugin version of Rack. The standalone version of Rack v2 will continue to be free/open-source.
Even though the current hardware might be not powerful enough to run big patches, this would open a lot of possibilities. I actually wouldn’t use the synthesis modules a lot. Having some interesting modulation sources and things like envelopes, more effects, logic operators is more interesting to me.
Someone in the community is working to port a few of the VCV modules as LV2 plugins.
VCV is indeed very cool, but also it is very self-contained.
The audio engine and GUI is very tightly coupled together, so making something out of it to display in a browser and connecting to a remote device is simply a no-go (unless we rewrite the entire thing).
Until this remains the case, a version for MOD will be quite out of reach.
Best we can do and ask for is to port a few of their modules to LV2 format.
I just found VCV and am amazed. One thing that excites me about it is that the UI is all in SVG format, in a very standardized way, so I think it might be possible to generate modgui interfaces automatically.
Based on the plugin GUI standard and the momentum the plataform got, I’d guess that there are good standards inside it. I wonder if an adaptor can be made to put VCV Rack inside MOD without having to port modules individually.
The modules are built only for x64/intel, so direct usage is not possible.
The “ugly” side of the spec from VCVRack is that UI elements and plugin DSP are tightly coupled together.
UIs are generated based on parameters from the DSP side, with then some attributes for UI positioning and styling. It is pretty neat, but also means any attempts to automatically convert a plugin UI will need to understand the underlying C++ APIs behind it.
Would it make sense to port (if possible) these kind of attributes to lv2 atoms? or would you then still end up with each UI needing its own specific translation?
as I see it, any kind of porting would require manual work.
the only sorta automatic approach would be to recreate the entire VCVRack API that plugins use, and then maybe, just maybe, that would be able to load such plugins.
Surely no one would be crazy enough to try this, I think…
: