DirectX in Track FX?

David Abraham Fenton wrote: >2) Will other DirectX host applications have access to this >API? > >This is a scary trend for those of us with substantial >DirectX Plugin investments. I think there are a bunch of flaws with the DirectMedia filter system which the audio software community uses for audio plug-ins. I could be wrong, as the description is pretty convoluted, but if I understand it correctly, it seems to have a lot of limitations. So I'm not surprised if people want to work around those limitations. (Although I hope the claimed reason for the new interface in Vegas is an oversimplification, since the existing interface supports what is claimed is desired, it just doesn't guarantee it; so the performance gains should already be there if you stick to in-place filters already.) In terms of you getting burned by having bought DirectX effects, hopefully if there are industry-accepted revisions to the "standard" plug-in approach, people will offer free (or cheap) upgrades. If there aren't, then odds are SF will be obliged to make it easier to use normal DX plug-ins. But rather than every company and his brother creating their own modified plug-in approach, we'd all (consumers and plug-in developers) probably be better served by a bunch of technical folks from (otherwise competing) companies getting together and creating a standard, instead of just letting Microsoft define something and accepting that as good enough. (I actually have no idea what happened in the development process; maybe Microsoft did seek out industry feedback on it.) Some obvious limitations that I see from reading the DX spec (although I could be wrong about this): Inability to have dynamically-varying parameters controlled by the host app (e.g. you can draw volume and pan envelopes on your track, but you can't draw plug-in effect parameters on them). An effect could try to integrate time varying behaviors directly into it, but it'll never be integrated with a track view. Difficulty hot-swapping out effects in real-time: e.g. you want a different effect on the verse than on the chorus. Have to split them into two tracks (at least under the hood). Inability to have program-controlled effects instead of user-controlled effects. There's no standard way to define "this is a pitch-shift effect", so that you could drop differing pitch-shift effects into Acid. The first two can be faked around in limited ways, but only with UI difficulty and/or performance penalties (potentially severe). This is not meant to take sonic foundry to task, just some thoughts I've been having for the last year when I wrote some plugins for my own use. (If any technically inclined folk want to email me offline about this, feel free.) Sean