CLAP (plugin format)
More info
- Creator
- Bitwig and u-he
- Released
- 2022
- Type
- Audio plugin format
- License
- MIT
CLever Audio Plug-in — an open audio plugin format written by a DAW maker and a synth maker who had grown tired of depending on Steinberg.
Bitwig and u-he released CLAP in June 2022 under the MIT license, a few years after Steinberg stopped licensing VST2 and pushed everyone onto VST3 on its own terms. The interface is a plain C ABI with no C++ baggage, which makes it easy to bind from other languages.
Two things set it apart. Modulation can target individual notes, so a polyphonic synth can get a different filter movement per voice straight from the host, in the spirit of MPE. And the host can lend out its thread pool, so a heavy plugin stops spawning its own threads to fight everyone else's. REAPER was quick to follow Bitwig, but most vendors still ship every product in four formats.