DSSI
More info
- Creator
- Chris Cannam, Steve Harris, Sean Bolton
- Released
- 2004
- Type
- Plugin format
- Successor
- LV2
Disposable Soft Synth Interface — Linux's stopgap for software instruments, built on top of LADSPA and later replaced by LV2.
LADSPA could take audio in and push audio out, but it had no notion of notes. DSSI added the missing pieces for synths in 2004: a function that receives MIDI events in ALSA sequencer format, plus support for presets. Chris Cannam, one of the developers behind the Rosegarden sequencer, was among the authors, and the "disposable" in the name was an honest admission that it wasn't meant to last.
The odd detail is the UI. A plugin's editor runs as a separate program talking to the host over OSC, so a crashing GUI can't take the audio engine down with it. Sensible, but fiddly, and when LV2 arrived in 2008 with unified metadata and extensions, developers moved on. The name turned out to be prophetic.