LADSPA
More info
- Creator
- Richard Furse, Paul Davis et al.
- Released
- 2000
- Type
- Audio plugin format
- License
- LGPL
- Successor
- DSSI, LV2
Linux's first shared audio plugin format, deliberately so simple it could barely do anything.
The Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API came out of the linux-audio-dev mailing list in 2000, at a time when Linux had no answer to Steinberg's VST. The entire spec is one C header: a plugin exports a function describing its audio and control ports, and the host calls run() once per buffer.
The simplicity was the point, and also the ceiling. LADSPA has no GUI, no MIDI and therefore no synths. DSSI patched that in 2004, and LV2 arrived in 2008 as an extensible successor. The format survives in thousands of small filters and in PipeWire, which loads LADSPA modules straight into its filter chain.