Hey @jariseon
First, thanks for your feedback on AudioNodes, it's still a WIP but I'm very glad to hear you like it so far!
As for VST, we were definitely giving online VST support a fair share of thought previously, and without compromising portability or performance we concluded that it wouldn't be feasible at this time without either:
- Having a huge latency (as a side-note, there is significant latency currently in AudioNodes for VST plugins on the desktop, but this was already resolved in an internal build, although it's still under development -- a little behind schedule I'm afraid)
- Requiring users to install browser plugins
- Requiring users to download "helper" apps
(moderator notice: the rest of this post contains technical details for software developers)
The video you showed -- I assume -- was showcasing the use of a local HTTP server to facilitate communication with a desktop app, which is definitely possible from a technical side, but I'm unsure if it offers anything more than what we can already do here by simply downloading AudioNodes to the desktop and running everything out of the box that way.
In other words, what I seem to be missing here is what one gains by running a local application and using a web browser for doing editing inside that browser, compared to simply running a local application and doing editing in place.
the plugin host does not stream audio to speakers at native side. instead it pushes the buffers through websockets to the browser, which finally renders the audio to speakers
Yes, this is definitely a requirement for a module/plugin like behavior, AudioNodes also simply chains audio through a VST Plugin Node, from input to output, although the actual audio processing is done inside AudioNodes without a remote server (this may change in the future for stability reasons, but there are no plans for it currently).