U-He And Bitwig Launch Bold New Open Audio Plug-in Format

US CLAP (CLever Audio Plug-in API) is here 15/06/22

Big news today, a couple of the industry's smarter developers have today announced a totally new Audio Plug-in format. Titled CLAP (CLever Audio Plug-in API), - no doubt you were wondering if were tempted to write some smutty headlines alluding to STD's and for the record yes we were, but we kept it together.

CLAP designed to offer:

... new open standard for audio plug-ins and hosts. CLAP offers modern features, innate stability, and rapid support for plug-in and host developers. And since it's open source and liberally licensed, CLAP is a safe bet for the future.

This is a bold move, but clearly they feel that there is room for improvement in the way things currently stand:

Developed with modern CPUs in mind, CLAP takes multi-thread management to a new level, with a clear and efficient allocation of roles between plug-in and host. Specifically, CLAP allows collaborative multicore support between plug-in and host through a so-called "thread-pool", also allowing hosts to manage CPU-threading for plug-ins that provide their own multicore support. Preliminary tests show significant performance gains compared with current solutions.

To summarize, integration of MPE and other MIDI 2.0 features is baked in from the get go ,meaning this should lead to more expression and automation options - inf act in the video they cover the fact that automation can be polyphonic - like with MPE. Initially conceived and developed by u-he and Bitwig, they've been working on this for some time and have also persuaded several big players to put their names on the list of currently evaluating or actively developing.

Arturia, Avid, Epic Games (Unreal Engine), Presonus, Valhalla DSP, VCV and Xfer Recorders are but a few.

Another clip from this page where there are more details

Better Modulation

The CLAP standard promotes new ways to create music with automation, modulation, and expressions. Here are a few examples:

CLAP supports per-note automation and modulation (in accordance with the recent MIDI 2.0 specifications).
Going one step further, CLAP's parameter modulation concept allows for temporary parameter offsets. Parameter modulation is non-destructive, so as soon as the modulation has finished, the target parameter will return to its original state.
CLAP makes it possible for polyphonic plug-ins to have their per-voice parameters modulated for individual notes ("MPE on steroids").

With this new standard we aim to inspire host developers to add exciting new features to their products. Initial implementations by Bitwig, u-he and the Surge project demonstrate just a few of the possibilities.

More Details: https://u-he.com/community/clap/