LADSPA
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A Stereo Reverb LADSPA plugin running inside Ardour Digital Audio Workstation on Linux | |
| Developer(s) | Richard W.E. Furse, Paul Barton-Davis, Stefan Westerfeld[1] |
|---|---|
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| License | LGPL |
| Website | link |
LADSPA is an acronym for Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API. It is a standard for handling filters and effects, licensed under the GNU LGPL. It was originally designed for Linux through consensus on the Linux Audio Developers Mailing List, but works on a variety of other platforms. It is used in many free audio software projects and there is a wide range of LADSPA plugins available.
LADSPA exists primarily as a header file written in the C programming language.
There are many audio plugin standards and most major modern software synthesizers and sound editors support a variety. The best known standard is probably Steinberg Cubase's Virtual Studio Technology. LADSPA is unusual in that it attempts to provide only the "Greatest Common Divisor" of other standards. This means that its scope is limited, but it is simple and plugins written using it are easy to embed in many other programs. The standard has changed very little with time, so compatibility problems are rare.
DSSI extends LADSPA to cover instrument plugins.
LV2 is a successor, based on LADSPA but permitting easy extensibility.
Competing technologies
- Apple Inc.'s Audio Units
- Digidesign's Real Time AudioSuite
- Microsoft's DirectX plugin
- Steinberg's Virtual Studio Technology