DIdijksterhuis·Jan 2, 2024Submission
1 points · Open discussionrobbert-vdh
nih-plug
Rust2022–2024
robbert-vdh / nih-plug
nih-plug
Rust VST3 and CLAP plugin framework and plugins - because everything is better when you do it yourself
6Distinct people
6Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
3KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Rust VST3 and CLAP plugin framework and plugins - because everything is better when you do it yourself
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
I don't think Max4Live is not a good choice for building audio plugins. It's a weird platform that was designed for 'institutionalized academic music,' as I once read someone…
tumult used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
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Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month6 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2022-04-16 17:14:27 UTC to 2024-01-02 01:52:29 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 2022 | 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| May 2022 | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2022 | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Jul 2022 | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2022 | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2022 | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Oct 2022 | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2022 | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2022 | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2023 | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2023 | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Apr 2023 | 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2023 | 2023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Jun 2023 | 2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2023 | 2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2023 | 2023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2023 | 2023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2023 | 2023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2023 | 2023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2023 | 2023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
6 sourcesI don't think Max4Live is not a good choice for building audio plugins. It's a weird platform that was designed for 'institutionalized academic music,' as I once read someone describe it. It's difficult to program in and not efficient. None of my favorite music software is made with it. It's also quite buggy, in my experience. For doing some basic extensions to Ableton Live specifically, beyond what VST allows access to, it's OK, since it's the only official way to do so.
If you want to just dive into DSP using wires and boxes, with some additional code sprinkled in, SynthEdit or Reaktor Core are faster, more fun, and produce better results. If you don't mind C++, check out iPlug from REAPER's WDL codebase: https://www.cockos.com/wdl/ — there are some forks of it.
There's also JUCE. You'll find some people complain about it and some peopl
Read the rest
e regret using it, despite it being relatively popular.
There are some Rust things for doing VST (and AU) development. Here's one that I've seen a few things made with: https://github.com/robbert-vdh/nih-plug/tree/master I wouldn't worry too much about the differences between C++ and Rust in this world. Audio software tends to be buggy, so the bar for being considered 'good enough' is pretty low.
I try and learn Rust by glueing all things together (MIDI, Open Sound Control, Audio I/O) into little commandline utilities (e.g. routers), it's mostly to keep myself happy; quick results keep me pushing. Whether it's a good idea to start with a plugin depends on your experience (e.g. writing such things in C or C++).
Active noise cancellation would be too involved for a first attempt (at least for me). Here's an unfinished project: https://github.com/materoy/noice
For regular denoising there's these (haven't tried them):
https://github.com/jneem/nnnoiseless
https://github.com/bennetthardwick/rust-obs-plugins/blob/mas....
Here's an aggregate for sound related things: https://rust.audio/
Overviews/libraries:
https://github.com/kfrncs/awesome-rust-audio
https://crates.io/keywords/audio
• Some videos:
- Rust for audio developers:
https://w
Read the rest
ww.youtube.com/watch?v=Yom9E-67bdI
- The nannou framework:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPFv3adyLB4
• Here's a real good article by Ross Bencina that goes into the intricacies of realtime audio, don't allocate/free in the hot parts of your code !
http://www.rossbencina.com/code/real-time-audio-programming-...
Other things to check out:
fundsp - a compact library with DSL for typical dsp things
https://github.com/SamiPerttu/fundsp
nih-plug - a plugin framework
https://github.com/robbert-vdh/nih-plug/
Nannou
a creative coding library that glues the needed parts together in a very clean way, will get you results quickly; the more difficult parts are already implemented, and it's a good place to learn.
I started trying to understand and use obvious libraries like `cpal` for cross-platform audio I/O, `midir` for midi I/O, and `rosc` for OSC.
Finally, I found `Programming Rust`, by Blandy and Orendorff a real nice condensed read. TRPL by Klabnik and Nicols is very readable as well, but I prefer Blandy/Orendorf. All in all, plenty of information, just a bit scattered over github / youtube and other places. Any way, my advice would be to take things step by step, learn from examples, and you could do worse than embrace chatgpt for rs pair programming as well (at least to get started) :)
NIH-Plug: Rust VST3 and Clap Plugin Framework
1 points · Open discussionI and some other folks in the Rust audio community have put together some low-level bindings for the CLAP API: https://github.com/glowcoil/clap-sys
They're relatively straightforward due to the fact that CLAP is a simple, pure-C ABI, and there are already some fully functional plugins making use of them (e.g. https://github.com/robbert-vdh/nih-plug).
In Clap: The New Audio Plug-In StandardSome good work in this direction: https://github.com/robbert-vdh/nih-plug
Also, have a look at the vibrant Rust Audio community on Discord!
In Continuous Looper