Support For Upcoming Plugin Formats

A lot of plugin developers seem to be of the opinion that Steinberg's VST format is going the way of the dinosaur, either for licensing reasons, longevity reasons, or perceived flaws in the VST specification. There are two important upcoming formats to discuss in this vein.

Number 1 is the CLAP format, which I believe was created by a few developers working together to solve several problems they had with VSTs. You can read all about the various advantages the developer believes it has on the KVR forums - there's an entire topic about it. Developers seem to agree it's encouraging. It's certainly interesting, but it shares a similar problem with VST that's solved below.

You can read about it here:
https://github.com/free-audio/clap

Number 2, and my personal area of interest, is the C Major format, for a number of reasons. It replaces the SOUL language after the owners of the JUCE framework (a popular framework for VST development) had to file for bankruptcy.

The most important advantage here is simplicity for the developer and end user; the GUI can be made in HTML, and the underlying sounds programmed in a JIT-compiled language. The point being, the developer does not have to recompile for every single possible platform, while maintaining high performance - a must in real time programming.

You can read about it here:
https://cmajor.dev/

As MuseScore starts supporting the wider world of audio plugins, I believe it is highly important to consider both of these going forwards. I don't believe VST will be the standard forever.