Apple moves to Arm: 3rd party plugins on Akai?

I see there's been previous speculations on opening up MPC Standalone for 3rd party plugins, but that has not happened. I guess one reason is that VST is not compatible with the Akai platform.
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=182001

However, now that Apple moves to Arm processors I'm pretty sure we will see a lot of VST-instruments and plugins being made compatible with that processor type. Wouldn't that also mean the compability to the MPC platform increases?

But maybe Akai has no interest in opening up the platform for 3rd party plugins, that would mean less income from selling extension packs?

However, maybe we could get a few more plugins from Akai? Development might be easier for them or they could license popular and not so CPU-demanding plugins?

apples ≠ oranges

While the M1 is Arm based, it runs a completely different OS and it is a different architecture in many ways from the MPC. I do not think it helps in any significant way.

NearTao wrote:While the M1 is Arm based, it runs a completely different OS and it is a different architecture in many ways from the MPC. I do not think it helps in any significant way.

Maybe not but I was thinking that since work must be done to improve compilation of VST:s for arm based architectures, Akai coud benefit from that. Maybe new code libraries and things like that will evolve.

The devs could've ported their shit to ARM at any time, its not that tough at all on the Apple side of things. The problem with the MPC is its closed. There is no way to add anything to the system as it is without flashing an entire firmware image. How is that going to work? Is every dev going to be selling a 600MB firmware image you flash to your MPC? What happens after you buy Diva, and then want Zebra? Is UHE going to make you a custom firmware image with both of those apps installed just for you? What happens to your NI plugins you just bought? Does Urs have the ability to make you a custom firmware with Zebra, Diva AND all your other software when you buy something new?

As it is, the MPC doesn't have the juice for just about any of the third party software people would want. I dont think a mono version of MassiveX would go over so well, even if MassiveX could be ported to it (its highly dependent on Intel AVX instructions).

"The devs could've ported their **** to ARM at any time"
No and you don't seem to know what programming is.

"The problem with the MPC is its closed. "
Correct

"There is no way to add anything to the system as it is without flashing an entire firmware image."
Wrong

"How is that going to work? Is every dev going to be selling a 600MB firmware image you flash to your MPC?"
The binary containing the plugins is 50 MB size, not 600 MB. The rest of the image is the OS (Linux) and some data files.

A lot of code (and bugs) is shared between MPC standalone and MPC Software. And MPC Software has VST plugins.
I think they could provide a SDK to create plugins for the MPC standalone but it is just not the strategy.
The same strategy that provided the drum synth instead of fixing and improving the existing code.

dsy73 wrote:"The devs could've ported their **** to ARM at any time"
No and you don't seem to know what programming is.

You're both being obtuse... therefore your quite possible both correct.

dsy73 wrote:"There is no way to add anything to the system as it is without flashing an entire firmware image."
Wrong

Are you sure? I've looked at the packed content... and the MPC Software certainly looks like a binary blob to me. I didn't see any evidence that all of the MPC instruments/effects are running as VST plugins, but I haven't looked since 2.5 or 2.6, and I didn't look that hard since it looked pretty closed off. Do you have references about the application layout for the newer firmware? If you do, I'd be interested to take a look.

dsy73 wrote:"How is that going to work? Is every dev going to be selling a 600MB firmware image you flash to your MPC?"
The binary containing the plugins is 50 MB size, not 600 MB. The rest of the image is the OS (Linux) and some data files.

Dsy73, you're talking about what Akai is doing, while you're quoting Monotremata talking about what application developers outside of Akai would presumably need to do.

dsy73 wrote:A lot of code (and bugs) is shared between MPC standalone and MPC Software. And MPC Software has VST plugins.

Which would indicate that they likely have a shared code base in some areas, but it doesn't mean it is running the exact same software.

dsy73 wrote:I think they could provide a SDK to create plugins for the MPC standalone but it is just not the strategy.

Akai could do a lot of things. They clearly have an SDK to build their software, but who knows what kind of proprietary third party bits are in the guts of the thing. There are quite likely many legal reasons and agreements that would prevent this.

dsy73 wrote:The same strategy that provided the drum synth instead of fixing and improving the existing code.

Likely this is two or more different teams. It's entirely possible that they've asked the AirFX team to do this porting work, or they have a specific porting team. I wouldn't assume that the resources devoted to features, porting, and bug fixing are necessarily the same team. That's a lot of different skill sets that do not necessarily overlap.

@NearTao

The firmware is not a single blob. Use binwalk and get the binaries of the firmware. There is 2 main binaries: MPC and DeviceControlServer.

Use SSH to get access to your MPC. You can add compatible ARM binaries and run it.

Use Ghidra or IDA and compare the code. They are very close. I didn't look for the embedded plugins code yet.

What do you mean by "application layout"? The 2 MPC binaries are monolithic.

since more HW is running on ARM processers, i think that will/could be the case
first step is providing an SDK

with the correct ARM LINUX stretch i can compile VSTs made on windows (or OSX) for ARM processors

some are doing it already :

https://forum.percussa.com/t/instructio ... opment/593

https://ko-fi.com/thetechnobear/posts

wavejockey wrote:since more HW is running on ARM processers, i think that will/could be the case
first step is providing an SDK

with the correct ARM LINUX stretch i can compile VSTs made on windows (or OSX) for ARM processors

some are doing it already :

https://forum.percussa.com/t/instructio ... opment/593

https://ko-fi.com/thetechnobear/posts

So I guess the real question is if Akai is going to continue being completely closed on their own standalone platform or open up for the average users.

That could be a mistake I believe since being a rather clumpsy and heavy remote control probably is not going to be a winning concept for long and the standalone mode would be so much more powerful in a more open environment.

Even though I'm sure many big and heavy plugins are not going to work on Akai MPC some of the smaller and more lightweight might do.