LADSPA is an acronym for Linux Audio Developers Simple Plugin API

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...

. It is a standard for handling filter

Audio filter

An audio filter is a frequency dependent amplifier circuit, working in the audio frequency range, 0 Hz to beyond 20 kHz. Many types of filters exist for applications including graphic equalizers, synthesizers, sound effects, CD players and virtual reality systems.Being a frequency dependent...

s and effect

Sound effect

For the album by The Jam, see Sound Affects.Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media...

s, licensed under the GNU LGPL. It was originally designed for Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 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

Free audio software

This list of free software for audio lists notable free and open source software for use by sound engineers, audio producers, and those involved in sound recording and reproduction.-Audio analysis:-Converters:-Modular systems:-Platforms:...

 projects and there is a wide range of LADSPA plugins available.

LADSPA exists primarily as a header file

Header file

Some programming languages use header files. These files allow programmers to separate certain elements of a program's source code into reusable files. Header files commonly contain forward declarations of classes, subroutines, variables, and other identifiers...

 written in the C programming language

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

.

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

Steinberg Cubase

Cubase is a music software product developed by Steinberg for music recording, arranging and editing as part of a Digital Audio Workstation. It is one of the oldest DAWs to still enjoy widespread use...

's Virtual Studio Technology

Virtual Studio Technology

Steinberg's Virtual Studio Technology is an interface for integrating software audio synthesizer and effect plugins with audio editors and hard-disk recording systems. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional recording studio hardware with software...

. 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

DSSI

DSSI is a virtual instrument plugin architecture for use by music sequencer applications. It was designed for applications running under Linux, although there is nothing specific to Linux in the interface itself...

 extends LADSPA to cover instrument plugins.

LV2

LV2

LV2 is an open standard for plugins and matching host applications, mainly targeted at audio processing and generation.LV2 is a simple but extensible successor of LADSPA, intended to address the limitations of LADSPA which many applications have outgrown.Currently there is support for LV2 in...

 is a successor, based on LADSPA but permitting easy extensibility.

Competing technologies

• Apple Inc.'s Audio Units
  Audio Units
  Audio Units are a system-level plug-in architecture provided by Core Audio in Mac OS X developed by Apple Computer. Audio Units are a set of application programming interface services provided by the operating system to generate, process, receive, or otherwise manipulate streams of audio in...
  
  
• Digidesign
  Digidesign
  Avid Audio is an American digital audio technology company. It was founded in 1984 by Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks. The company began as a project to raise money for the founders' band, selling EPROM chips for drum machines. It is a subsidiary of Avid Technology, and during 2010 the Digidesign...
  
  's Real Time AudioSuite
  Real Time AudioSuite
  Real-Time AudioSuite is a format of audio plug-in developed by Digidesign, currently Avid Technology for their Pro Tools LE, and Pro Tools M-Powered systems, although they can be run on Pro Tools HD and Pro Tools TDM systems. RTAS plug-ins use the processing power of the host computer rather than...
  
  
• Microsoft
  Microsoft
  Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
  
  's DirectX plugin
  DirectX plugin
  In computer music and professional audio creation, a DirectX plugin is a software processing component that can be loaded as a plugin into host applications to allow real-time processing, audio effects, mixing audio or act as virtual synthesizers...
  
  
• Steinberg
  Steinberg
  Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...
  
  's Virtual Studio Technology
  Virtual Studio Technology
  Steinberg's Virtual Studio Technology is an interface for integrating software audio synthesizer and effect plugins with audio editors and hard-disk recording systems. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional recording studio hardware with software...
  
  

External links

• Official website
• http://plugin.org.uk/
• http://tap-plugins.sf.net/
• http://lv2plug.in/