AUv3 Support

[mfisher31]

Discussed in https://github.com/orgs/kushview/discussions/590

^{Originally posted by olafgeibig May 17, 2022}

Background

Since the advent of M1 iPads, more and more iOS audio plugins appear on the Mac App Store on a M1 Mac since the iOS plugin developers usually just have to check the Mac option and their plugin is also generated for Mac and published to the Mac App Store. It‘s also relatively easy to generate the plugin as an Intel AUv3 and some developers are doing that, too. There is a growing number of great music plugins on iOS.

Problem

The problem is that on iOS AUv3 is the standard but on the Mac most plugin hosts do not support AUv3 and if they support AUs it’s usually AUv2. I think the only DAWs that support AUv3 is Reaper, Logic Pro and Garage Band. For the users of all other DAWs it would be neat to have a wrapper plugin for AUv3. For M1 Mac users that want to run AUv3 plugins in a live setup they have no alternative to Apple‘s Main Stage but Element could be one. Moog, for instance, released their excellent synths also bundled with a VST wrapper but that‘s an exception.

Feature

I’ve seen there is AUv3 configuration in the source code but it seems to be inactive. I think it’s there because JUCE supports AUv3. Unfortunately I have no skills for plugin development or knowledge of JUCE… Would it be enough to enable AUv3 in the sources and because of JUCE‘s AUv3 support, Elements would then host AUv3? I could try that myself but I think it would be an interesting feature for the official Element distribution, too. So, please if it is just a matter of configuration, please enable AUv3.