I second this entirely. Multichannel audio is not limited just to Ambisonics, we have now other competing formats such as Spatial PCM Sampling (SPS, aka Mach1), T-design geometries (T-format), MPEG-H, Dolby Atmos, etc.
Also the maximum number of channels should be unlimited: in Wave Field Synthesis it is common to use systems with 128 or even 192 channels. We have a WFS room here in Parma, Italy, inaugurated in 2008 (12 years ago) equipped with a single computer driving 192 channels. The WFS rendering cannot actually be done with a VST3 plugin, simply because the VST3 format does not allow for such channel number, whilst the host program (Plogue Bidule) has no problem managing the RME MADI interface providing them.
In some of these formats, such as MPEG-H and Dolby Atmos, we get a mixture of “loudspeaker” channels in fixed positions and a potentially large number of “sound objects”, which are mono tracks encoding sound sources moving around.
In some other cases, each of these moving sources is Ambisonics-encoded (perhaps just at first or second order) or SPS-encoded, representing the directivity of the sound source with a number of channels, which can then be moved in space and oriented in space (6DOF rendering).
In conclusion, what would be important is to allow for maximum flexibility, both on channel number and channel labelling.
Sticking to a reduced set of predefined “speaker layouts” is something which brings all us back by 20 years.
So Please Steinberg, remove all these limitations form the VST3 SDK…
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