Native Linux VST plugin directory

88 points by Aldipower 13 hours ago|26 comments

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locusofself 12 hours ago

I've always wanted to do music recording on Linux (literally since the 90s). The fact that my preferred DAW (Reaper) has long been native to Linux has tempted me. But I have Universal Audio "Apollo" interface and have bought into their whole ecosystem which is very good and runs really great on my mac.

If I made the plunge I would get an RME USB audio interface and use Reaper, maybe play around with Bitwig which is also native on Linux. I don't think I would mess with WINE, regardless of other's success stories with it.

I'm glad to see where things have gone in recent years though

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Aldipower 12 hours ago

I have a RME _PCIe_ Raydat card that is supported by Linux. It has 4+4 ADAT ports, meaning 32in+32out channels. You can connect basically every interface that has ADAT to it. I've connected two Ferrofish Pulse8 AE, a Focusrite Scarlett and a Motu Traveler. :-) If your UA Apollo has ADAT, you still can use it this way! Of course it hasn't to be a RME Raydat, any other Linux supported interface with ADAT does it too, f.ex. a Scarlett. You could get a cheap Scarlett and connect your Apollo to it. Hahaha. Seriously, this would work.

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locusofself 10 hours ago

That's awesome. I have ADAT converters as well, but the Apollo itself does not operate as standalone, and unfortunately has very proprietary Thunderbolt drivers. I'm pretty sure we will never see Linux support for Apollo thunderbolt interfaces. I would definitely go RME for Linux.

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prmoustache 10 hours ago

There is also Ardour which is FOSS and would be enough for recording as well as Traktion Waveform which has a free and a Pro version, if my memory is correct the difference is what kinds of instruments/effects plugins come bundled with it.

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locusofself 7 hours ago

Ardour is the OG for sure! I'm a huge Reaper guy though been using it since 2009. One of the few pieces of software that I truly enjoy using, and the community is great

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Rooster61 13 hours ago

Oh nice. I'd have loved to have had this a few months ago. It's not overly easy to find VST plugins for Linux, and I've missed that since moving from Windows last year.

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donbrae 11 hours ago

I hope the CLAP plugin open standard[0] will lead to more VSTs being made available for Linux. My favourite synth, Diva[1], has already been ported over (its maker, u-he, co-developed CLAP.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLever_Audio_Plug-in [1] https://u-he.com/products/diva/

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sramsay 10 hours ago

And honestly, if I was on a desert island with just u-he plugins . . .

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ThatMedicIsASpy 11 hours ago

https://lsp-plug.in/ https://linuxdaw.org/

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jsheard 12 hours ago

Is it possible to wedge WINE between a Windows VST and a native Linux DAW?

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Aldipower 12 hours ago

Yes, with yabridge, it works very well for example with all the Valhalla Reverb plugins. But then there are others like FabFilter, they do not work so well. But luckily there are now native Linux FabFilter alternatives, like ToneBoosters EQ Pro, Tal EQ, ZL EQ, ...

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embedding-shape 12 hours ago

As a FabFilter user, how do those alternatives compare? I mostly use Pro-C and Pro-Q

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Aldipower 12 hours ago

They _all_ offer Dynamic EQ, all the phase modes (linear, minimal and derivatives), freq matching, collision detection, side chaining, etc... Absolutely comparable imho. And cheaper. ZL Equalizer even is open source!

https://www.toneboosters.com/tb_equalizer_pro.html https://tal-software.com/products/tal-eq https://zl-audio.github.io/plugins/zlequalizer2/manual/

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sramsay 10 hours ago

I'll put TB Barricade against Pro-L 2 and TB Reverb against Pro-R for sure. I mostly use other stuff for EQ and compression, but those two are really very similar to the FB offerings.

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ErroneousBosh 12 hours ago

I think you can do it with Carla if you build it with Wine libs linked.

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bandrami 12 hours ago

It used to be the only way to do it (LMMS is still kind of stuck in that time period). Fortunately there are a lot more native plugins now.

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jaimex2 8 hours ago

It's pretty sad that LMMS is stuck there. The wine hacks needed are not trivial either, you need legacy versions of it.

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camtarn 12 hours ago

Yabridge works, and it's frankly incredible that it works at all, but it has some trouble figuring out where I'm clicking on EZDrummer. It's gotten better in the latest version of Linux Mint but it's still a bit off.

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ta988 12 hours ago

Yes with yabridge but it is really brittle.

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embedding-shape 12 hours ago

Brittle in terms of crashes sometimes, or brittle as in "looses bit of connection always"?

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Aldipower 12 hours ago

Brittle in terms of GUI rendering, sometimes, never had problems with the audio though.

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sirwitti 12 hours ago

I absolutely love the progress that was made in the several last years! The number of VST/audio plugins available on linux has grown from being quite a problem to having an actual ecosystem!

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shams93 9 hours ago

This is a nice resource. Personally I use linux vst plugin on bespoke synth. But bitwig, renoise and reaper all support linux for those who want or need commercial audio applications on linux. With pipewire and new kernel changes everything is coming together for linux to perform much better than windows + asio.

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foresto 10 hours ago

Do any audio filters/plugins exist that are effective at disguising a voice in real time, such that it would be difficult to identify the speaker / match against samples of their unfiltered voice?

(Pitch shifting is easy and widely available, but also trivial to reverse, so it's not good enough.)

I'm mainly interested for anonymity in online gaming, but I could see it also being a helpful privacy measure in other situations.

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jaimex2 8 hours ago

So much choice. I a little too much -

How do I know which are good / worth trying?

Where do I start?!

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Aldipower 24 minutes ago

First, you need to try to develop a serious GAS or PAS, after a while you'll get into a flow of trying things out. But be careful, this does not work, if you try to do actual music.