Running commercial audio software on linux

[glokraw]

So the reasonable coders at Propellorheads have released
'Europa' as a vst plugin, and, with a major caveat, the demo
works in wine/reaper: you can use Europa's gui to load
presets, but then you have to use reaper's sliders-only-gui
to program the synth, and then switch back to the main gui,
as most of the Europa gui controls crash the wine-based reaper.

But saved fxp sounds can be reloaded,
so if you the love the Europa sounds, the price is $99 for a short while.
I don't do sounds-from-scratch, so as a player, Europa has some nice sounds to consider.
I suspect a few more wine over-rides may get the full gui
working, will test some later this week.

Better news is that Dimitry Sches ThornCM works fine,
and like his Tantra effects extravaganza, works and registers
fine in wine/reaper. The two will make a great team,
and buying the full Thorn instrument seems a solid choice.

I had to make a unique folder to install ThornCM, as the installer
would terminate, warning that the default path already existed
Smoothe sailing beyond that, and it's a fine sounding synth,
and quite easy to use, to be sure.

The Linux-Reaper version is making fine progress, to cater to
the diverse gui options that linux musicians have, and the
U-he linux ports are getting new updates. I have Zebra2, Hive,
ACE, the Repro Twins, and BazilleCM, and it's always a
'pinch me, am I dreaming?' moment when firing them up.
If only they would have snatched up Cakewalks Dimension Pro,
before Bandlab got their mits on it...
...at least the fat lady has yet to sing that aria...
Cheers

[glokraw]

discoDSP's Vertigo synth found a new home in my computer,
I tried the linux demo and found plenty of sounds I liked,
so made the investment, and discovered sample-import
for resynthesis, and put that to good effect,
by using samples saved with their Bliss sampler app.
Makes for a very good duo. The manual covers the basic
mechanics for making such things work, but the more you know
about synthesis, the better you're results will be, apart from
pure blind luck, which I've had a goodly share of already.

Another software I demoed was the Wiggle synthesizer.
Demoed all 570 presets, did a quick read, and got it for $50
at pluginboutique.com, and to be honest, I think it's the most
well-behaved synth I have running in wine/reaper. Everything
just works, from registering to drawing in the wiggly boxes,
dragging control points etc
The preset browser is fantastic, presenting a window fitted with
with a large font, an array of search options, and responds to
arrow keys and mousewheel, like all preset managers
should do, but not many do it as gracefully.
I'd say there were a hundred sounds with delightful surprises,
with a trove of sequences destined for the BlueCat Axiom
ampsim/effects suite.

The Wiggle sequencer page is gigando compared
to the squint-fests presented even by reputable developers,
and so begs for use, and does not disappoint. Wiggle even
has it's own audio recorder built in, very handy as the muse
will get a daunting workout exploring the sounds and synth options.
On startup, an on-screen tutorial points out 20 or so features
to insure a useful start, another nice touch. It was discussed briefly
a couple years back:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=459586

And a word for pluginboutique, the plugins I've bought from them,
are listed in my account, along with the related serial numbers.
When a purchase is made, an email provides links for installation
and registration info at their site, and in the buyers account.
They also keep track of purchases and add some bonuses
as your purchase history mounts up, and provide phone and
chat support during Englands banking hours. And they aren't shy
about hosting some very nice free softwares, so there's
always something to take home for your studio.
Cheers

[glokraw]

Fathom is on sale today, June 8th, 2018, for $12,
and seems to be working fine
in an older wine 2.x and the latest reaper. (I have installed
the BlueCat Axiom demo, and Destructor demo,
both of which I think serendipitiously supply a microsoft
vcrun thingy that Fathom also uses.)

Fathom wav drawing, drag/drop of modules etc working
as expected, and new sounds are quite likeable, and easy to make.
Cheers

[glokraw]

https://www.modartt.com/organteq

Pianoteq devs now have a free alpha release
of Organteq, to wet your appetite
for things to come, linux, pc, or mac

The Fathom dev is making ready a new release,
for another $12 friday sale, featuring cpu optimizing,
and gui customizing, hopefully the gui improvements
will still work in wine.

http://www.fathomsynth.com/

...and on the hardware side,

http://www.primovasound.com/ have a nice gizmo
for utilizing the midi from various usb guitar amps,
and sundry guitar/audio gear with famous names.
It has a pair of bi-directional usb ports,
a pair of 5 pin midi ports for i/o or mergers,
and a pair of analog trs jacks for expression pedals,
footswitches, and etc.

The software is windows-only, but the dev recommends
trying various windows emulators, if one uses linux,
a magazine review mentioned 'wineskin' worked pretty well.

You can use a recessed button to program settings
if you don't use a computer, various numbers and speeds
of button-taps will be recognized.
Cheers

[glokraw]

U-he's Newsletter-coupon deal brought the price of their
Bazille modular synth down to a ridiculous 3 pennies
per preset, a ballpark figure, likely on the HIGH side,
and including the many community donated sounds,
and around 100 sounds from a collection of commercial
soundset demo downloads...

The thing I find about U-he sounds, is that many of them
are just aching for distortion, whether a subtle moody saturation
on an ePiano, a wall of sheet lightning applied to
a pad, some serious overdrive drama imposed on
a rollicking sequence, or some crunch and punch
to make a good pluk sound jump off the CD spindle.

It's not that the sounds arrive weak or uninspired,
rather they are solid and well presented, so it's easy
for one's creativity to kick in, and take things beyond
the original, or in some cases, even simplify the original,
when your muse hears something excellent that
the sound designer has taken elsewhere,
in their own fine direction.

the beancounter just informed me that Zebra2
will cost a lucky coupon holder a fully absurd
1.7 pennies per preset
... again a ballpark figure, and acknowledges that
the beancounter is quite diligent,
when it comes to tracking down free Zebra sounds.
But hey, it's baseball season, and world-cup time,
ballparks selling hot-dogs are fun, and they
could learn a trick or two from U-he,
who seem to be making a nice business
out of nearly giving away their hard-won sound content.

Maybe it's my dodgy philosophical math,
but for the musician, when something great is nearly free,
or almost really free, it is indeed a very good price,
and well worth the pain of reading a
U-he newsletter every so often, whilst taking a break
from the studio monitors.
Cheers



pssst! Bazille has a crush on your ampsim!!!
Chaperone, curfew, whatever it takes...

[glokraw]

I used my 25% U-he coupon on Bazille, and a week later,
still haven't made it out of the 'keys' folder. One preset I really like
ran the cpu entourage into a ditch, and I realized I hadn't checked
the Bazille settings yet, and when I added the multi-core support,
the cpu meter came back down to earth, and when I lowered
the quality setting, I couldn't hear a difference, but had even
more cpu powers available.

That preset will get sampled using discoDSP's Bliss sampler,
and then samples will be imported into their Vertigo synth
for resynthesis. Knowledge of which places me at
Sergeant Schultz's table in the local strudel-haus,
but I like what I hear, and that's what spending some money,
is all about.

Fathom is having a friday/saturday $11 Friday sale,
update is only $2.50, so I'll add that to the rainy-day-folder,
when time will avail to learn some module chaining.
With Bazille, I'll needs start with Un-chaining
(in my dreams, just too many great sounds to improvise with,
cables can wait)

Cobalt is a fine commercial synth that is now free,
and a new skin, in BlueCat colors, has been made by
kvr vagabond-returned Shemsu-Heru, as French as
the BlueCats themselves, the skin is great to use,
and laid out for extremely easy generation of new sounds.
Works fine in linux, either in wine-reaper,
or wrapped as a native linux-vst plugin
using Lin-Vst.
From the Cobalt topic in the instruments forum,

Hi everyone,
Here is my little gift.


GoogleDrive Link
Font is supplied with .rar (from fontspace.com)

Hope you'll enjoy

I second that, and just in time for the weekend!
Cheers

[glokraw]

the beancounter just informed me that Zebra2
will cost a lucky coupon holder a fully absurd
1.7 pennies per preset
... again a ballpark figure, and acknowledges that
the beancounter is quite diligent,
when it comes to tracking down free Zebra sounds.

CORRECTION: There is a handy linux utility called
'fdupes', useful to find/list/remove dupliicate files,
and during some housekeeping, I discovered
a duplicate of the Zebra Vision collection,
so after removing it, the pennies-per-preset price
for Zebra2 factory and community donated presets
rocketed to almost 2 pennies each! How will the
Earth ever stay on it's axis?

[audiojunkie]

Wow! I just barely noticed this thread. I missed out on a lot of good deals!! I'm following now!

[audiojunkie]

By the way, there are enough of us now, why can't we get Ben @KVRAudio to give Linux its own forum? Then I don't have to search for "Linux" to find Linux related news.

We are a valid userbase. Surely it would be allowed....

[glokraw]

I think the present situation is OK, a sticky topic that's been
running for years, this newer split, to focus on commercial products,
and sundry individual topics that appear.
If you click the Forum tab, and scroll down to the company forums,
quite a few cross-platform developers are in the list,
Bitwig
zynaddsubfx
discoDSP
U-he
DISTHRO
Harrison Mixbus
OvertoneDSP
Tracktion
EnergyXT
So linux users can and do post in those areas.
The consensus among the long-term win/mac users
here seems to be, 'my setup works fine, I love it,
why would I ever try something complex and new,
when my time is already in short supply?'
And some of those are linux sysadmins as a profession.

So new linux musicians will likely be kids,
(of which there are always plenty)
people priced out of high-end gear, refugees
from win-ten and apple upgrade fiascos, and
tech oriented folks who get exposed to capabilities
they appreciate. Along with some folks who
are newer to computer music, and not fully entrenched
in their existing production tools.

We have the entire U-he catalog in native linux,
along with several great discoDSP plugins, PianoteQ,
and the vast Airwindows effects collection,
with Reaper, Mixbus and Bitwig daws, vst wrappers,
and wine progressing quickly, all filling in traditional gaps.
(not mentioning the entirity of traditional linux
instruments, effects, and tools)

To me, dedicated linux forums exist aplenty,
and a new one here would just be a redundant layer,
perhaps needing some maintenance or official moderation.
That's mi dos centavos
Cheers

[glokraw]

Installed the Quanta granular synth demo in a wine 3.11 setup,
which has some over-rides, and the basics seem to work OK.
I was able to drag/drop a few samples from a linux filemanager
to the sample window, and the various
controls all responded. The demo needs a restart after 20 minutes,
but no noises or giberish to dampen the testers spirit.
If you have a clue about granular synthesis, or want to learn,
give it a shot. A couple video links and a discussion topic:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=504226

https://youtu.be/AECoCSo_xpk

https://youtu.be/0C_RPOVPVjA

Enjoy your independance. Make it work for you!

[yellowmix]

Monoplugs sells native Linux plugins. Monique, a synth, B-Step, a sequencer, and a free metronome. Demo available for testing.

http://monoplugs.com

[glokraw]

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=507480

U-he 'Colour Copy' delay rack plugin is in public beta.
Super easy to use, a 426 hemi under the hood,
and as usual, can be wrapped with linvst for use in linux daws,
or used in wine, until a linux version appears, likely
after the full release is finalized. Early buy-in pricing
is in effect, so don't delay...






...


Cheers

[glokraw]

Monoplugs sells native Linux plugins. Monique, a synth, B-Step, a sequencer, and a free metronome. Demo available for testing.

http://monoplugs.com

Thanks for the info, I've not heard of Monique,
and didn't know B-step has a linux build,
but I'll try them tonight! Nice informative website
is a good sign, even pi and android B-steps
Cheers

[glokraw]

SampleTank 3 is on sale, so I installed the latest
free Custom Shop version, as a test for the new
wine-staging 3.12, (without -over-rides) and the latest Reaper 5.93.

All the basics seem to work, and I was able to import sounds
from the older IK sound collections from the 32 bit era.
ST 3 is 16-part multi-timbral, and each sound can have
four effects and an EQ, with the same for the master output,
so nuanced productions are simple. It comes with 33 gig
of sounds, 4000 instruments from 21 categories

Here's the page for the free Custom Shop version:

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/sampletankcs/

and the full version on sale:

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/sampletank3/

Also, you can install the free version of IK's Syntonik,
and it's sounds will be available in the free Custom Shop version,
so using that along with IK's free content,
provides some very productive testing and usage.
Sounds and individual Syntronik instruments
can be purchased alacart in the custom shop,
as the Muse and budget allow.

Many of the other IK products are on sale,
and Ampltitube and T-Racks also have free
Custom Shop versions. I have Amplitube 4,
and the Fulltone collection purchased from the shop,
along with some older T-Racks plugins, and they all
share quality sounds and interfaces.
Cheers

'Native Access' is not required so using Reaper
with a well configured and recent wine will be
fundamental for running most windows plugins
in linux, with some people are also happily using FL Studio.
Cheers