ladspa

[tor.helge.skei]

but.. bitwig studio can't use ladspa plugins?
oh, yes we can!

[glokraw]

Who is to blame for this outrage?

[ThomasHelzle]

Translation for the layman please? What is this about?

Cheers,

Tom

[tor.helge.skei]

well, it's a linux vst plugin that loads and wraps a ladspa plugin

there's not that many vst plugins in linux.. usually i connect bits and pieces via jack and alsa seq-midi, and use various applications and software for synthesis and effects,etc.. but, since bitwig studio doesn't support jack midi (yet?), it's a major hassle.. so i decided to write some plugins and stuff myself, to have more sound-generating sources to play around with.. (this being just one of around 20 plugins now, and more coming)..

when the plugin loads, it reads from a config file, in the same directory, and with the same name as itself, but with a .ladspa extension.. this config file is just a text file containing the path to the real ladspa plugin to load.. then it loads that, and initializes a simple layer so that it acts as a vst plugin..

this means you can have several (renamed) copies of this plugin in a directory seen by bitwig, and each of them wraps a ladspa plugin.. i'm planning to make some simple scripts to set up this automatically..

i need to do some more testing and cleaning and stuff, before i feel comfortable with making it available for all to use.. soon...

and it's not for bitwig studio only, but all 64bit linux vst hosts (tested with bitwig studio, qtractor, carla).. should be pretty easy to compile a windows (and mac?) version too, but there's not that may ladspa plugins available for windows, so i don't think there's much of a point in that.. and i'm considering a similar dssi, and perhaps even a lv2 wrapper.. and further into the future, there could be possibilities for jack audio/midi ports, and perhaps even a win32 vst wrapper using wine.. but all of that is just thoughts and possibilities, not concrete plans..

and, btw, if the bitwig developers want, they can have the code (for free), if they add ladspa support directly in bitwig studio insiead

[ThomasHelzle]

Nice!.
I only dipped my toes into Linux-Audio myself, but I see a lot of potential there.
Would be great to have an out if Apple and MS go fully bonkers

Would it be feasible to create a little tool/script that scans the machine for ladspa plugins and creates a folder with all the "translators", so that the average musician doesn't need to set things up by hand but just runs the utility whenever something new was installed and has it added?

Especially a Windows-VST-Translator would have a huge positive impact for me personally. Even if Linux Audio should start to take off finally with the recent additions to the DAW arsenal and hopefully more developers offering Linux ports, I would guess it still will take years until it even starts to get anywhere close to the Windows VST world variety...
How much work would that be? Can the existing wine/VST projects be reused/extended to work for Bitwig as well or does it need to be done from scratch?

Cheers and thanks for the heads up!

Tom

[StudioDave]

Picture only entices. Must have code !!



Very cool, there are a couple of LADSPA plugs I use frequently, might be nice to access them in BWS.

Best,

dp

[linuxdsp]

Especially a Windows-VST-Translator...

Making Windows VSTs work on linux is possible but fraught with problems - essentially you are trying to run a binary compiled for a completely different operating system, which can work, but more often than not depends heavily on which version of WINE you use (and you have to use WINE, which, unfortunately tends to suffer unpredictable regressions..)

As for running LADSPA in Bitwig...? Looks interesting, but, there are very few (one or two) LADSPA plugins that actually work properly (or well enough to be useful, and LADSPA is a deprecated format) so, why go to the trouble of creating a wrapper for them? If this was to wrap some proprietary plugin or format (e.g. like some VST to RTAS wrappers do etc) it might make sense, but as the LADSPA plugins are open source (and don't have a GUI, which is normally what makes porting most plugins such hard work) - would it not be better to just drop the DSP code into e.g. a VST project and re-compile for linux (or a JUCE VST with a trivial 'generic' GUI?). In fact I think this may have already been done - there may be some useful ports in some of the dedicated linux audio distros (KXStudio, AVLinux etc.) Wrapping LADSPA plugins in VST and relying on config scripts seems like a horrible kludge.

[tor.helge.skei]

yes, it's 'a horrible kludge'.. more like a proof of concept.. i have working code for hosting ladspa plugins, and for making vst plugins, so i just threw these together i'm not trying to make anything 'pro'.. i like to experiment and do 'weird' things, and i want to make my palette of possible audio sources/manglers bigger

right now, i have 185 .so files (plugins) in my /etc/lib/ladspa directory, many of them with several plugins in the binary.. it would be nice to be able to use them (as-is) for something.. instead of trying to convert and re-compile everything, with possibly obscure library version dependencies and build systems, and whatnot..

btw, there's a 'ladspa2vst bridge' here: http://www.anticore.org/jucetice/?page_id=8
but only some of the plugins really work..

and for wine.. i have been using reaper in linux via wine/wineasio for years now, and a big majority of the plugins i use in windows, work flawlessly with wine! i haven't tested many of those big commercial plugins, though.. (i'm not stuffed with money).. maybe it's a bit different for these?

[psycha0s]

Especially a Windows-VST-Translator would have a huge positive impact for me personally. Even if Linux Audio should start to take off finally with the recent additions to the DAW arsenal and hopefully more developers offering Linux ports, I would guess it still will take years until it even starts to get anywhere close to the Windows VST world variety...
How much work would that be? Can the existing wine/VST projects be reused/extended to work for Bitwig as well or does it need to be done from scratch?

You can try this vst bridge, it works, but with some restrictions. I am also trying to write windows vst bridge, but currently it has many issues and it is not ready to public release.

[linuxdsp]

You can try this vst bridge, it works, but with some restrictions...

Several years back, I spent a considerable amount of time creating almost exactly the same thing, before I developed the linuxDSP plugins - a lot of fixes were developed for many of the most common issues with WinVST plugins and WINE at the time, but then you 'upgrade' WINE and a whole different set of problems start happening - in the end it was decided it was simply impossible to get it working reliably enough to release - what it would have done would be to encourage users to depend on Windows VSTs which 'appeared' to work, and then one day they won't load and what do you do?
Undoubtedly it can be made to work (although more as a last resort) - and this has been done by several other projects / plugin hosts / bridges, so it's worth checking you are not duplicating someone else's effort (as so often happens in linux)
As a commercial product it was decided there would also be too many support issues - users would see problems with VST plugins which would be impossible to reproduce / investigate conclusively, and this would be seen as a 'fault' with the VST bridge application.
It is also impossible to use any plugins which require (hardware) copy protection - this may not be a problem for some, but it is increasingly becoming the standard for commercial VSTs which may limit the usefulness of a WinVST bridge somewhat.
An interesting experiment (and a tribute to how well WINE can do something which should be almost impossible - but probably not something to depend on as a practical / reliable solution)

[glokraw]

i have been using reaper in linux via wine/wineasio for years now, and a big majority of the plugins i use in windows, work flawlessly with wine! i haven't tested many of those big commercial plugins, though.. (i'm not stuffed with money).. maybe it's a bit different for these?

Another long-time reaper/wine user, as for 'big commercial' plugins,
if they don't require a dongle, or complex software installer-protector,
most should work, if one considers IK Multimedia, Native Instruments,
and U-he to be big...if you can't make a song using them,
it's seriously time to move on

Here's a partial list of links to ladspa, and a few lv2 plugins.

http://manual.ardour.org/working-with-p ... g-plugins/

I use some of these in audacity, and it would be great to
have them available in bitwig (and others). A wrapper for dssi
would be great, with hexter bringing DX7 sysex,
Whysynth bringing Kawai sounds, linuxsampler adding sfz/sf2 playback, amsynth adds a huge set of soundbanks, and a dssi- port of the great zynaddsubfx and it's great 16 part multi-timbrality and effects section,
is one of the best instruments out there.
LV2 wrapper would bring in Calf, MDA, and Invada collections, and a lot
of projects from the KX Studio author, Zita plugins...dozens
of excellent effects, and some fine instruments and ports.

People weighing the price of bitwig, might be more tempted
to slap the plastic if they knew such things were going to be available
using wrappers.
Cheers

[StudioDave]

You can also send your MIDI data out to Carla 2.0 and let it handle the heavy lifting with its support for LADSPA/LV2/DSSI/VST plugins. Or send it to Festige for Windows-format (DLL) VST plugins.

Best,

dp

[linuxdsp]

People weighing the price of bitwig, might be more tempted
to slap the plastic if they knew such things were going to be available
using wrappers.

Wrappers seem like the wrong solution - they make perfect sense for commercial plugins where the host doesn't support a particular format, but it feels like the wrong solution for open-source plug-ins (when we are so often told that the key benefit of open-source is that it can be adapted if required - but for the work / knowledge required for someone to create a collection of wrapper applications - and all the problems that may cause - why not simply invest the time in converting the few useful / reliable plug-ins to e.g. linuxVST? Which is now supported by almost all linux audio applications anyway including e.g. Ardour3 etc )

Trying to get a collection of essentially linux-only plug-in formats into a commercial cross-platform application seems like the wrong solution too - realistically, there are no LV2 / LADSPA plug-ins for Mac / Windows, and likely never will be (there really, really shouldn't be if anyone has any sense), and there's probably little benefit in porting 'Yet Another Plugin Format (tm) ' to Windows / Mac etc, especially when it is one whose only real purpose is to solve a set of problems unique to (and created for or by..) using linux.

When it comes to WinVSTs, it's easy to be drawn into increasingly circular and nonsensical arguments about hosting them on linux.. Surely if you depend heavily on Windows software, especially when the host application is also available for Windows, why go to the trouble of trying to get a linux version running, with all the associated linux hardware driver issues etc and then hooking up lots of compatibility layers in order to run the Windows plug-ins (less reliably). Why not just run Windows software on Windows?

[psycha0s]

Surely if you depend heavily on Windows software, especially when the host application is also available for Windows, why go to the trouble of trying to get a linux version running, with all the associated linux hardware driver issues etc and then hooking up lots of compatibility layers in order to run the Windows plug-ins (less reliably). Why not just run Windows software on Windows?

Running Windows software on Windows is great solution for people, who are earn on living by using such software. I use Linux because Windows is uncomfortable for me. I am making some music only as my hobby and I don't want change my entire work environment for that. But I ready to pay for commercial software, that I use. Of course it would be great, if developers port their products to Linux platform. But in reality they wouldn't do that. There is too small target auditory. So using wrappers is all I can do right now.

[linuxdsp]

Of course it would be great, if developers port their products to Linux platform...

Yes it would be, and gradually we are seeing more applications support linux (Bitwig for example) - but it takes time to build the necessary infrastructure, and in the case of commercial software it needs to make economic sense - I guess a lot of the point of what I'm saying is that wrapping Windows software to run on linux, isn't encouraging development of native linux solutions (commercial or otherwise) and that doesn't encourage the development of more native linux host applications etc - and that will just leave us with the current situation.
I don't think the right way to address the problem is to try and get more adoption of linux-specific plugin formats, there has to be some acceptance that formats like VST work well as a cross-platform solution (at the moment)
I understand that musicians shouldn't be expected to re-compile plugins etc etc, but developers who obviously have the skills required to create complex wrappers etc might they not invest their time in porting some of the plugins to VST instead?
The reality is that there are relatively few LV2 / LADSPA plugins of sufficient quality - so maybe it makes sense to port the usable ones to e.g. JUCE etc - then you get a VST that works on everything (and other formats too) - I'm almost talking myself out of using linux here... I should be careful.. : ) but that's the basic point I'm trying to make - when there is already a viable solution available, why invest a lot of time and effort in creating something which isn't quite as good?