Melda in Linux ?

[nosucherror]

I recently did a fresh install of Ubuntu 16.04 and found that I couldn't install the Melda plug-ins under Wine as there seemed to be some graphics libraries missing. If anyone runs into this I found that installing the previous iterations first then the latest works. So install 10.07 and/or MDrummerLarge6.07 first then the later .exe's should be cool. I'm guessing there's some needed redistributable files not included in the latest versions.
For anyone searching the forums the Wine error is:

Could not initialize the GUI subsystem.
Error:No styles available. Please reinstall the software.

Hope this helps.

[MeldaProduction]

Missing fonts if I remember correctly. But I think the newest installer should work. (or maybe it is the next )

[Taika-Kim]

Great to know they can be made to work! I recently moved to Linux, and get a lot better CPU utilisation than under Windows. I work mostly inside Bitwig now but there are a few plugins that offer something special, like Mcharacter.

[mevla]

Great to know they can be made to work! I recently moved to Linux, and get a lot better CPU utilisation than under Windows. I work mostly inside Bitwig now but there are a few plugins that offer something special, like Mcharacter.

The wording wouldn't be 'can be made to work' really. Because there's basically nothing to do. Simply install them and use them.

Now for some details. I didn't want for a long time want to use Windows plugins in Linux because it seemed awfully complex, with all those people describing complicated problems and procedures. The time I have for this is to make music, not again doing software work. So recently I tried wine-staging with linVST. This is very simple and works great. In a nutshell: install a Melda plugin, or several, then copy the .dll to your favorite location. For each plugin copy a linvst.so under the sane name at the same location. The Linux DAW will see the .so file and in turn that .so file will load the .dll.

For instance I store my plugins of any kind on another drive: /B3/Plugins/

So I have:

/B3/Plugins/Windows/Melda/

In there you would see, to take your example:

MCharacter.dll
MCharacter.so (which is the renamed linvst.so file)

Bitwig is already told to look into /B3/Plugins/ so that's fine. Only the .dll file is copied, all other files from the installation remains where they are in ~/.wine/drive_c/

I use Linux Mint 18 KDE, which comes from Ubuntu. I use a low-latency kernel, part of Linux Mint.

The Melda plugins works very fine. The resizing of the UI works fine but after resize you must minimize it and show it again for the resizing to take effect. No sweat. One thing: since every Windows plugin runs as its own process, there's no possibility of intercommunication. This means that MMultiAnalyzer will not see other instances of itself. This is also true for a similar Voxengo feature.

I tried them all, bought several so far, all works well. One thing: there is currently a problem with MDrummer reacting on MIDI commands. This concerns only Bitwig. On the same machine MDrummer works fine when using it in Harrison Mixbus32C (Linux version).

Then on the Bitwig side, I do not throw too many new Windows plugin at it at once. I prefer to introduce them one by one. Eg. copy one.dll and its .so file and see that Bitwig recognizes it, then proceed with another one. It's my experience that if I throw 10 or more Windows plugin at Bitwig at once it has good chances of choking. This is only valid for the initial recognition of a plugin. Any subsequent loading of Bitwig will be OK.

Speaking of, I also always start Bitwig with a simple template file and see that everything is OK, before loading a full project. When using many Windows plugins you will see it takes a bit more time to load. I use a i5-3570 CPU @ 3.40GHz with 16 GB RAM. Bitwig can also play mean with jackd at times, but that's something else.

All in all the Melda plugins runs very fine, no problem concerning the creation process, mixing, mastering. My latest, "Escape of the Hopping Rhinos" below in the signature has some Melda processing.

If you have any questions about installing wine-staging and compiling linvst with the Steinberg SDK let me know.

Cheers.

[Taika-Kim]

I have LineVST and Wine Staging, still get a lot of problems with VSTs (Omnisphere, Alchemy, etc), and even if the plugins work, many copy protection schemes don't. But then again I didn't go through everything I own since the initial experience wasn't so good. Luckily the ones I really need do work quite fine. Also there is the question of CPU overhead which is very big, around 10% per plugin or so, this especially is annoying with efficient plugins since it does not seem to be proportional, but some quite fixed amount that the Wine framework uses.

So now I've been adding new Windows VSTs only if I use them. I didn't anyway use a lot of the suff I owned even in Windows recently

[mevla]

I have LineVST and Wine Staging, still get a lot of problems with VSTs (Omnisphere, Alchemy, etc), and even if the plugins work, many copy protection schemes don't.

I drop them. I do not insist. They have complicated copy-protection schemes, then I have a complicated wallet-protection scheme. For me it's simple. I only use what works and I'm quite satisfied (if not overwhelmed by the creative choice) with that.

I did not see CPU overhead so much. Regular stuff, with which I'm surprised as I was expecting more consumption of resources. This said, there's one synth that do ask for a lot and Bitwig will choke on some sounds: the additive synth Harmor. That synth has some very nice sounds and resynthesis, but it also makes a lot of calculations. Harrison Mixbus32C handles it much better than Bitwig. Actually Mixbus32C is much more efficient than Bitwig regarding audio stability. But then, it is a mixing DAW. I never mix in Bitwig, I find it has too many shortcomings. Bitwig's domain is not in mixing and mastering IMHO, but in musical creativity. Not mixing creativity.

I do not run Windows, so I do not have any backlog of plugins. That lets me pick and choose as described above. For the record I run the following and it offers me a lot of creative possibilities: Melda plugins, all Voxengo, Rob Papen newest synth Go2 (for a really digital sound), all Sugar Bytes, Synplant, Microtonic and Echobode, Phonec2 and Echomelt2, KV331 Synthmaster2, Image Line's Harmor, Harmless (additive), Sytrus (FM), Ogun (Harmonic), Sakura (string modeling) and Morphine (additive, resynthesis). Amongst the IL synths, some run better in Mixbus32C, so it can happen that I split the creative process and also do creation outside of Bitwig.

That's in addition to the Linux native plugins such as all u-he synths and plugins (Dark Zebra, Diva, Bazille, Uhbik, Presswerk, Satin, ACE, etc...), Biotek, Discovery Pro, Bliss, Monique, B-Step, pianoteq, Redux, Zyn, Waverazor, all Harrison plugins in Bitwig (thanks to Robin Gareus for the VST versions), OvertoneDSP plugins and some Loomer plugins.

And recently I added some Melda plugins, so I have enough to learn and use for the coming year, if not a bit more.

Cheers.

[sjzstudio]

Is there anything new on this front. Linux is evolving to become more attractive when using Pro audio. The potential is huge.

[Boone777]

Yabridge should be used instead of Linvst. Easier to setup and quicker scan. Also window scaling is working well now. My Melda stuff rocks in MXLinux 21. Use VST3, I don't remember why but it works better.
https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge