Resurrect one plugin. What would you pick?

[NothanUmber]

Glad to hear you still dig them!
...
It would also have to handle stuff made for single core, or else it would probably crash the host.

Thanks for providing them in the first place!
Just gave it a try: A "jBridged" version of String Theory loads without problems in Bitwig 6 and GigPerformer 5, so it seems to handle the single core issue. (I think the trick is that the 64 bit wrapper dll communicates with a 32 bit auxhost process per plugin instance that is actually hosting the 32 bit plugin). Yay!

[ugo]

Glad to hear you still dig them!
...
It would also have to handle stuff made for single core, or else it would probably crash the host.

Thanks for providing them in the first place!
Just gave it a try: A "jBridged" version of String Theory loads without problems in Bitwig 6 and GigPerformer 5, so it seems to handle the single core issue. (I think the trick is that the 64 bit wrapper dll communicates with a 32 bit auxhost process per plugin instance that is actually hosting the 32 bit plugin). Yay!

That is good news. It has been a very long time since I was able to use my old plugins. My last win machine had problems with them, then crapped out as I was transitioning to Mac for work. I assumed they were just unusable now. My wife’s win laptop isn’t setup for audio, but I may need to install a host and give this a try again.

[NothanUmber]

Tried all ugo plugins with jBridge (Disturbance, Ironhead, Ironhead:Spawn, M-theory, Metallurgy, Motion, Rez, String Theory, Texture, Element of Surprise), they all seem to work in current versions of GigPerformer, Bitwig and Reaper. This is great!
https://plugins4free.com/dev/26/

I guess that many of the synths in this thread could still be used that way? If the files are still available and copy protection doesn't prevent it. Would be good if more devs would make things that they don't plan to sell anymore available and remove DRM before shutting down activation servers.

[ugo]

Tried all ugo plugins with jBridge (Disturbance, Ironhead, Ironhead:Spawn, M-theory, Metallurgy, Motion, Rez, String Theory, Texture, Element of Surprise), they all seem to work in current versions of GigPerformer, Bitwig and Reaper. This is great!

This is sounding very promising. Would you mind doing an extra test? (I’m not setup for it yet.) If you haven’t already…

1. Load more than one instance of something really old like Motion, Texture, or String Theory.
2. Sequence a few notes on each track.
3. Save the project and quite the host.
4. Restart the host, reload the project, and play the sequences.

I think I am starting to remember that on 32 bit dual core processors a single instance might run, but two instances of the same synth usually crashed. On rare occasions two instances might load and appear to work but the host always crashed when I tried reloading the project. So if you can make it all the way through step 4 and there is still no crash when simultaneously playing back two instances on a reloaded project, then jBridge might really make these old plugins fully usable again.

[NothanUmber]

Tested with Bitwig 6 and three String Theory instances on separate tracks. Sequencing and replaying after a reload works so far.
Also played around with combining jBridge+MPEfy. This also works, so now I have 64 bit MPE compatible versions of the ugo plugins - neat!

[ugo]

Thank you for testing all this! Wow, this is really great news.

Perhaps I should finally rebuild my site and put these back up there, so they can be downloaded from an “official” place again. Maybe that would also encourage me to start experimenting with all those various sound/synth/effect design ideas I’ve been considering.

[audiojunkie]

Thank you for testing all this! Wow, this is really great news.

Perhaps I should finally rebuild my site and put these back up there, so they can be downloaded from an “official” place again. Maybe that would also encourage me to start experimenting with all those various sound/synth/effect design ideas I’ve been considering.

If you get back into building plugins again, could you use frameworks that support all 3 major OSes this time (meaning Windows, MacOS, and Linux)? I’d love your plugins for Linux—which I use these days.

[ugo]

If you get back into building plugins again, could you use frameworks that support all 3 major OSes this time (meaning Windows, MacOS, and Linux)? I’d love your plugins for Linux—which I use these days.

Funny you should mention that. The other day I started to wonder if I should try Bitwig, and a few hours ago I was looking into the state of audio on Linux (because I don’t like where things are going with Apple and Microsoft) and saw Bitwig is one of the few that supports Linux…and now your post. Perhaps this is sign that Linux and Bitwig should be in my future.

[audiojunkie]

One can hope!

[TS-12]

definitely: Steinberg-Wizoo Virtual Guitarist 2

[burkek]

Image-Line's Harmor - they used to sell it outside of FLS, and I owned it, but then they ceased development and therefore compatibility outside of their own DAW. It's a great synth for EBM/Industrial. I've been pissed off at them ever since and refuse to buy anything else from them.

[NothanUmber]

Bitwig Grid is cool, particularly for own experiments! (I wish it had a module concept so you could structure more complex designs).
TheTechnobear has released a template that can be used to create VCV plugins with RNBO+Max, this also looks interesting! https://github.com/TheTechnobear/VcvRnboTemplate (RNBO generates C++ code, so this + JUCE can be used to create any kind of plugin for Mac+Windows+Linux. (Max itself is Mac+Windows atm.)).
And then there is PlugData (https://plugdata.org/), a VST/AU/LV2/CLAP plugin version of Pure Data. PlugData runs as standalone or as plugin inside any DAW on Linux+Mac+Windows. PlugData can be switched between "perform" and "edit" mode inside the plugin window for a loaded schematic. Can be exported as C++ code(*), exported to run on compatible hardware pedals or PD schematics can directly be provided to people so they can load them in PlugData inside their DAWs and/or extend the synths. One can prototype UIs with the PlugData UI elements or make more fancy UIs with Juce later with e.g. this template(*): https://github.com/o-g-sus/JUCE-HEAVY . Here some plugins that people have made with PlugData: https://plugdata.org/store.html
*: Export as C++ uses the Heavy compiler which supports a subset of Pd, similar to RNBO in Max which also provides a Max subset. So when C++ export is the goal then best enable "compiled mode" in Plugdata, so it will highlight modules which cannot be exported later on.

[Sampleconstruct]

Iris 1+2.

[gaf_thit]

Iris 1+2.

I never got around to trying Iris 1, was there something in that that was better than in Iris 2?

[Sampleconstruct]

Iris 1+2.

I never got around to trying Iris 1, was there something in that that was better than in Iris 2?

Well they somewhat broke the modulation system in Iris 2, increased the CPU load and loading time significantly and introduced other bugs we didn't need. But hey, it's all over now anyway...