For all Linux users...

[Fourstepper]

Just wanted to say that I tested all melda plugs on Linux using wine and LinVST Bridges and that melda plugs worked flawlessly with those


A special thanks to mevla for making me fall in love with this OS..

[nosucherror]

Hi Fourstepper,
I would advise caution to any Melda product users wanting to switch to Linux. Personally, I would love to ditch Windows7 for Linux for my audio work but I just don't think it's viable.

I've been hoping and tinkering for over ten years thinking one day Linux is gonna be ready for professional audio. Linux is amazing for what it is but the problem seems to me that without developer support from companies like Melda, Izotope, Native Instruments etc. Linux is just not a realistic option.

Vojtech made the Melda plug-ins to work in Windows and OSX. Running them in WINE is a gamble. LinVST is the work of one person, OSXMIDI, he's done a fantastic job but he could abandon the project tomorrow.

On a technical note, the multi channel plugins like MAutoAlign and MMultiAnalyser wont work via LinVST.

My sincerest advise to anyone wanting to use Linux for audio is stick with Linux supported software. I have happily bought and use U-he stuff, Loomer stuff, Bitwig, and REAPER to name a few and I feel they are more deserving of support because they made the effort to support Linux.

Hope this isn't too much of a downer! Good luck with your audio!!!

[mevla]

My sincerest advise to anyone wanting to use Linux for audio is stick with Linux supported software. I have happily bought and use U-he stuff, Loomer stuff, Bitwig, and REAPER to name a few and I feel they are more deserving of support because they made the effort to support Linux.

I strongly disagree with this but first, on thing you mention at the beginning must be sorted out. You mentioned professional audio. Does that mean that you earn a living with audio, that you have customers or that you cater to your own productions to earn a living ?

Or is it used only as a term to describe the quality of audio ? I'll assume this.

I started earlier this year to run Windows plugins in Linux using wine-staging and linvst. Based on the creative results I ended up adding to my Linux audio arsenal in a significant way. But I'm not a professional and I do not earn any money from this. I would like eventually, but that's not the case now.

And so I do run all Melda plugins in such a way that they are fully incorporated into the workflow. There is one 'thing' in that they will not resize automatically and need to be minimized and brought back again after a size change to reflect the new size, but that's only two clicks away and I do not ocnsider that a roadblock at all to music creation. This is so much offsetted by what the Melda plugins are actually brining to audio production.

I also run all Voxengo plugins. Since in order to run Windows plugins in Linux a software bridge is needed and since that bridge runs into its own process for each plugin, there's no communication between plugins. Again, this is not creative roadblock. With SPAN or instance, I take a snapshot and load it into another instance to compare and let my ears do the rest. I believe there's also a way to export that kind of data with some Melda analyzer plugins but I haven't tried it out yet. For carving frequency spaces between instruments I use for now the SPAN snapshots and my ears. No deal breaker there.

You can hear some output by clicking on the songs in the signature below.

And then on the synth side, I use Blue2, Predator2, Icarus, Ray Blaster, ElectraX, Synthmaster One and 2 (some UI glitches in One, but that's OK, no creation deal breaker), Sample Tank 3, Harmor, Harmless, Sytrus, Morphine, Sajura, Ogun, MSF beta, all Sugar Bytes, all Sonic Charge, Phonec2 and Fathom.

If I try a demo of a Windows plugin and it does not work for whatever reason, I forget about it, I do not pursue to try running it, spending time reading on forums, asking questions, no ! Just music creation. With the added Linux plugins (all u-he, pianoteq, Biotek2, Waverazor, OvertoneDSP, Loomer, all DiscoDSP, Monique, B-Step and Redux, I have more than enough to 1) learn how all of this works for the next two years and 2) to create all the music I could want.

Since this is a software bridge it adds to layers that can eventually show bugs and problems. This is a given in the software world. The question is, is it possible to create music nevertheless in a pleasant manner exploiting close to 95% of the capabilities of the plugins ?

So from my perspective I disagree totally with your assumption as exprience and production output has shown otherwise.

Cheers.