Mixbus4 and Windows Vsts

[durutti]

Hi--

Will Mixbus4 in Linux load windows vsts?

For everyone that might be interested the windows version works with wine loading windows vsts but the dsp is always

between 90 and 100% with buffer set to 1024 samples.

Another less stable solution is airwave-vst where the plugins are all recognizable but crashes are usual. There is also carla but i havent tested it.

But it would be great if MB4 in linux can load windows vsts

Best--

[x42]

No, the Linux version won't be able to load Windows VST.

The dependence on Wine makes it almost impossible to support this feature. Wine's functionality generally improves over time, but any given release of Wine may behave worse with some or all Windows VST plugins. Particularly for some commercial/proprietary plugins which use special APIs for license checks that are not available via wine.

Step back and think about what "using Windows VSTs" really means: Taking bits of software written with only one idea in mind - running on the Windows platform - and then trying to use them on an entirely different platform. It is a bit of a miracle (largely thanks to the incredible work done by the Wine project) that it can work at all. But is this the basis of a stable, reliable DAW for a non-Windows platform? Getting Mixbus on Linux to pretend that its really a Windows application running on Windows? To make this possible Mixbus needs to become a windows binary (well, a wine-application) itself (not a linux ELF binary) and run entirely under Wine.
It's very similar to running the Mixbus Windows version inside wine (and you'll want wine-rt to begin with), except that as hybrid wine-application it could also load ELF plugins.

If you really depend on Windows VSTs, then remain on Windows, or potentially consider using an actual Windows VST host running inside of Wine and not require the the whole DAW to be under Wine's control.

The best option however is to appeal to Plugin manufacturers: Ask them for a Linux version. Several commercial Plugin developers have already ported their Plugins to Linux -- and some frameworks e.g. JUCE make this rather straight forward these days.

[mrskytown11]

Hi--

Will Mixbus4 in Linux load windows vsts?

For everyone that might be interested the windows version works with wine loading windows vsts but the dsp is always

between 90 and 100% with buffer set to 1024 samples.

Another less stable solution is airwave-vst where the plugins are all recognizable but crashes are usual. There is also carla but i havent tested it.

But it would be great if MB4 in linux can load windows vsts

Best--

Can't you try to use Carla to host the windows vsts inside mixbus it might help with performance maybe and only the Carla vst host will host the windows vst and not the whole program but In general using vst with heavy GUI is not recommended so if you have vst plugins that are not too graphical heavy they should be fine to work with, just my 2 cents


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[x42]

Aside from Carla, there's also https://github.com/phantom-code/airwave

[durutti]

Well it seems that with 32 bit prefix mixbus works smoothly within wine.
My initial setup was 64bit prefix which didnt not work so good.

I also use airwave vst where apart from a known wine bug where the airwave-vst author has provided a patch for wine (i havent figured out how to patch wine) most of plugins that i have tested work on native Linux Mixbus.

Regarding the comment x42 made (by the way awesome work, I have used your plugins on ardour which I am a supporter and a fan), there is not a dilema for me windows or Linux. This has been answered 10+ years ago and the answer is linux. However, having more options and presets in music production is always better. For me that is what wine does effectively. Providing users more options (also compatibility with other people who are not into linux yet). In addition not many well known plugin companies have plans for linux support probably because the number of users is small (small profit, if profit all, market rules...). I have found an old post from the fabfilter forum (2014) https://www.fabfilter.com/forum/2307/any...?replies=2 where the answer is
"We're not planning Linux support for the foreseeable future."


To sum up I believe and hope that one day in the foreseeable future I could have more options in my music arsenal in Linux by default.

[mrskytown11]

Aside from Carla, there's also https://github.com/phantom-code/airwave

Is airwave better then Carla
Does airwave host plugins like a rack or does it run the plugins differently


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[x42]

I have not tried either, so I can't say which is better (for whatever definition of good in this context)

..but I gather that airwave is a single-plugin wrapper and exposes the plugin control ports for automation, while Carla is a multi-plugin rack where automation can only be done using MIDI-CC.

[Jostein]

I recommend Carla. It is maintained and do in addition have a lot of additional functions, like being a stable Linuxsampler front end and being a consistent interface for a lot of plugins an even sample libraries.

One of my happier moments lately was when I with the win64 plugin ran the amazing Roland JX-8P emulator: PG-8X from ML-VST. I even use Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 with Carla.