The plugin bridge sounds interesting. Could this be extended in future to allow the use of Windows VSTs supported by Wine in the native Linux Renoise?
would be neat.
It’s a great idea, but unfortunately I don’t think this will ever work reliable, thus it might be better if we don’t even claim being able to use Windows VSTs on Linux - not even try to do so.
First, not all plugins will work with Wine. Then Wine and everything that’s needed to bridge will add a big bunch of overhead. It’s going from a native Linux executable to a plugin bridge in Wine, to the plugin and all the way back. All this in “realtime” (audio) and multiple times if you want to use more than one plugin at once.
Finally, the current way of bridging that we do use won’t work out of the box, cause we’d have to bridge a native Linux process with a native Windows process running in Wine. Of course it’s possible to write such a thing, but well, this is far from being easy to add.
If you really really need/miss those plugins on Linux, running Renoise directly in Wine might be the better choice. Wine supports Jack, so you can even connect it with your other tools running natively in Linux.
Or try to convince the developers of those plugins to support Linux with a native Linux version of the plugin.
I sometimes try that, but unfortunately don’t find Renoise running under Wine to be stable enough for composing entire songs. I do use it to capture Windows VSTi output using the plugin grabber and then importing the resulting XRNI into Linux Renoise, which is useful enough for getting new sounds.
Well we can certainly dream.
I used to be a fan of running windows VSTs, but then I realised two things: it was too much hassle in the end sorting the wheat from the chaff, and secondly I found I wasn’t actually using them!
Since moving to 64 bit linux I’ve gone ‘fully native’ - I don’t have wine installed any more, and I do everything using only linux tools. It’s freed up a lot of time and I can focus on what I want to do rather than trying to solve IT problems. Linux audio has come a long way in recent years, especially with the arrival of Renoise (and those Loomer VSTs!)
I know we don’t have the same level of choice as windows and mac users, but there are still plenty of tools out there, we can still make our own samples and use hardware synths, recorded instruments etc. I wouldn’t convince a windows user to give up their o/s for linux purely to make music, but linux users are no longer excluded from the process. The limited choice of VSTs isn’t the end of the world.
Instead of devloping windows/wine compatibility the devs would be better off working on LV2 compatibility. Much better for linux in the long run, and more stable for the users… IMHO!
I thought you was going to say; ‘…better off working on a native solution’. Hope luajit will become stable so folks like Mxb can go synth coding crazy!
LOL yes… that too 