3 Thanks to the combined work of Torben Hohn, Kjetil Mattheusen, Paul
4 Davis and a few other developers, it is possible to use Windows
5 <dfn><abbr title="Virtual Studio Technology">VST</abbr>
6 plugins</dfn> (that is, plugins in VST format built and distributed
7 for the Windows platforms) on Ardour running on Linux. (Note: there
8 is no VST support of any kind on OS X).
11 <p>However, doing so has three <em>substantial</em> downsides:</p>
14 <li>It requires a special build of Ardour that is fundamentally
15 very different from normal builds</li>
16 <li>Support depends on <a href="http://winehq.org/">Wine</a>,
17 a Windows "emulator"</li>
18 <li>As usual with plugins, a crashing plugin will take Ardour down
19 with it—and crashes in Windows VST plugins are more likely when
24 The dependence on Wine makes it almost impossible for the Ardour
25 project to support this feature. Wine's functionality generally
26 improves over time, but any given release of Wine may behave worse
27 with some or all Windows VST plugins. It may even just crash Ardour
32 Step back and think about what "using Windows VSTs" really means:
33 taking bits of software written with only one idea in mind—running
34 on the Windows platform—and then trying to use them on an entirely
35 different platform. It is a bit of a miracle (thanks largely to the
36 incredible work done by the Wine project) that it works at all. But is
37 this the basis of a stable, reliable DAW for a non-Windows platform?
38 Getting Ardour on Linux to pretend that its really a Windows
39 application running on Windows?
43 It is understandable that there are many outstanding plugins available as
44 Windows VSTs and, that in many cases, no equivalent is available for Linux.
45 If a workflow is so dependent on those plugins, Ardour should be used on
46 Windows (or potentially used with an actual Windows VST host running inside
47 of Wine). If the effort can be made, a better environment can be obtained by
48 using a normal build of Ardour and exploring the world of plugins built to
49 run on Linux natively. This covers LADSPA, LV2 and Linux VST formats, and
50 even some outstanding proprietary plugins such as those from
51 <a href="http://www.loomer.co.uk/">Loomer</a>.
54 <h2>A Plea To Plugin Manufacturers</h2>
57 Please consider porting your plugins so that users can enjoy them on
58 Linux too. Several other commercial plugin developers have already
59 done this. You can choose between using "Linux VST" (which is what
60 Loomer and others have done)—you will find toolkits like JUCE that
61 help to make this fairly easy—or using LV2 format which is
62 ultimately more flexible but probably more work. We have
63 users—thousands of users—on Linux who would like to use your