[ardour-users] shall we wait for VST or go with libfst?

[Mark Knecht]

On 6/9/05, Hector Centeno <h.centeno at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Geoff,
> 
> This is happening with the GRM Tools plugins. I haven't tried with other
> plugins because these are the only ones I'm interested in using, but
> I'll give it a shot. The errors happen always after some time of moving
> around the sliders in the plugin's GUI. If I don't touch any slider it
> takes longer to crash (but it does and with the same kind of errors). I
> have 1 gig of ram (PIV2.8HT, Fedora Core 3 with Planet CCRMA kernel but
> I'm not using a smp one) and before using Linux I was using Windows XP
> in the same computer and with audio applications (including these VSTs)
> without any problem. I tried using the VSTs from within ardour and they
> work fine for some time and then the GUI locks and I start getting a
> gray box when I reopen the plugin (but the effect is still running and
> processing audio).
> 
> thanks!
> 
> hector

Hector, Geoff & Russ,
   I have said this before - we need a specific set of 'known-good'
VSTs that all new users should try as part of the install process
BEFORE they start trying the ones they really want to use. I suspect
that Hector is now just running into the '10% work, 90% don't' sort of
problem. (Fill in your own guess at what those percentages should be.)

   I can offer up that the SIR Reverb is known good. NI's Battery as a
VST is known good. The VST synth Crystal is known good. I don't
remember right now which others I'm comfortable with. I can say that
very many of the ones I've tried don't work but I hesitate to write
any names here since someone researching this subject in the future
might put too much weight on a few lines I could toss off. If we want
to do some checking then maybe that's best done off list and we come
back with a list of really known good for test purposes.

   I know that the site about 'VSTs under Linux' site has comments
from individuals about what does and doesn't work, but there's not
control on that. Someone can write anything whether it works really
well or just barely works.

   What VSts do we want people to try first before they get too
confused or demoralized?

With best regards,
Mark