Audiogridder

[Kott]

Hi all,

https://audiogridder.com/
https://github.com/apohl79/audiogridder

This project might be interesting for who have Mac or Win in their setups.
Run plugin on server-side (Mac, Win) and forward it's GUI and Audio/Midi stuff to client as VST plugin.
I've tested it a little (I have windows in a little VM only) and it seems to work. At least I was able to run instruments that doesn't work with wine.

[tavasti]

How does is compare to running netjack?

[Kott]

How does is compare to running netjack?

I haven't any measurements. And I think it assumes a quite different workflow.

[Kott]

I have played with old Windows 7 i3 M370 laptop with 100Mbit Ethernet and SpaceCraft https://www.tracktion.com/products/spacecraft
Plugin's GUI is heavy, so Audiogridder clients reports the latency 320 ms *

I've tried a Serum demo but it so annoying in demo mode, so I can only say - yes, it works.

EDIT: Latency depends on buffer, it can be set to zero.

[buonamorte.records]

Hi Guys,
That's interesting, but...
Do you know a only-linux way to have a server for plugins and a client with ardour/mixbus? Maybe with a usable latency?
Thanks!

[eufex]

How does is compare to running netjack?

It's a totally different way of working.

Audiogridder will make the GUI of the plugin from the remote server appear directly within you plugin host - Ardour or whatever, whereas with netjack you have to open a terminal on your host, run netjack, then do all the jack routing in Carla or wherever else you do it etc then you need 2 tracks in your DAW, one for midi out, one for audio in (if a synth) and you need to use VNC or similar to be able to see the plugin if you're not going to run two sets of keyboards, mice and monitors. Also, Jack doesn't work on Mac to any degree - Mac jack runs, QJACKCTL runs but currently there is nothing to bridge anything into jack so it's effectively useless.

I've got an old Mac Mini here that also has parallels running on it (it runs Windows in a very fast VM - faster than VirtualBox as I believe it has some passthrough to hardware like KVM) and I want to try Audogridder because I'm tired of having to re-install absolutely everything WINE based on every Linux upgrade (yes, I know full well that in theory you can save your WINE folder and or your home folder but from experience something ALWAYS breaks and you end up reinstalling everything, same with Virtualbox VMs, you save all of those, upgrade Linux, oh Vbox has upgraded, your VMs no longer work....) ,so for those odd things I would much rather keep everyinth that is Linux on Linux and the things that aren't Linux installed on a completely separate machine I've previously tried the VM route and that didn't work very well even on a system with lots of horsepower and RAM, why I don't know. I do know on the Mac side that the Audiogridder server will only pick up audiounits and VSTs so (for example) if Logic is installed on the Mac you couldn't stream from any of the Logic synths/effects - that would still have to be done the old fashioned way via audio and midi interface.

[tavasti]

I've had for long few windows plugins that can't be authorized when running under wine. Now I took radical step, and installed windows computer (haven't had such for 25 years!) for running those plugins. AudioGridder installed to windows without problems. In linux side, plugin installer script left /usr/local/share/audiogridder/ permissions to 700, so needed to fix those with 'sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/share/audiogridder/'. After it, in Bitwig adding 'Agridder (inst)' plugin to track, and there I can access instrument plugins on remote windows, remote host detected automatically. And it would be possible to have multiple hosts, so sharing cpu load with many computers would be possible. Linux server (part that hosts plugins, client part is DAW using plugins) is experimental, but if that works, you could share your linux plugins to multiple computers.

After selecting plugin needed to close that plugin window and re-open to show plugin UI.

iris.jpg (188.8 KiB) Viewed 3623 times

UI is responsive. Audio delay can be selected, now in screenshot that is with default by 2048 samples delay. Statistics shows that it would be possible to change settings to tighter:

iris2.jpg (27.13 KiB) Viewed 3623 times

Edit: should I have posted this under 'Running non-linux software'?

[grammo]

How does is compare to running netjack?

It's a totally different way of working.

Audiogridder will make the GUI of the plugin from the remote server appear directly within you plugin host - Ardour or whatever, whereas with netjack you have to open a terminal on your host, run netjack, then do all the jack routing in Carla or wherever else you do it etc then you need 2 tracks in your DAW, one for midi out, one for audio in (if a synth) and you need to use VNC or similar to be able to see the plugin if you're not going to run two sets of keyboards, mice and monitors. Also, Jack doesn't work on Mac to any degree - Mac jack runs, QJACKCTL runs but currently there is nothing to bridge anything into jack so it's effectively useless.

On Linux I've had some luck with xpra and non-session-manager in the recent past. Just some quick testing, mixed results. If you've to do a configuration task multiple times, you should write a script and/or use a session manager to automate this for you probably.
FYI: there is a plugin for jacktrip: http://msp.ucsd.edu/tools/quacktrip/ and https://sonobus.net/ more made for a remote jam as use case it seems.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xpra

[eufex]

Just a follow up.
The AudioGridder setup using Linux for DAW/plugin host and Mac (and with Windows in Parallels) setup works pretty well. There's the occasional hiccough with plugin windows not closing but it has proved to be reasonably solid. Particularly I like to run sampling sessions where I setup various patches in Carla utilising both Mac/Widows plugins via Audiogridder and Linux plugins in a patch and then sampling them, works a treat.

[tavasti]

My own experience recently: running NI Guitar Rig, if UI is open there is xruns (or at least it sounds like that), but closing ui fixes it. I assume guitar rig showing some meters updating all the time cause too much need for UI update, and that is spoiling audio also.

[Audiojunkie]

I'm actually looking into using AudioGridder as well. I'm looking for the absolute easiest way to tie my Linux DAW system to some Sampler tools that will not run on linux in WINE. I originally was (and I still am) considering tying my Linux DAW and an old Windows 10 laptop together with two audio interfaces with midi, and treating the windows system like an external hardware rompler. But, I've recently read that one can simply use a network cable to connect the two systems together. That might be more convenient than connecting via two audio interfaces and midi.

What would be really nice, would be if someone could figure out how to get TX16Wx sampler to work in WINE. Nicer still would be a linux native version, but I don't feel hopeful for that.

[tavasti]

I'm actually looking into using AudioGridder as well. I'm looking for the absolute easiest way to tie my Linux DAW system to some Sampler tools that will not run on linux in WINE. I originally was (and I still am) considering tying my Linux DAW and an old Windows 10 laptop together with two audio interfaces with midi, and treating the windows system like an external hardware rompler. But, I've recently read that one can simply use a network cable to connect the two systems together. That might be more convenient than connecting via two audio interfaces and midi.

Give audiogridder a shot, installing it is simple. Only caveat is that installer puts 700 rigths to /usr/local/share/audiogridder/, so you need:

Code: Select all

sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/share/audiogridder/

What would be really nice, would be if someone could figure out how to get TX16Wx sampler to work in WINE. Nicer still would be a linux native version, but I don't feel hopeful for that.

Does free version of TX16Wx have something worth trying, or is it commercial version that is special?

[Audiojunkie]

I'm actually looking into using AudioGridder as well. I'm looking for the absolute easiest way to tie my Linux DAW system to some Sampler tools that will not run on linux in WINE. I originally was (and I still am) considering tying my Linux DAW and an old Windows 10 laptop together with two audio interfaces with midi, and treating the windows system like an external hardware rompler. But, I've recently read that one can simply use a network cable to connect the two systems together. That might be more convenient than connecting via two audio interfaces and midi.

Give audiogridder a shot, installing it is simple. Only caveat is that installer puts 700 rigths to /usr/local/share/audiogridder/, so you need:

Code: Select all

sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/share/audiogridder/

What would be really nice, would be if someone could figure out how to get TX16Wx sampler to work in WINE. Nicer still would be a linux native version, but I don't feel hopeful for that.

Does free version of TX16Wx have something worth trying, or is it commercial version that is special?

I have looked high and low for a full featured audio sampler with open formats on native linux. TAL-Sampler is the closest thing we have. ShortCircuit-XT will hopefully come this year with more features, but it has already been confirmed that it won't likely contain all of the features that TX16Wx has. Bliss Sampler is another option, but it too doesn't have all of the features. So, in the end, the best full featured open sampler in existence isn't a Linux native--it's Windows--TX16Wx.

There are possible combinations that "might" cover some most situations:

1. TAL-Sampler, or ShortCircuit-XT, or Bliss could cover the smaller multiSamples, but none do direct from disk (DFD), and TAL doesn't support more than 4 layers. Bliss exports to a very basic SFZ format, but its default format isn't an open format.

One of the above, combined with the following:

1. Sfizz, Decent Sampler, Linux Sampler--these offer DFD, which makes it so that they can handle very large files, but they don't come with basic controls through GUI or MIDI CC without adding special text instructions (that define these features) to every sample preset used. This is still a possibility, and I am actively researching a possible way that one could do a header copy/paste to an instrument patch that would provide this functionality, but it is messy and less than ideal.

These combinations might work and provide a native only solution that would provide most of the features that TX16Wx has built in, but it would be ideal if we had a native version of the program, and almost as good of a solution if anyone could get it running in WINE.

So far, I know of no successful ventures. That is why I am looking into other possibilities such as audiogridder or connecting two computer systems together via audio interfaces and midi.

[Audiojunkie]

I've heard that there have been those who have been successful with using kvm/QEMU and a Windows install on a linux machine and then hosting an audiogridder server through there. Supposedly this combo provides lower latency than through trying to use the simulated audio card from the Windows VM. I personally don't understand how AudioGridder through the simulated network card could be any faster than through the simulated audio interface, but I guess it is possible. I haven't tried it and it seems like a lot of work to get TX16Wx working on one Linux machine.

I did notice some D2D1 fixes in the last version of WINE come through, so maybe WINE will work now? I don't know. I've never bothered with WINE before because I always felt that I had what I needed from native apps. But now, I'm not satisfied with some of my instruments, and I want better, higher quality instruments that don't exist on Linux currently.

TX16Wx does have a free version if you want to try it with the latest WINE.