fst is back on track

[brummer]

torben Hohn have anounce a new version of fst, a vst wrapper. Now it is build with the vestige header,
so no more steinbergheader's are needed to build it. Great, it's full Gpl now.
What comes in mind, it's a little step now, to build redistributable ardour version's with vst support.

For those how needed vst(i)'s it's a good way to run them.
url: http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/l ... 58239.html

hi...

i just wanted to anounce that i finally got round to
do some work on the good old fst.

Fixed most cavaets, included the vestige header.
So this is GPL stuff now. binary packages welcome.

get it via git: git clone git://repo.or.cz/fst.git

the homepage: http://www.joebutton.co.uk/fst/

perhaps some of he info is still valid :S

-----------------------------------------------------------

Its only a matter of make if your on 32bit.

for lash suport:
make -f Makefile.lash

On 64bit you need to have some 32bit libraries:
gtk libs and alsa, perhaps a 32bit lash
you also need to make sure a link ending with .so
exists for each library. there were some problems
with that before.

Also on 64bit jack-0.116.0 is required because fst is
a 32bit client.

i hope for packagers to jump in on this fast.
so that people are not having to wade through 32bit dependency hell.
The current version in git is very likely to become
fst-1.11 (schnaps is better than wine)



Due to the fact that the embeding and gtk bugging is fixed now,
i have a gtk window around the plugin now, where i can put buttons
and stuff. So midi learn and stuff is not far away anymore.


jack-midi is planned, and should show up in the git soon.
But this is orthogonal to the "hunt me down not working plugins"
request.

well... blabla... try to find a plug that does not work !!!


--
torben Hohn

thanks to torben

[thorgal]

how does it fare in comparison with dssi-vst ?
have you tried it ?

[brummer]

have you tried it ?

sure, man, I wouldn't post stuff that I dont tested, or I will mark it as "non testet"

the diff to dssi-vst is. fst run vst(i)'s as standalone app, if you run it direct. And also fst is the engiene
witch is used by ardour to enable direct vst plugin support. So is it only a short steep for distributions to include ardour with direct vst support under GPL License.
I for my self dont use vst's, okay, I have a lot of them installed, but I only use them for testing stuff, never for productive work.

And, fst enable the use of presets for vst's, midi suport, and torben said, he work on a midi learn implementaion.

[thorgal]

Brummer, dssi-vst is also a standlone VST host. I was more wondering how better (or worse) fst performs compared to dssi-vst. I remember Paul Davis talking about his choice of FST as the VST engine for ardour due to the way audio threads are handled (I may be wrong, it's just out of memory). If FST is ultra-stable, I will give it a try. I am not a plugin fan either, but my piano and drumming are done via 2 VSTi's.

[philip888]

I checked out the latest fst file from the git link. Cd to that directory and ran "make". After it made which only took a minute I started qjackctl and ran this.

Code: Select all

pcuser@DAW-8:~/fst$ ./fst /home/pcuser/vst/distortionator-mk2.dll
yo... lets see...
instantiate...
sample_rate...
PortLayout: in: 2 out: 2
created audio thread
Calling Jack activate
And xid = 3e00002
Entering main loop
hallo ?
program name: Default-Bypass
program name: Nasty Full-On Clipping
program name: Full-On Sine Wave
calling gtk_main now

The command is

Code: Select all

./fst /wherever/yourvst/is

The vst plugins come up and are seen by qjacktl in the connect tab.

I know they have some more work to do with it but this is awesome.

This is as far as I have played with it.

But it does find and execute the vst without the 2.3sdk unpacked in it.

Philip

[thorgal]

just tried it. It works nicely ...

Warning: if you use jackdmp, not jackd, then it won't compile properly. Jackdmp installs a header file /usr/include/jack/systemdeps.h which confuses the compiler. As a workaround, I uninstalled jackdmp, reinstalled jackd, compiled FST (no errors), deinstalled jackd and reinstalled jackdmp.

Little bug: in my drum VSTi, I usually can type in words in a search field for locating MIDI patterns that came with the VSTi. The search field is located on the VSTi GUI and is correctly working with dssi-vst. With FST, this search field remains empty, my keyboard action is useless. The rest of the GUI is fine.

Little plus: the positive thing is that I can use my piano emulator not as a standalone app with wineasio (which performs crappily at low lat in my system) but as its VSTi version without a glitch in FST. dssi-vst has a GUI refresh problem with it that FST does not exhibit. Cool

[brummer]

Warning: if you use jackdmp, not jackd, then it won't compile properly.

fixed

url: http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/l ... 58267.html

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 02:53:00AM +0100, torbenh@gmx.de wrote:

Update:

- jackmidi is implemented an seems to work.
and i dropped alsa support altogether.

- on 64bit you need to wait a little bit, because i have found
bugs in the 32bit interop. which breaks jack-midi for 32bit
clients. the bug is fixed in my tree, but i want to talk with
paul about it, before committing.
If you need alsa support: it still lives in a branch in git.
However i will not maintain that. the code is far more complex
then jack-midi code for no value.

- building with jack2 is fixed

- and i managed to include
a small button, which says "Midi Learn"

- midimap is not saved yet. gonna do that tomorrow.

- ahh... and some people got confused with the old README.
vstsdk is NOT needed anymore. the vestige header is
part of the code.

so just: git pull

well done torben

[funkmuscle]

from Paul Davis at the ardour's website:


paul
Posts: 1021
Joined: 2006-03-16

more work is required within ardour to get the benefits of torben’s recent work on FST.

but yes, it will now be possible to distribute binaries of ardour with VST support in the near future.

[Capoeira]

please help installing it:

readme says:

" 1) ensure you have the necessary build dependencies:

gtk-devel
jack-devel
lash-devel (optional) "

those packages doesn't exist

[funkmuscle]

not too sure how... my distros doesn't ask for devel dependencies... I think you maybe using a Deb distro... That's the main reason I don't use Deb distros. Got fed up with dependency issues.

[Pablo]

Capoeira,

In debian based distros, the development packages end with -dev, and they usually start with 'lib'.
In this case, for jack-devel, you need libjack-dev, for gtk-dev, libgtk2.0-dev, for lash-devel, liblash-dev.

I hope this helps. Pablo

[funkmuscle]

there you go, tons of Deb users here so help will be plenty...

[Capoeira]

thanks guy, i found the DEBs in the other topic, easier: http://www.linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic ... t&start=15

I knew it had to be something with "lib" and "dev" but the packages in synaptic confused me