Airblast for Airwave

[Luc]

I am creating this thread here in case someone wants to discuss this topic specifically. It is a spin-off of this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=13686

To wit, Airwave is very nice, but adding more than a few plugins to it is awfully tedious.

So I've taken the matter into my own hands and written a script to add a large number of plugins to Airwave (plus the ability to edit their names) as a batch process. It's rather crude and not very user-friendly, but it works, and it might be useful to someone else besides myself. It's called AIRBLAST and you can download it here:

http://pastebin.com/aDNcdRjp

The bad news is I wrote it for the fish shell, because it's the one I use and know. I don't want to bother relearning Bash, so you'll need to install fish to use it unless some generous soul with a lot of time on his hands decides to port it.

Fish is an excellent shell, everyone should use it.

Update! Wed Apr 19, 2017 2:10 am
Version 2.1 is written in Tcl and runs much faster. Uploaded here:
https://pastebin.com/FuYShASe

[sadko4u]

Maybe rewrite in Perl/Python? They're more popular and in most cases come out-of-the-box for many Linux distributions.

[Luc]

Sure, go ahead.

[funkmuscle]

hey Luc, thanx for offering to help.. You actually offered to help a few months back but got busy.. I really don't know where to start.
I would launch AirWave, launch Ardour and I use to see the vsts in Ardour..
That has stopped now. Hope this thread is ok for asking as I followed you here from your LMMS post.

[Luc]

hey Luc, thanx for offering to help.. You actually offered to help a few months back but got busy.. I really don't know where to start.
I would launch AirWave, launch Ardour and I use to see the vsts in Ardour..
That has stopped now. Hope this thread is ok for asking as I followed you here from your LMMS post.

OK. So why do you "launch Airwave"? You only need to launch it to configure it or add plugins. Which one are you trying to do? Have you added any?

Have you seen this thread? I wrote a walkthrough in it:
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=15927

[funkmuscle]

hey Luc, thanx for offering to help.. You actually offered to help a few months back but got busy.. I really don't know where to start.
I would launch AirWave, launch Ardour and I use to see the vsts in Ardour..
That has stopped now. Hope this thread is ok for asking as I followed you here from your LMMS post.

OK. So why do you "launch Airwave"? You only need to launch it to configure it or add plugins. Which one are you trying to do? Have you added any?

Have you seen this thread? I wrote a walkthrough in it:
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=15927

Damn haha, I was failng right out of the gate. I will follow your step by step. Thanks a lot man

EDIT: it works now dude!! thank you some much.. now to see which vsts work without headache xruns.

[Luc]

I just ported the Airblast script to Tcl. It's not a very popular language either, but it's what I know, and most Linux distributions have it installed. It also runs faster than the Fish shell script. It is available for download here:

https://pastebin.com/6v4HXMAg

I didn't test it very well, but I'll be using it instead of the old one. If I find a bug, I will upload a new version and update the link here.

[glowrak guy]

Thanks for working on this, and the detailed write-up/doc.
(A profanity-laced parrot might be a hot selling vst! )

[Luc]

Version 2.1 uploaded:

https://pastebin.com/FuYShASe

This fixes a bug that caused problems with file names that contained spaces.

Strange that no one brought this up. Maybe nobody uses it? Anyway, I believe that is fixed.

[glowrak guy]

Windows plugin authors use a lot of different plugin destination paths in Program Files,
and more by those who default to installing in the .wine/drive_c/users subfolders.
Could the script be made to traverse a list of paths provided by editing?

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php? ... 88&page=46

Some linux users are showing up at the link, quite a few interested in using
windows plugins in linux reaper, might be good advertising for your script.
Cheers

[Luc]

Windows plugin authors use a lot of different plugin destination paths in Program Files,
and more by those who default to installing in the .wine/drive_c/users subfolders.
Could the script be made to traverse a list of paths provided by editing?

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php? ... 88&page=46

Some linux users are showing up at the link, quite a few interested in using
windows plugins in linux reaper, might be good advertising for your script.
Cheers

Hmm... I think the destination paths don't matter because the user is supposed to navigate to wherever the plugins are located and run the script, so the plugins will be found by the script wherever they are.

So I suspect I don't really understand what you mean. Can you please rephrase?

[glowrak guy]

To make a long story shorter, I have 10 vst paths
in just 3 locations:

.wine/drive_c/users/Public/Documents

.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)

.wine/drive_c/Program Files

The location with the most plugins, is the one
I would not run the script on, due to the odds of failed scans
on specialized plugins rarely used, or being tested. The other locations
have just one or two plugins, and would negate the benefit of the script.

Plugin hosts, in theory, should scan recursively from the
last folder in a path statement, so based on a path statement ending with
Steinberg/VstPlugins, the host would successfully scan

Steinberg/VstPlugins/brandX/64bit/brandX.dll

A script that could read and follow a list of paths, like host scanning does,
would be the most beneficial. Being able to follow links would be
another nice feature. Plugin users often accept the developers
defaults, just to be safe, and developers often choose unique locations,
even though a standard of Steinberg/VstPlugins is an obvious default.

Someone with a lot of plugins could reinstall or copy them to a single
location, perhaps a worthy activity to ease future backups, as well
as using a script for Airwave. The Lin-vst wrapper app has a batch
function, not sure if it's script, or code, not that a plugin would care

https://github.com/osxmidi/LinVst

Cheers

[Luc]

Thank you for your reply. I want to help, but your point is still not very clear to me. Let's see:

1) Whenever I scan (or even when I use the Airwave GUI to add a .dll plugin manually), I always store the .so Airwave bridge links in /usr/lib/vst/airwave/, so I can tell the DAW to scan /usr/lib/vst and its subdirectories will be included because the DAW does act recursively. Do you keep them elsewhere? Do you keep the .so links in the same, respective directories as their .dll counterparts?

2) My script scans a selected directory recursively and launches a text editor, and gives you the chance to edit or remove entries from a batch job list before it is applied. Why is that not enough?

[glowrak guy]

I'm not being critical of your script, just pointing out some scenarios
where it may not provide a great advantage. The typical vst collection becomes
a hodgepodge over a number of years, if someone has 8 favorite
plugins, in 6 different locations, a script will be of little value.
But someone who has studiously installed all plugins in
one or two locations, will find it very useful.

I put the wrapped plugins in .vst/air in case I need to do
a reinstall, I can spare the /home partiton from reformatting.

"My script scans a selected directory recursively and launches a text editor, and gives you the chance to edit or remove entries from a batch job list before it is applied. Why is that not enough?"

What happens when you scan the Program Files folder?
Cheers

[Luc]

I'm not worried about criticism. I like criticism when it's meant to improve something.

What happens when you scan the Program Files folder?
Cheers

That would cause many .dll plugins to be found, most or all of which have been scanned and added to the catalogue before. So I would have to spot the duplicates on the text editor screen and edit that list. The script may spot dupes from their names, but that particular mechanism is very unreliable.

But that is not how one is supposed to run the script. You're supposed to install a plugin -- or more accordingly with the goal of the script, a directory with many .dll plugin files -- and know where they are, then 'cd' to that one specific directory and run the script there, so only new plugins will be found.

Now I think I see your point. You want to scan a high level path and identify which plugins have not been added yet and add them, ignoring existing ones. That requires a more complex algorithm. I have thought about doing something like that, but I don't have a lot of free time, so don't count on it soon.

Thank you for your input, and feel free to correct me or share additional ideas.