Latest CALF LV2 plugins

[thorgal]

Hi guys,


Have you had a glance at the newest version of the CALF plugins in LV2 format ?

Here is a snapshot of the multichorus plugin in ardour:



it is actually animated! the curve shows the filter envelop in realtime, which depends on the modulation rate, etc. It's quite cool to see it, as you increase the depth or freq of the chorus effect. I also tried the flanger and phaser, and you can set the phase between left and right. Two curves will show up and show the phasing as you increase it. It is finally coming to linux

I tried this with version 0.0.18.3 (CALF plugin tarball available here: http://sourceforge.net/project/download ... a=72102847)

You may have to update your LV2 environment (lv2 core, slv2, lv2-c++). ALl this must be compiled but it should not be a hassle. This is truly nice that ardour supports this so nicely

More screenshots here: http://calf.sourceforge.net/?id=4

[thorgal]

wow, there's more to it.
The CALF author has even made a calfplugin jack host for these LV2 plugins, so you can stack them up. Here is another screenshot:

[studio32]

Looks nice, but how about the sounding ?

[thorgal]

good question, I don't like them too much, they add way too much gain, just insert a simple phaser or flanger plugin and your volume meter will jump way above 0dBFS. But it does not matter, that's not why I posted this. It's about the progress of the LV2 framework. If things start to improve that way, it means that there's hope that more pro-devs will port their plugins to LV2.

I personally have a couple of projects that I have to find time to bring to completion. When I am there, I will tell you more.
It would be a shame that LV2 stands to a halt because of lack of interest, considering what you can do with it. I already told the Pianoteq devs that LV2 would be the way to go for a linux native plugin of their piano emulator. It would be fantastic, no more bloody wine (no pun intended ), at last multiple CPU core rendering, etc.

[studio32]

It's about the progress of the LV2 framework. If things start to improve that way, it means that there's hope that more pro-devs will port their plugins to LV2.

I personally have a couple of projects that I have to find time to bring to completion. When I am there, I will tell you more.
It would be a shame that LV2 stands to a halt because of lack of interest, considering what you can do with it. I already told the Pianoteq devs that LV2 would be the way to go for a linux native plugin of their piano emulator. It would be fantastic, no more bloody wine (no pun intended ), at last multiple CPU core rendering, etc.

I tried the plugins and I totally agree with you, LV2 seems to have a lot potential.. ! The sounds are not perfect yet, but I hear a potential good Hammond organ.. The looks are nice!

[linuxdsp]

The CALF plugins look quite good, but I'm not convinced about LV2. I don't think it really solves the problems associated with different GUI toolkits. For example, if your plugin uses GTK then it will probably work in ardour (because that uses GTK too) - if it uses a different toolkit e.g. Qt then I suspect there may be problems. Similarly if your plugin uses GTK it may not work in a host that uses Qt. Speaking from personal experience I've had all manner of difficulties getting an LV2 plugin to work reliably in different LV2 hosts. The main problem is that the core framework is deliberately very minimal (not a bad thing) but it seems to rely on a whole lot of ad-hoc extensions that may or may not be supported by any particular host. This leaves many users who are not programmers with the problem that the 'LV2' plugin they use in ardour which supports LV2 perhaps doesn't work or looks different in other DAW applications that also support LV2. Expecting the user to go through a compatability list of extensions isn't really practical, especially if they are coming from a platform like windows or mac where a VST or an AU just works in any host that supports those formats. I would like to be able to port some of my plugins to LV2 but although I have had a few prototypes (sort of) working it just doesn't seem reliable / predictable enough yet. As a developer I am happy to help if people have problems with my software but I am reluctant to embrace a 'standard' that I feel will invite all kinds of compatability 'issues' - I suspect other developers may feel the same which may explain why LV2 hasn't really taken off yet.

http://www.linuxdsp.co.uk

[thorgal]

what about the JUCE framework for GUI ? It's even multiplatform.

[linuxdsp]

Juce maybe a possibility - although its not so much whether its multi-platform, after all, GTK is available on many different platforms, the problems I encountred had more to do with running different toolkits in the same process - which is where the problems start - with a host running one toolkit and the plugin requiring another unless you run the plugin GUI 'out of process' and then use some form of IPC to connect it to the DSP code. This approach can be made to work but neither LADSPA or LV2 seem to have all the necessary methods to allow this to work as standard. Specifically you need to be able to 'push' values to the host from the plugin so that it knows when you've turned a control on the GUI, currently LV2 only seems to support this if you use (one of) the GUI extensions - which brings us back to the problem of various ad-hoc extensions needing support in the host. Also, there needs to be a method for the host to pass a 'name' to the plugin when it is instantiated so the plugin knows what to call itself (for example based on where it is connected in the host) e.g. so that when you have multiple channel EQs, they can be logically called CH1-EQ, CH2-EQ etc as is standard in for example cubase. If there are methods to do this that I'm not aware of please let me know, after all, I would like to get some form of LV2 support working if its possible.

[dakylla]

just to revive this little thread

i compile calf from cvs last night.
and, OMG, the devs made some wonderful changes

I just can't resist go and give it a try
Big thx for the dev
here are 2 screenshots :

http://picasaweb.google.com/dazgard/Calf#

[thorgal]

this is no CALF plugin but something we may want to try and provide feedback for:

http://eq10q.sourceforge.net

[dakylla]

wow, man, this is great (looking).
i'll test this tonight
guys, this is the way to go !!!
LV2 power yeah !

[thomasK]

I tried to install rq10, but all I get was this:

g++ -O3 -shared -fPIC -DPIC plugin.cpp `pkg-config --cflags --libs lv2-plugin` -o paramEQ.so
Package lv2-plugin was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `lv2-plugin.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'lv2-plugin' found
plugin.cpp:21:25: error: lv2plugin.hpp: No such file or directory
plugin.cpp:38: error: ‘LV2’ is not a namespace-name
plugin.cpp:38: error: expected namespace-name before ‘;’ token
plugin.cpp:41: error: expected template-name before ‘<’ token
plugin.cpp:41: error: expected `{' before ‘<’ token
plugin.cpp:41: error: expected unqualified-id before ‘<’ token
make: *** [paramEQ.so] Error 1

any idea how to solve this?!?!?!

[thomasK]

Hi,

I managed to get eq10 to install, I'm to stupid to read the readme file , I just had to install lv2-c++tools.
But I can't get the eq started, lv2rack crashes at scanning for plug ins, the terminal output is:

IndexError: list index out of range

In Ardour I got just an empty window.

Has anyone tried rq10 and got it to work? Because I think a lv2 10 band eq is very useful!!!

[linuxdsp]

I managed to get EQ10 to compile and run in Ardour (2.8.4) the GUI only works in GTK hosts (such as Ardour) - I tried it in Qtractor and only got the 'default' sliders provided by the host. Other people seem to have trouble with it in LV2 rack, and there have been reports of the GUI not starting properly due to some problems related to plotmm. There is also evidence of high CPU usage caused by denormal problems in some situations on some types of (Intel) CPU. I guess its still quite an early version, and the developer seems to be active in solving the problems so it will probably get a lot better. When it works its quite a useful plugin.

[Evtomax]

I tried to install rq10, but all I get was this:

g++ -O3 -shared -fPIC -DPIC plugin.cpp `pkg-config --cflags --libs lv2-plugin` -o paramEQ.so
Package lv2-plugin was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `lv2-plugin.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'lv2-plugin' found
plugin.cpp:21:25: error: lv2plugin.hpp: No such file or directory
plugin.cpp:38: error: ‘LV2’ is not a namespace-name
plugin.cpp:38: error: expected namespace-name before ‘;’ token
plugin.cpp:41: error: expected template-name before ‘<’ token
plugin.cpp:41: error: expected `{' before ‘<’ token
plugin.cpp:41: error: expected unqualified-id before ‘<’ token
make: *** [paramEQ.so] Error 1

any idea how to solve this?!?!?!

You need to install lv2-c++-tools-dev