Dedicated VST distro?

[vfxuser]

Does anyone know if there is an dedicated VST Host distro out?
A light weight, fast booting, non-cpu thirsty and purely dedicated vst distro only to serve as a Host.

What I want to do is to make use of a older but still useful computer and soundboard that I have and turn it into a VA synth by putting mb., a midi-controller (maybe made out of a Arduino) and a old midiclav into a case shaped as an old-school analog synth and make all buttons, selectors and potentiometers easily accessible for hands-on mode live tweaking.
I do not lack electronic skills but in Linux I'm kind of a rookie.

First plans was to use a lighted XP version but I thought that Linux must be able to get even more light and thereby less latency.
Intel 3GHz, 512Mb ram, Creative Audigy or Live and a CF or USB-stick should be enough to get started.

This is a "Just because it's fun to DIY" project.

[Qualitymix]

The answer to this question largely depends on another question.
Do the VST plugins you plan on using exist on Linux?
If you are unfamiliar with audio on Linux, then the first thing you should know is that almost all (with very few exceptions) VSTs that you are used to using on Windows are not 'natively' supported under Linux.

We do have quite a few of LinuxVSTs. But if you are looking to use a particular VST for your build, then just know that it likely doesn't exist natively on Linux.

Now I've said natively twice. The reason I make this distinction is because there are things called VST bridges that we can use on Linux in order to run our Windows VST plugins.
This can be hit or miss, but my suggestion is threefold:
Test your VST with these three different VST bridges:
FST (look up something called Festige)
DSSI-VST
Carla's VST bridge.

Carla is a program made by falktx (he will likely respond in this post) that can run Windows VSTs, via either DSSI-VST or Carla's own VST bridge.

Once you have established that your plugin will run on Linux (or not) that should help you decide between Linux or Windows.

[vfxuser]

The VST plugins for this exists on Linux, also considering using a LV2, LADSPA or DSSI. Many brilliant soft synths out there, Bristols has allot of nice oldies.
And as you point out, a bridge is probably needed if there is a VST that will be used.

The decision between OS has laid its votes for Linux for matter of reasons. I like when the user are in charge of the system and are able to decide how it is to be used.
Been fiddling around with some distros for a while now and are currently using AVLinux as my base for composing, like it, Jack is a favourite.
I have also tried KXStudio, Ubuntu Studio and PuppyStudio and like the simplicity and clean environment. Low latency was the first thing that come to my attention.

But the question remains, is there a really light version at hand or do I need to compile my own?
When it comes to use text based terminal operatives I'd guess I would have to call for some help but a desktop is unnecessary load for the CPU, I get that, though it is much easier (for me) using a GUI.

[DepreTux]

Running windows software on linux is agreed to be an unstable experience on linux here, it seems to be. Of the few windows vsts that I've tried, probably about half showed some kind of flaw, hung themselves, threw some kind of screen artifact, etc.

I'm quite sure there is no better option than windows (probably good old xp) to run windows software of any kind.

This is not meant to turn you down, but to warn you that you might end up frustrated if you head for this task, especially if you have no prior experience troubleshooting in linux.

But if you are still decided, and back on topic, the best light audio distro out there nowadays is probably avlinux. Others such as musix, and dynebolic are cool but are not updated as often. And as far as I know vst support slowly gets better with the work of kxstudio (whose app suite is available to avlinuxers afaik).

If avlinux doesn't fit you, another option is to start with a vanilla debian installation, build your system as you prefer, and then add the kxstudio repos. Again this might not be the most suitable option if you haven't got experience fiddling with linux distros.

I tend to believe a vast majority of the vst synths and effects out there are a concatenation of various publicly known processes, and as such, their characteristics can be obtained through the use of native linux alternatives (which will most probably yeld you with better results in terms of CPU efficiency and general stability).

eg. there is additive synthesis, substractive synthesis, wavetable synthesis, waveshaping, granular, etc. Any synthesizer out there is probably based on one of this methods (unless it's something very special). So most of the vsts will be implementing a method (in this case a synth method) that you can replace with linux native software.

The only exception for the former in the field of synthesis (afaik) is waveform morphing. I haven't seen any linux synth does does that (except perhaps zynaddsubfx, but I haven't tried).

The same counts for effects.

Your milleage may and will vary.

[briandc]

Considering the half-GB of RAM element, I'd stick with only native linux synths. If you want to use VST-based synths, you can do it, and many of them work; however, I'd look at increasing RAM to at least 3GB.

brian

[sysrqer]

Considering the ram, I think the desktop environment/window manager is the main concern really. Pretty much any distro can have JACK (and wine and anything else) installed on them and set up to run well and you're not going to see much difference between distros themselves, assuming all things being equal (program versions, system tweaks etc). With 500mb of ram you're going to be using a lot of that just booting in to the graphical desktop with something like KDE or Gnome 3. The lightest and fastest solution would be a window manager, like openbox, fluxbox, or tiling ones like awesomewm, i3 etc. These require hardly any ram and are very fast.

If you want something with all the right things already there and the tweaks make then kxstudio or avlinux would undoubtedly be the right choice. kxstudio comes with KDE though so you might want to look at installing and setting openbox with tint2 and using that instead of KDE (there are lots of docs around to do this, arch wiki is a very good resources and can be translated to most distros more or less). I would do this with avlinux as well, even though it comes with a much lighter DE, you're still going to have a certain amount of precious ram being used by the DE.

The other option if to build you're own system from the ground up, as was mentioned above. There is debian, arch, gentoo/funtoo, I think lots of distros comes with minimal or core installers too. In your case my ultimate recommendation would be gentoo. This isn't an easy installation by any means and you would need to do a lot of reading but it will compile every part of your system with optimizations for your particular CPU and hardware. This isn't a major difference on most modern computers but I think you would really benefit from it and see the difference with those specs. There is http://www.gentoostudio.org if you want a simple approach to this, this offers very quick and easy instructions as well as all the audio tweaks and tools you would need.

[glowrak guy]

Does anyone know if there is an dedicated VST Host distro out?
A light weight, fast booting, non-cpu thirsty and purely dedicated vst distro only to serve as a Host.

What I want to do is to make use of a older but still useful computer and soundboard that I have and turn it into a VA synth by putting mb., a midi-controller (maybe made out of a Arduino) and a old midiclav into a case shaped as an old-school analog synth and make all buttons, selectors and potentiometers easily accessible for hands-on mode live tweaking.
I do not lack electronic skills but in Linux I'm kind of a rookie.

First plans was to use a lighted XP version but I thought that Linux must be able to get even more light and thereby less latency.
Intel 3GHz, 512Mb ram, Creative Audigy or Live and a CF or USB-stick should be enough to get started.

This is a "Just because it's fun to DIY" project.

You don't even need a host, and there are command based recorder apps.
I would think the dssi synths hexter, whysynth, amsynth, and the calf monsynth and organ (included in calf-plugin suite)
would be a great powerful and lightweight selection, and can be run from commands without a host, connected by
qjackctl. This would eliminate a lot of overheads. Fluidsynth and it's qsynth gui can load soundfonts, to round out
your sonic range. Hexter loads 3 thirtytwo patch banks from the world of DX7 sysex banks, scroll down here:

http://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/mth192/pages/html/dx7.html

The great effects in calf ice the cake! Look in usr/bin to see the app for launching jack-dssi-host,
and calf-jack-host, as names may vary a bit.

Several lightweight Debian install cd iso images are less than 700 meg,
You can download audio apps from debian unstable repository website, and install them using command

sudo dpkg -i name-of.deb

If a debian package requires more apps, it will mention them in the terminal.
Download and install them first. Shouldn't be many for the synths I mentioned.
Timemachine, jack_capture, jack_rec for simple recording, audacity for
fancier recording, and editing.

https://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/
Cheers