Suggestions on using Stochas with MusE

MusE is a DAW for Linux with both MIDI and Audio editing. https://muse-sequencer.github.io

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Adm
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Suggestions on using Stochas with MusE

Post by Adm »

As a novice, I'm most impressed with MusE. Although I'm having trouble with the plugins, and not yet conversant.

I was thrilled to get the Cardinal FX synth modular analogue working. Very much fun with only the odd crash.
Never managed to get Carla working, that's a query for another post sometime. Still not exactly sure what it is,
a rack patching setup it seems. There might be a Youtube intro on it.

Stochas looks rather interesting. Its only available as a VST3 I believe. I'm not sure if MusE can yet use VST3.
https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/stochas/releases

Can anyone suggest if I might have success using Stochas with MusE one day?

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Re: Suggestions on using Stochas with MusE

Post by Impostor »

Currently, the answer is either:

  1. Use Stochas vst3 inside Carla plugin in musE, or
  2. Use the standalone + MusE with a bit of midi routing with QJackCtl or equivalent, or
  3. Use another, vst3 capable, host (eg. Renoise).

SInce MusE is a wonderful midi sequencer, my advice is to get Carla working.

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Re: Suggestions on using Stochas with MusE

Post by Impostor »

Adm wrote: Fri Apr 07, 2023 11:11 am

Never managed to get Carla working, that's a query for another post sometime. Still not exactly sure what it is,
a rack patching setup it seems.

Carla is a plugin host (ladsppa, dssi, lv2, vst, vst3, jsfx, clap, sf2), and itself has a plugin version (lv2,vst) too. It comes both as a patchbay variant (connect anything to anything) and a rack variant (linear chain).

You could use multiple synths, effects, and midi plugins like Stochas inside a single Carla instance if you so wish. You could use it to create a standalone instrument from your plugins, or you can use it as a plugin to run plugin formats which your DAW doesn't natively support. So it's quite a powerful tool, and it's definitely worth it to get it working.

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Re: Suggestions on using Stochas with MusE

Post by Adm »

The good news is I have Carla now available in MusE. I'm using the Carla-Rack engine.

No luck in finding the VST3 of Stochas. Not with the Stochas versions 1.3.4, 1.3.5, 1.3.8, 1.3.9, anyway.
Each is a Stochas.so library for linux-x86_64, yet none are found when scanned by MusE or Carla as VST3.

So I will leave Stochas for now, may contact the developers.

Learning to drive Carla-Rack will keep me busy. Thank you again.

FYI: I am using Carla-Rack to avoid using Jack which I've always had difficulties with.
As Jack is probably here to stay, I can see I'll have to cross that bridge sometime soon.

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Re: Suggestions on using Stochas with MusE

Post by Impostor »

Adm wrote: Mon Apr 10, 2023 7:45 am

No luck in finding the VST3 of Stochas. Not with the Stochas versions 1.3.4, 1.3.5, 1.3.8, 1.3.9, anyway. Each is a Stochas.so library for linux-x86_64, yet none are found when scanned by MusE or Carla as VST3.

For vst3 it's important to use the following directory structure; each plugin has its own plugin.vst3 folder inside the main vst3 plugins folder, and the actual plugin.so must be put inside even more subdirs. The entire path is:

~/.vst3/Stochas.vst3/Contents/x86_64-linux/Stochas.so

MusE won't find any vst3's. With Carla, you have to specify the plugin paths (~/.vst3 in this case) for each plugin format in settings>configure Carla>plugin paths, before scanning for them in add plugin>format=vst3>refresh.

Adm wrote: Mon Apr 10, 2023 7:45 am

FYI: I am using Carla-Rack to avoid using Jack which I've always had difficulties with.
As Jack is probably here to stay, I can see I'll have to cross that bridge sometime soon.

What difficulty do you have? Afaik it's just a matter of installing jackd2 from your distro's repository, tweaking your system for realtime audio performance (realtimeconfigquickscan, or rtcqs, can help you out), and running qjackctl to start the jack server, and for configuration and connections management.

By the way, for Carla, MusE, and QJackCtl some repository versions may be ancient. For Carla, you could use the kx.studio repository (and then you can run the latest carla-git version 2.6), and for musE and QJackCtl you could use their appimages.

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Re: Suggestions on using Stochas with MusE

Post by Impostor »

Adm wrote: Fri Apr 07, 2023 11:11 am

Can anyone suggest if I might have success using Stochas with MusE one day?

If you follow the steps outlined here:
viewtopic.php?t=25799

You should end up with a functional Stochas VST2 plugin, which you can use in MusE directly, without Carla.

It may be, especially if you haven't previously built anything from source, that you're missing certain dependencies in the form of development packages. But you'll notice that soon enough. You could always ask here.

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