Trying to install a VST in a Linux DAW (Steam Deck)

0xDE57 · December 16, 2024, 11:24pm

Playing with Ardour and LMMS, and maybe zrythm. First Ardour.

First issue is the window doesn’t seem to let you resize smaller like 900px wide which is larger than the default steam deck resolution (1280x800) so part of the horizontal is always chopped off. Was able to resolve by dropping UI scale by 1 tick (90%): Edit > Preferences > Size and Scale

I want some reverb. So first VST to try - Valhalla Supermassive (free, not open)
Only has a mac and windows installer. Tried to unzip but no go so installed in windows VM. Unsure if I need v2 or v3 but by default they installed to:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST2\ValhallaSupermassive_x64.dll
C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\ValhallaSupermassive.vst3

Edit > Preferences > Plugins > VST
Ardour by default looks in: /app/extensions/Plugins/vst but I can’t seem to find this folder anywhere. Is it because flatpack?

These docs say host application expects VST 3 plug-ins to be located in:

Prio	Location	Path
1	    User	    $HOME/.vst3/
2	    Global	    /usr/lib/vst3/
3	    Global	    /usr/local/lib/vst3/
4	    Application	$APPFOLDER/vst3/

Made a new folder in home mkdir .vst3/
Dropping ValhallaSupermassive.vst3 extracted from the windows install into /$HOME/.vst3/

This does make SuperMassive show up in the plugins list.

Unfortunately this fails with: invalid ELF header

VST3 module-path '/home/deck/.vst3/ValhallaSupermassive.vst3'
[Info]: Scanning: /home/deck/.vst3/ValhallaSupermassive.vst3
[ERROR]: Could not load VST3 plugin '/home/deck/.vst3/ValhallaSupermassive.vst3': /home/deck/.vst3/ValhallaSupermassive.vst3: invalid ELF header
Cannot load VST3 module: '/home/deck/.vst3/ValhallaSupermassive.vst3'

Hmm, may not be compatible (similar issue in a different DAW, but I think it’s the exact same root issue): invalid ELF header errors in Reaper · Issue #13 · osxmidi/LinVst3 · GitHub

Found a great resource for open audio. Maybe I’ll have better luck with one of these:

I don’t see an Octave pedal VST. I am a big fan of MBassador. Would love to have something similar on Linux. Maybe to add to my never ending list of projects: make an octave pedal VST

Dratatoo · December 17, 2024, 8:40am

You could try running distrobox on your Steamdeck and setup complex or difficult programs this way. It also runs gui apps with HW acceleration and I think it has HW access to everything on your Steamdeck (otherwise permissions can be granted) - I used it to run Solaar before it got a flatpack release. It also alows you to export applications to make desktop starter / links available in Desktop mode.

0xDE57 · December 17, 2024, 10:24am

Hmm, I don’t think distrobox will solve this particular VST compatibility issue. Those are mostly linux tools and this seems to be a windows file format issue.

Wine might work, but I’d prefer native solutions as I have found audio latency issues with wine in the past. Maybe its better these days?

It complains about the ELF header. It fails to find the magic number in the first 4 bytes:

0x7F 'E' 'L' 'F'

Which makes sense because this VST is DOS MZ, not ELF.

But it looks like I can use this bridge wrapper compatibility layer thingy from the issue linked earlier. (I didn’t realize I was looking at the potential solution, I misread initially and thought it was a Reaper only tool.)

It says in the test VST plugins docs that valhalla is supported. Will try setting this up tomorrow…

Alternatively, yabridge might work:

0xDE57 · December 17, 2024, 10:24pm

Turns out this is not such a trivial process…

Ok. So looks like both LinVST3 and yabridge are wine based, no escaping wine then.

yabridge appears more supported so will try that first.

I see it in the official repo’s on manjaro, and in the AUR. But not on the steam deck store.

Hmm. it seems like flatpack itself is now getting in my way…

github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge

Yabridge on Steam Deck, wine error

opened 08:07AM - 13 Oct 23 UTC

closed 09:32PM - 22 Oct 23 UTC

nnbveh

### Thanks for giving yabridge a shot! - [X] I read through both the troublesho…oting and the known issues sections, and my issue wasn't listed there ### Problem description I've installed both the yabridge and the Wine through flatpak. Probles is, yabridge doesn't see the wine, this is what it gives me if i try to sync: (deck@steamdeck ~)$ yabridgectl sync Setting up VST2, VST3, and CLAP plugins using: - /home/deck/.local/share/yabridge/libyabridge-chainloader-vst2.so - /home/deck/.local/share/yabridge/libyabridge-chainloader-vst3.so - /home/deck/.local/share/yabridge/libyabridge-chainloader-clap.so Finished setting up 4 plugins (4 new), skipped 0 non-plugin .dll files Error: Could not run 'wine', make sure Wine is installed Caused by: No such file or directory (os error 2) So it DOES see the files inside wine drive, but doesn't see the wine app itself, i guess it has something to do with the flatpak... ### What did you expect to happen? To finish the sync ### What actually happened? Can not find Wine ### Operating system Steam os ### How did you install yabridge? From the github ### yabridge version th ### yabridgectl version bb ### Wine version bb ### Plugin bbb ### Plugin type VST2 ### Plugin architecture 64-bit ### Host none ### Desktop environment or WM _No response_ ### GPU model _No response_ ### GPU drivers and kernel _No response_ ### Debug log _No response_ ### Anything else? _No response_

github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge

Long-Term Possibility of Flatpak Compatibility?

opened 10:23PM - 11 Sep 21 UTC

Eoin-ONeill-Yokai

enhancement help wanted

### Feature description There's been some discussion in other issues regardin…g users trying to use Flatpak versions of professional DAWs with Yabridge -- specifically #114 and #111 where it's been clarified that it's not technically possible to use flatpak w/ yabridge due to sandboxing at the moment. This has been mentioned in bitwig/bitwig-studio-flatpak#24 as well, which might be worth following up or discussing. Maybe if bitwig and yabridge could establish some communication here, it would be helpful! My understanding of flatpak is pretty limited, but I was wondering if there could be some way to support flatpak distributions of DAWs while also supporting yabridged vst instruments. ## Why? While most DAWs provide some kind of `.deb` installer, there are certain systems (Fedora, Arch) where installing the flatpak version could lead to better stability (due to correct library usage within the DAW) while providing an easier installation process where software versions can be specified and maintained easily via Flathub. Because of this, it would be nice to eventually have Yabridge be compatible with flatpak daws. ## Flatpak Extensions My limited research on Flatpak resulted in finding out about `Flatpak Extensions`, which I think would allow Yabridge to provide a "add-on" environment onto standard Bitwig installations via flatpak. My understanding would be that it would look something like this: ``` flatpak install org.bitwig.Bitwig.Yabridge ``` Where the last domain represents the desired extension on top of the `org.bitwig.Bitwig` environment. This would provide the necessary environment for Yabridge (my understanding is basically LibBoost + Wine-Staging, but there's perhaps more necessary) which would then be optionally included within the sandboxed Bitwig instance. This extension would need to be uploaded and maintained within the flathub repository. There might be more I'm missing here, as my understanding of this topic is pretty limited. If anyone happens to know more about Flatpak, it would be nice for some input here. Additionally, I'm not sure if a flatpak exension needs to be made by Bitwig, for instance, to get this working as expected or if the extension can be maintained separately by yabridge contributors. Anyway, I'm mostly interested in this as a user who would like to use flatpak for most of my user-side installations for stability reasons. If anyone here has any insight on the issue, it would be nice to hear it.

You would need to package both Wine and yabridge in such a way that they can run inside of the Flatpak runtime. One crucial issue with using Flatpak for these things remains that it was always meant to sandbox individual applications, while DAW usage often involves integrating many separate components such as plugins (which include things like yabridge and hardware-specific plugins that depend on other applications running on the same system) and connected hardware. So I’m still not convinced that distributing DAWs through Flatpak is the correct solution to the packaging problem, but that’s a different matter entirely of course.

Looks like wine + yabridge + vst + DAW need to exist in same flatpack runtime.

Looks like Wine is available as a flatpak.

How would one go about repackaging this so they share a runtime?

0xDE57 · December 17, 2024, 10:38pm

Maybe distrobox is the way. Install everything in that instead of fighting with flatpacks?

Dratatoo · December 18, 2024, 1:55pm

That’s what I‘ve read from developers running entire development environments within it. You can also run different distributions side by side if you want to try different solutions.