I am looking for some solid, utilitarian plugins to use on Linux. I have spent quite sometime looking as you can imagine, given the large number available for Linux. I have however come to the conclusion that a large amount of these are buggy or not otherwise good enough sound quality wise. I don’t care about fancy GUI’s and I don’t mind using the generic plugin interface that Ardour provides.
I know that Fons Adriaensen’s stuff is considered to be high quality code and x42 EQ, which is based on his code i understand, is exactly the type of thing I’m talking about. On the other hand you have Calf plugins that have been known to cause a lot of headaches for Ardour users and the devs seem to care more about appearance than utility.
Just looking for bread and butter plugins that I can rely on, that is EQ (well this one is covered ^), Compression, Gate, Reverb and Delay, and I’m looking for good DSP code and stability over appearance. Any plugins out there where the devs knew their stuff? Any help would be appreciated.
Do you mind commercial plugins? The OvertoneDSP (Formerly LinuxDSP) stuff is good, as is Harrison’s plugins. There are a few other ones floating around that are good as well.
I actually have LinuxDSP plugins but I want to move exclusively to open source for future proof reasons. I would prefer to stay away from VST plugins (which OvertoneDSP are) and while the LinuxDSP LV2 plugins still work, I don’t know if that will always be the case so I am using this chance to try to settle on some good, stable, quality, workhorse plugins that I can depend on.
The ‘triple band parametric with shelves’ that has been kicking around on Linux distros forever is fine, as is the SC4 compressor. Neither are emulations of ‘warm and punchy’ analog gear, just basic utilitarian processors. If you are used to dealing with something like the channel EQ on an LS9 that’s about the sort of thing you can expect.
I use the TAP Reverberator and LADSPA version of the Calf reverb. GVerb is okay too.
A good, open source, gate does not exist near as I can tell. If something really needs to be gated I cut up the regions instead.
I’ve been trying to use Linux for audio production for a long time now and I’ve concluded that the best way to get good sounding mixes without making yourself insane on Linux is to buy a copy of Mixbus. Kind of a bummer, but I’m at a point where getting stuff done is the priority.
A good, open source, gate does not exist near as I can tell.
The gate from swh-plugins (LADSPA) or swh-lv2 plugins works well enough if you don’t need a separate sidechain input. Calf (use 0.60 or later, preferably latest git) includes a sidechain gate, but it’s really an expander rather than a classic gate (it has no hold control, just attack and release).
old thread, but I’ve been watching to see what shows up before chiming in, then I forgot. Anyway, some of my favourite reverb plugins are M-verb, Zita Rev1, and CAP*S plate. Each has a unique character and good sound.
Agreed the x42 eq is a very nice one, which I’ve only recently discovered.
I have used the Steve Harris LADSPA fast lookahead limiter a lot. Simple and foolproof brickwall limiter, not much to go wrong, and the lookahead functionality means it never goes over the limit, though I don’t know whether it’s clever enough to catch inter-sample peaks.
@anahata: The x42 doesn’t truly have fully de-cramped filters as far as I can tell. The shelf filters appear to be just the standard ‘cookbook’ versions, it might be the case that the range is restricted so that this doesn’t become an issue in itself (in which case for the range it covers it would technically be true to say that it has the correct equivalent analogue gain) but, for example, the OverTone AF2-10 EQ has zero-latency filters, with correct equivalent gain at Nyquist across the entire 20Hz - 20kHz range for all filter types, meaning that for the shelf, you can even set the filter cut-off above the Nyquist limit, which as far as I am aware no other linux EQ will allow you to do.
I mention it, not to be critical of the x42 EQ, which is fine for what it does, but because its one of those details, which takes a significant amount of engineering time (and expense) to get right, and yet as is so often the case, if it works properly, no-one notices - precisely because it just does exactly what you would expect it to do, and hopefully sounds great too - the subtlety is in the range over which you can operate it, and the fact that the engineering allows it to do this with significantly less CPU than conventional methods would require. All of which are important in assessing the relative merits (especially when it comes to commercial vs free etc)
Mike - I don’t need convincing of the virtues of OvertoneDSP’s no-compromise attitude to DSP design. And each of the AF2-10’s (up to) 10 processing blocks can be any of a wide range of filter/EQ types.
What you didn’t tell me, though, is that you’ve just reduced the price of the the AF-210, enough to win a sale here!
I still wish there was a mono version, like there was for the older LinuxDSP graph-eq. I know Ardour handles it but it looks messy and any subsequent channel processing (e.g. dynamics) is duplicated, doubling CPU usage.
Anyway, with AF2-10, FC70 and MBC, I have a great set of mastering tools now.
yep, x42-eq shelves are standard biquad. I didn’t yet see the need to change this: CPU usage is very low and they do their job.
It’s it true that they would not operate smoothly over the full range, but a major design goal was to constrain all ranges sensibly to efficiently reach a result.
If you need an EQ for pathological cases, AF2-10 is definitely the better choice (notch, variable slope HP/LP etc etc).
I would not mind paying for AF2-10 but I do dislike the proprietary aspect of it. If it was free (as in speech) software, x42-eq would not exist.
I would not mind paying for AF2-10 but I do dislike the proprietary aspect of it. If it was free (as in speech) software, x42-eq would not exist.
Granted there is a difference in opinion regrading proprietary vs open source - and the OP's original request was for open-source plug-ins (though I'm not sure this would always better ensure future-proofing, there is plenty of open-source abandonware too, and, in particular audio requires a unique mix of skills / specialist knowledge which often means that unless you have that, or know someone who does, it's not practical to maintain the code, even if you do have the source).
Personally, I don't really have a view, or want to take sides about open vs closed, other than that open-source doesn't suit my business model (I get the whole 'free as in speech' argument, but if your only product is the software, then a license which means that anyone could build it and distribute it, automatically makes it free in any commercial sense too. For example, I could offer free binary builds of the x42 eq if I wanted to under the terms of the GPL).
If anyone can demostrate a viable business model in which I spend my time and money making a product, give it away to everyone without restriction for no cost, and don’t end up bankrupt I’d be interested to hear it… Just because it’s software doesn’t mean there is no cost in developing it, not least because at a basic level, being alive costs money, and, when it comes to distributing it, increasingly there are significant costs associated with that too (especially if you are doing so as a legitimate company, which is increasingly required).
or example, I could offer free binary builds of the x42 eq if I wanted to under the terms of the GPL).
Yes. Same with Ardour.
With x42-plugins I’m learning what Paul (and probably you) already knows: People prefer to pay for support and value that more than the product itself. Both supporting a project and receiving timely personable support. Offering binaries alone won’t do the trick, there are probably already some out there on various warez sites. You’re never going to get money those people anyway…
I understand your position though, I assume it’s your main source of income. It’s a niche product and the world’s a rough place and you have to eat…
I suppose you could try to release the source for one or two and see how it impacts sales.
I count myself lucky to have received a free/gratis education and learn a lot of people who share their knowledge papers and code for studying. So I think it’s only fair I do the same.
which brings us back on topic. Damien Zammit has just implemented a really nice Limiter following a DAFX02 paper. It’s available in his zam-plugins git repo!
MoosAirStudios: Hi, you mentioned my gate plugin crashes with Ardour 4.7? can you please provide more info on my blog here: http://www.zamaudio.com/?p=976 I modified the gate to have sidechain input, so it might not work with Ardour 4.7 correctly, I have been testing with latest git of Ardour. Also, thanks x42 for spreading the word about my new limiter, ZaMaximX2 ! I hope people find it useful.
I suppose you could try to release the source for one or two and see how it impacts sales.
I count myself lucky to have received a free/gratis education and learn a lot of people who share their knowledge papers and code for studying. So I think it’s only fair I do the same.
