samplv1 and Noisemaker - sampler and synth

Getting Stuff Done Hints and Tricks
#1

I’ve lost count of the number of newcomers to Ardour who have requested it should integrate synths, samplers and numerous other features. In many cases the features being requested are already available as LV2 plugins and so I wanted to post something to these forums to raise awareness of two of the best and most useful LV2 plugins currently available.

samplv1 - www.rncbc.org

Just when you thought there was some conspiracy by Apple, Avid, Steinberg or whoever to prevent and suppress a free and easy to use Linux sampler plugin, Rui releases his breakthrough samplv1 LV2 plugin! OK so its not as powerful as LinuxSampler, but at least it can load regular wavs without having to go via SFZ and you can learn to use it in minutes (seconds) rather than studying Linuxsampler full-time for a few years before you get it to play a sample.

TAL Noisemaker - http://distrho.sourceforge.net/ports.php

falkTX has done Linux musicians a massive favour by porting the pro-quality virtual analogue Noisemaker synthesizer to LV2. It includes hundreds of quality presets, all its controls can automated and it stands up against commercial synths for sound quality.

There are of course 100’s more LV2 plugins out there, but I think these two deserve extra exposure due to their quality and utility.

1 Like
#2

Thanks for the heads up.

#3

oops, noisemaker crashes ardour when trying to open its gui
console says just:

Found UI http://kunz.corrupt.ch/products/tal-noisemaker at index 1 in:
/usr/lib/lv2/TAL-NoiseMaker.lv2/TAL_NoiseMaker_Plugin.so
Segmentation fault

#4

@danboid Thanks for sharing !

@tomas vtipil

You do not have the new LV2 stack that can show noisemakers gui.
Use simple edit or upgrade LV2 to new version.

I have the same problem and I have not upgraded so I can’ t tell you the steps but I sure someone will reply.

/Anders

#5

@Boesmann: I ran up against this problem using (one of the) recent pre-built ardour releases (I can’t remember which unfortunately). It may have been 2.8.13, if so then I think its a problem with the ardour build in that case. I was able to resolve it by installing the correct (latest) LV2 libs from drobilla.net and then re-compiling ardour against them from source. Its to do with the relatively new X11UI extension to LV2 which means it should only affect plugins which use (require) that method to display their GUI (mine currently support external UI and have the option to use X11UI compiled in). I believe Noisemaker is a port from a (JUCE?) VST. Either way if it started life as a VST it will most likely need X11UI to work (unless the developer can wrap it in some other UI toolkit). It should work as a linuxVST in Ardour3 as another option - wouldn’t you need some kind of MIDI to drive it anyway, in which case A3 is going to be the better (only) option?

#6

@Boesmann

Mixbus doesn’t do MIDI or Virtual Instruments at all.

See ahellquist’s comment as a likely cause of your issue.

Seablade
#7

Greetings,

The Noisemaker is a great synth, no doubt, but it creates an amazing amount of xruns when used in A3. Most LVST’s run comparatively poorly in A3. Now that I think of it, performance sucks in A3. Lots of crackling noise and stuttered movement. By comparison I replaced the Noisemaker with one of the MDA plugs. Zero xruns from the MDA epiano, same track, same host, same system. Totally smooth performance. By contrast, are the LVSTs all doomed to poor performance in A3 ?

Best,

dp

#8

@DavePhillips:

are the LVSTs all doomed to poor performance in A3

There’s nothing wrong with VST (linux VST or just normal Windows / Mac) - it’s certainly not a generic “All VSTs are bad” problem - or shouldn’t be - if this proves to be the case in A3 it reflects a bug in the code or the plugin (though, if my original patch for Ardour has remained largely unchanged this shouldn’t be the case - I was able to run linux VSTs with no adverse effect on CPU on quite a low powered system). What concerns me, is that though I know your comment wasn’t necessarily meant to imply “all VSTs are always bad”, there are many times I’ve seen such things siezed upon to discredit one plugin standard over another, completely fictitiously. As a software developer who works with just about all the plugin standards that have ever been thought of (and probably ever will) I can say that they’re all about the same - and I hate them all equally :slight_smile: - but I don’t think for a second that I could invent yet another standard that would be any better…
However, if we are ever to see wider adoption of high quality audio software on linux I think we need to be as inclusive as possible - since most commercial developers still favour VST. So, if there is a problem lets look for the cause and not let it be dismissed as another “VSTs are just bad” issue.

#9

Hello, I’m having trouble assigning different wav samples to different notes, on the same MIDI track, with samplv1. E.g. I’m trying to have a kick on C3, a snare on D3, a hihat on E3, a shaker on F3, etc.
When I try to load a 2nd sample, it converts all the sounds from the 1st sample to the 2nd…
Is there some kind of samplv1 tutorial or manual out there somewhere?
Thank you!

#10

drumkv1 is working great.