Reaper Plugins Linux

[Gibert Chisholm]

Hasanyone tried Reaper's native Linux version? Does it come with the usual library of VST plugins? What do you make of it? Have the developers put lots of Wine into Reaper to make it work? (As Reaper seems to work well under Wine.) Does Reaper support additional formats (other than VST) for this sort of instrument / effect extension?

I have found Reaper on Linux (the native version) to be running very smoothly and to be very stable indeed. All bundled plugins that come with Reaper work, as far as i can tell, on Linux as well. The only problem, as you suspect, are 3rd party plugins (i.e. VSTs) and also the SWS extensions which do not seem to be currently available on Linux. It is possible to run some VSTs on Reaper/Linux using wine, but it was not the smoothest experience for me.

I have used reaper on Linux mainly to practice mixing wav stems (exported from my windows machine) using reaper's bundled effects (compressor, reverb etc, even a simple guitar amp emulator) and it never ever crashed on me. In general I find Reaper an amazing program, and it's smooth Linux implementation (and the fact it exists!) really sealed the deal for me.

A lot of people are now publishing native Linux VSTs, both freeware and commercial. So you can download the Linux version of Reaper and the Linux version of some VSTs, and they all work together, no need to use Wine at all if you don't want to.

If there are Windows-only plugins that you really want to use in Linux, there are various types of bridging software that you can use. In this case you do need Wine to be installed. I haven't done much of this myself, but I've found that LinVst can convert the Fathom .dll file into a .so file that Reaper will load as if it's a regular Linux VST. I've heard that Airwave can do similar things. This method doesn't work on all VSTs, it's a bit hit and miss.

I've found a thread here from 2010 about the possibility of a Linux version. I have abandoned windows for good and using ubuntu studio distro now. I would love to be able to run my copy of aalto here.

Personally I'd rather have more time devoted to the main platforms. *nix daw users comprise an extremely small group. I could understand iOS or android as touchscreen capabilities would bring a new dimension to Kaivo, Aalto, and Virta. Plus every support request seems to be more involved as it consists of additional layers of abstraction that you don't deal with in Windows or Mac, like having to talk people through basic terminal syntax for installing.

And no, you dont need to talk us people through basic terminal support. The few users that linux has, are 99% of the time nerds and technicians that dont really need this kind of support. They are able to help themselfs as part of a community process. That's what manufacturers currently dont really get.

ok, Push2 is not going to entice many, but we could be creative in this area... my Orac 1.1 for example is going to support remote display, so use your iPhone/iPad , or anything that you can create a UI in that uses OSC.

Oh man, I hope this comes to pass. I'm using Linux more and more. With REAPER, Bitwig, and u-he plugins coming to Linux, and with everything Steam has been doing to make Linux more generally accessible, I'm starting to envision a future where I don't have to keep up an extra laptop just for audio production.

Two months ago I left Windows 7 and went 100% Linux to Ubuntu Studio. It's the best decision that I have made with a computer! After 10 years of putting it off and saying it's too hard, the horrific slave master that is Windows 10 drove me elsewhere. I could not imagine using Windows 10. That is the worst OS that I have ever seen; I have seen better Linux OS's made by one guy in his garage.

I have kept all of my music software even though most of it doesn't work on Linux. Only Reaper and renoise work on Linux. I have Kaivo. It's sad that I couldn't have used it more. I'd be happy to be a beta tester on Linux for Kaivo if Madrona Labs ever wanted that. Not that I expect it; I agree that as Linux users we are a small minority.

Madrona Labs makes awesome software. That hasn't changed. I just wish that the brain dead idiots who run Microsoft had not made Windows 10. I cannot believe that Microsoft would have the chutzpah to expect me to use such trash. It's like a car that goes where it wants to go and ignores you. Every day is a battle. You want one thing. Microsoft wants the opposite. I could not longer be bothered; my finite lifespan has better things to do than being enslaved by stupid updates, tiles and ad IDs that look like a toilet, and Microsoft wanting to limit my software to things that make them money in their joke Windows store.

Then there's the big picture. The endgame for Microsoft is to make your desktop into a 1970's dumb terminal that only exists in the cloud. That's not for me. Unless of course I were a sheeple who follows Ed the Bott, the Guardian Muppet or numerous other media Windows shills who want me to be a blue pilled, spoon fed Microsoftie. Well, that ain't me. I'm red pilled. Terrible is terrible. No cognitive dissonance or Stockholm syndrome. To hell with Microsoft's trash. I'm now in Linux for good.

Aalto and Kaivo run perfectly on a linux computer with the help of e.g. Carla Plugin VST host. Running it on a quite performative laptop atm, no crashes, sound is perfect, midi mapping with external gear works properly.

With my last new computer I got a dual boot setup going (with Bitwig on Windows and Linux) and one of the biggest things I miss on Linux are the Madrona plugins (I bought all of them). Had a great time with VCV-Rack and Jack tho.

I know porting elaborate software with many dependencies can be quite a pain indeed, so one can only hope that the stars will align at one point, the mood is high, the gods smile at us etc. I'd probably even go as far as buying all the plugins again just to have them on Linux.

Thanks for the support. Sumu won't come out for Linux initially as I just have to ship it ASAP. But I would love to add Linux support along with Aalto v.2. Possibly Aaltoverb might make a nice first step into Linux even earlier, since it's simpler.

Beating a dead horse, here, but I just want to say that when I made the switch from Mac to Linux last year, I left behind dozens and dozens of plugins (I was already a REAPER user, so no problems there). No more Arturia, no more Omnisphere, no more NI, no more Softube , no more FabFilter (that hurt) . . . I left behind a lot of stuff.

But it's amazing how little I miss most of it (the fact that all the u-He stuff works perfectly in Linux was probably decisive). But I do miss a few things. And Aalto/Kaivo are absolutely at the top of that list. That was a hard, hard thing to leave behind.

So yeah, Randy. I get it. We're a small market. I can imagine it being a pain, if only because targeting "Linux" can mean targeting a 1000 idiosyncratic setups. But man, that would be a happy day for Linux users.

Picture this, your starting to get in to audio, you\u2019ve been working as a production assistant and you want to learn more at home. Sure you could buy a MacBook install ProTools and waves like a normal person, but you\u2019ve been using linux for as long as you have computers and your not switching now. That my dear reader, is what the situation I found myself in and I wanted to build the a no (or at least minimal) compromises Linux audio setup, here\u2019s how I took care of the plugins.

So let\u2019s talk system, I\u2019m running Debian Linux on an old server (so I have a plenty of CPU and RAM headroom), my instructions will apply to Debian based systems, if your using something else it should be easy to look up the steps. I\u2019m using a Universal Audio Volt, it was totally plug and play and it sounds amazing. I personally use Reaper but in theory any VST compatible DAW should work.

First you\u2019ll have to install wine, well actually wine-staging (a more recent version then what we\u2019ll be in most repositories), you\u2019ll need to follow the instructions here. once you got that installed you\u2019ll need to install yabridge from here. Once you\u2019ve done that let\u2019s make yabridge an actual command (so you don\u2019t have to type the full path every time)

You should be set! of course there\u2019s a whole myriad of bug and issues to run in to, and I may make a post on installing Waves, because that is an entire adventure in it of itself. Until then happy hacking! (and mixing!)

One of the big hurdles for me when switching from a Mac based audio setup was the potential loss of access to my expensive collection of VST plugins (because a lot of developers still ignore the Linux platform as if it was 1995 even though it has never been easier to make and release cross platform plugins). Little did I know that almost all of them would run just fine on Linux using the wine Windows compatibility layer and the yabridge or linvst VST plugin bridging software.

The workflow for getting set up though was quite difficult before I switched to Arch based distributions than on other Linux distributions (thanks to the Arch User Repository (AUR)), and even though it is significantly easier on Arch and Manjaro, it still has some quirks in the setup process which I have tried to collect here as a set of instructions and notes for getting started.

To install wine (and enable 32 bit support) you need to do enable the multilib repositories in your pacman configuration. If you are running Manjaro, this is already done for you so you can skip this section.

To be able to run Windows software on Linux, you need to install wine. Wine is a huge subject in itself (and I definitely do not master it at all), but it basically runs as a compatibility layer between windows software and your linux system.

This method involves using linvst to enable vst support. It is used to create bridges between the windows .dll files that VST plugins are delivered in and creates a Linux equivalent .so file. Managing this process can be complicated and a bit of a pain, but thankfully there is a program to do it all for us:

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