[linux-audio-user] Re: [PlanetCCRMA] The Linux FreeVSTi Compatibility List

[Kjetil Svalastog Matheussen]

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Christian Frisson wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Initially posting on Tim Orford's Linux VST Compatibility Page, my quest has
> been to test all Win-only FreeVSTi's featured on the K-v-R database under Linux
> thanks to some of Kjetil Matheussen's apps and to report the way they work in my
> language, to speed up things a bit!
> 
> I've posted the list on the K-v-R forum:
> http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42640
> 
> Because that's where i've found most of the plugins:
> http://www.kvr-vst.com/get.php
> 
> Alternatively, until the nodes change while I update my bookmarks, you can
> browse all links to devs there:
> http://theremin.free.fr/hunchback/index.php?nodes=|0|461|897|1098|1103|/
> 

Very nice work. However, I think you may have misunderstood how the 
vstserver works:

I quote from the web-board:

> I've just restricted myself on VSTi's. The list is already long enough ,-) 
> The app I used, vsti, is aimed at launching one VSTi plugin at a time yet, 
> because it relies on a single-thread VST server, VSTserver. 
> 
The vstserver does acutally work by setting up a bounch of processes and 
threads, and are very very far from being single-threaded. There are no 
limitations on how many vsti's you run simultaniously.

> Surely some VST's do work, but I'm waiting for FST (the app whose 
> announcement I quoted) which seems more suitable to call more than one 
> effect, in hosts this time, like ardour. It's still interesting to use 
> vsti for VST effects that can handle MIDI CC's (tell me which ones?).

The difference between the vstserver and the new fst-library made by 
Torben Hohn and Paul Davies is that the fst-library runs the vst-plugin
in the same process, while using the vstserver-system you run the 
vst-plugin inside a new process set up by the vstserver.

What this means is that you get less contex-switches and therefor
better performance when running many (something like more than 8 according 
to Paul) vst-plugins simultaniously using the fst-library.



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