[linux-audio-user] more notes re: fst/xfst

[Mark Knecht]

On 10/16/05, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/16/05, Dave Phillips <dlphillips at woh.rr.com> wrote:
> > Mark Knecht wrote:
> >
> > >>I'd like to see every Linux Audio user interested in this subject
> > >>start pressing the Wine folks to support this themselves. Let's pay
> > >>attention to the Windows apps that can host VSTs and VSTi's. Acid Pro
> > >>is a commercial one that comes to mind. Fruity Loops, etc. There's got
> > >>to be free VST loaders out there for Windows. Older versions of Acid
> > >>install and run  fine under Wine but do not handle VSTs very well. The
> > >>new versions don't install or run.
> > >>
> > >>Putting together yet another hack outside of Wine that will run for 1
> > >>year and then die when gcc5 comes out would be disappointing. Let's
> > >>get the Wine folks to support this.
> > >>
> > >>Please enter apps in the Wine AppDB and enter test results in Wine's
> > >>Bugzilla. If there are enough of us entering 100's of apps then
> > >>they'll pay attention. Maybe not fast, but I believe they will.
> > >>
> > >>
> > Hear the man. This issue is really as much a matter for the WINE folk as
> > it is for us. VSTs are Windows applications, WINE intends to run Windows
> > applications.
>
> Thanks Dave. I haven't heard a consensus yet, but there seems to be
> interst in the savihost.exe application for a simple host that can
> hold both VSTs and VSTi's. I tried installing savihost.exe but it
> failed for a missing DLL. I've rectified that and am learning to run
> Savihost. It's a bit strange to be renaming the thng all the time, but
> so be it. We'll see. I haven't tried to get sound yet from it. (Other
> competing priorities...)
>

I have now entered Savihost in the Wine AppDb. It will hopefully be
accepted in the next few days. When it is accepted I will post back
information here about where interested folks can go to express their
interst in getting the Wine developers to pay attention to it. I will
sign up to be the app maintainer once it is accepted.

NOTE: I downloaded the Crystal VSTi, a more or less known good device,
and attempted to run it under savihost. The process, as I understand
it, goes like this:

1) Download and install a copy of the MFC42.DLL file. I got mine from
http://www.dll-files.com. Note that there did not seem to be different
vesions of this file for different versions of Windows.

2) Copy Crystal.dll to a working directory under .wine/drive_c. I used
a generic directory called VST

3) Copy savihost.exe to the VST directory and rename it to the name of
the VSTi you want to run. In this case I renamed savihost.eve to
Crystal.exe

4) Run wine ./Crystal.exe

In my case this crashed with the following message:

mark at lightning ~/.wine/drive_c/VST $ wine ./Crystal.exe
wine: Call from 0x40b001 to unimplemented function MFC42.DLL.6625, aborting
Segmentation fault
mark at lightning ~/.wine/drive_c/VST $

I have entered this information in the following Wine bug report:

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3604

I encourage any and all interested people try to duplicate what I've
done here, both with Crystal and other VSTi's. Please enter your
results in this bug report.

mark at lightning ~/.wine/drive_c/VST $ wine --version
Wine 20050930
mark at lightning ~/.wine/drive_c/VST $

Cheers,
Mark