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LMMS VST(i) on Mac OS X related issues

• VST plugins on OS X (Apple) #698
• LinuxVST [native] support #416
• Carla support for OSX #2689 -- I hadn't realised that Carla can run on OS X without Jack (until I started it one day without Jack running and it made sound :D ). As Carla has support for VST(i)s it might be another (albeit roundabout) option.

Historical mailing list posts about VST Enabler/Bridge

• September 2003 "[Audacity-devel] LADSPA/VST bridge" (VST Enabler a.k.a. ladspa-vst-bridge-0.1.0)

• July 2006 "[Audacity-devel] Any more current source for the VST enabler and 0.1.0?"

• August 2006 "[audacity-devel] New experimental VST Bridge...a.k.a. VST Enabler" (mirror)

• September 2006 "[Audacity-devel] VST Enabler for Windows is broken" (partial mirror):

  Currently, Audacity accepts only Ladspa plugins and queries the Ladspa plugin to determine which controls it should display. Unfortunately, Ladspa doesn't provide any type of "button" control and the Bridge (enabler) would need some sort of button control that the user could click to manually display the VST GUI.

• October 2006 "[Audacity-devel] Vst-bridge and audacityteam.org/vst"

• November 2006 "[Audacity-help] VST-Bridge regression on OS X PPC" (VST Bridge):

  I redid the code since it had a couple of bugs, add a new VST control type, and wanted to "clean" it up a bit. I called it Bridge as it was a complete rewrite and I wanted to make sure that folks understood that, even though it does the same thing, it would be different.

  [...]

  The paths where the new Bridge and Enabler look for VST plugins first in the path defined by the VST_PATH environment variable and then:

  ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST
  /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST

  [...]

  One thing that you may be running up against is that the Bridge will NOT load older CFM (or Mac OS 9) plugins such as Freeverb (the one that I found anyway) and all of the mda* plugs-ins. [Note: this applies to v1.0]

  Note: The message mentions http://www.audacityteam.org/vst/ (archived) which refers to a version "version 1.0, revision C - released October 9, 2006", so be aware that there are multiple "revisions" of "version 1.0". Unfortunately the vst-bridge-1.0.tar.gz file does not appear to be archived but the previous source for ladspa-vst-bridge-0.1.0.tgz is archived.

Other LADSPA-based bridges

• https://github.com/kmatheussen/ladspavst (historical)

Linux --> Windows VST Bridges

• https://github.com/abique/vst-bridge
• https://github.com/phantom-code/airwave -- "WINE-based VST bridge"
• dssi-vst -- Bridge via DSSI (Source: https://github.com/falkTX/dssi-vst)
• "Using VST/VSTi Plugins In Linux" -- (historical)
• https://github.com/kmatheussen/vstserver -- "Use vst plugins in linux. (First system in the linux audio world that did this.)" (http://archive.notam02.no/arkiv/src/ -- source dump of various projects including vstserver)

Mac OS X --> Windows VST Bridges

• "Win-to-OSX VST wrapper/adapter" (see: 1, 2, 3 etc)
• wacvst
  • https://github.com/jerseycoder/wacvst -- "wrap Windows native VSTs for use with Intel Mac OS X based VST hosts"
  • https://sourceforge.net/projects/wacvst/
  • http://syntheway.com/wacvst.htm
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/1bf2ma/found_an_open_source_project_that_allows_you_to/
• VSTAU Manager
  • http://syntheway.com/VSTAU.htm
  • https://www.kvraudio.com/product/vstau-manager-by-sethk
  • https://bitbucket.org/sethk/vstau/
  • http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Audio/VSTAU-Manager.shtml
• symbiosis-au-vst
  • https://code.google.com/archive/p/symbiosis-au-vst/
  • https://github.com/danielmundt/symbiosis-au-vst
• Plugwire
  • http://rekkerd.org/plugwire-windows-vst-plugins-on-your-mac/
  • "Add your fave Win VST plugins to the mix"
• VST Enabler/Bridge
  • "[Ardour] VST Support on Mac OS.x Intel"
  • "Tips on How to Use Audacity VST Enabler"
• "[cw-discuss] Crossover - VST plugin support?"
• "VST plug-in bridge for Mac OS X"

Mac / General VST Host/Plugin development

• https://github.com/DDRBoxman/obs-vst -- "Use VST plugins in OBS " (includes links to development information)
• "How to make your own VST host" -- "written for both Windows and Mac OS X developers" and includes specific steps & example code.
• https://github.com/audacity/audacity/tree/master/src/effects/VST -- Source for Audacity's current "native" support for VST effects including on OS X.
• https://github.com/fedden/RenderMan -- "Command line C++ and Python VST Host library" (uses JUCE)
• https://github.com/hordiales/ap-gen -- "Audio plugins skeleton maker"
• http://www.hermannseib.com/english/vsthost.htm
• "How To Create VST Plugins? Information for those just getting started"
• https://github.com/AuburnSounds/dplug -- "library for creating native audio plugins (VST / AU) as simply as possible."
• http://martin-finke.de/blog/tags/making_audio_plugins.html
• https://github.com/mbrucher/QtVST -- "set of VST plugins with a Qt interface"
• http://vokicodder.blogspot.co.nz/2009/04/vst-plugins-with-qt-user-interface.html / http://canvoki.net/coder/blog/2009-04-06-vst-plugins-with-qt-user-interface.html
• https://www.cockos.com/wdl/ -- "free and open source C++ library that is designed to be easily used by other code" (not VST specific)
• https://github.com/olilarkin/wdl-ol -- "simple-to-use C++ framework for developing cross platform audio plugins and targeting multiple plugin APIs with the same code. VST / VST3 / Audiounit / RTAS / AAX (Native) formats supported"
• https://www.taletn.com/wdl/ -- "WDL/IPlug 'Tale' Edition"
• http://blog.audio-tk.com/2009/12/01/vst-plugin-again-reloaded-with-a-qt-gui/
• https://github.com/rbarreiros/vstboard
• "[QTBUG-11934] When using a plugin in a VST host application on Mac then it will crash either when loading the plugin or when trying to interact with it"
• http://blog.audio-tk.com/2010/02/09/pyvst-another-ctypes-based-python-vst-wrapper/
• Debugging
  • dfx block test (docs)
  • "Simple VST plugin to test midi sync."