Category for Plugin presentation here in the forum

Hello,
i had a idea if we can have here in the forum an area, where useful plugins can presented.
Virtual Instruments or effect plugins - or distributions special for audio - whatever.

Would (i think) useful help for all (like me) who come from Windows DAWs to Ardour to find fast good plugins for working. And as easier the switch to Ardour, as more user Ardour gets.

My main business is sales and i know 100%: The easier it is to switch to something new (Ardour), the more people will use it. And as more user, it helps all here in the community and the devs to improve Ardour.

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These two projects handle that better than whatever we will do here:

  1. http://linuxsynths.com/

  2. Software | Libre Audio Visual

Update: @x42 pointed me to Free ā€¢ Audio Plugins for Free too of which I was not aware.

Non of that mentions stuff like the u-he Presswerk, u-he Satin, OvertoneDSP/ACMT plugins, Auburn Sounds LENS, and Harrisonā€™s LV2 and VST plugins.

I found all the good stuff suggested here in the forum by others who have skin in the game and on other forums, and on kvraudio.com

Stefan Franzā€™s proposal is a valid and really good one.

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I think a category more which mainly has to do with plugins (presentation, configuration, discussion, ā€¦)
would not hurt anyone in any way :slight_smile:

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There is such a forum category here Plugins, Effects and Instruments - LinuxMusicians

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Two things come into my mind:

  1. While it would be nice to have it here - because the Ardour forum is very alive - I personally do not think this should be a subject for Ardour.

  2. There is a sub-forum available on linuxmusicians.com already dedicated to plugins. It would be nice to get some life into that board:
    Plugins, Effects and Instruments - LinuxMusicians

ā€¦ my 2 cts ā€¦

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Hello Guys and thanks for your feedbacks.

My idea was, to have a area, where plugins from your experience are posted. There are many plugins out there on the internet, but many donā€™t run as plugins in Ardour, donā€™t work on Linux or are only available as source code etcā€¦and many arenā€™t usefulā€¦

Ardour will increase its popularity the faster if there are plug and play ways for the normal user.

So that posts (so my idea) in the category of plugins that are good, that work and that can be easily installed.

I would have helped so a category very much because I had tried many things since start - and was about to lose the desire because it was very time consuming.

DAWs such as Cubase have everything on board after installation to get started right away. Sounds, plugins, etc.
And if there was also such an approach for Ardour, where you can find the good plugins tidy then, it would be helpful for the spread. The easier something goes, the more people out there implement it.

Maybe there is a forum admin who creates such a category - if it is not useful, you can move the posts somewhere else and close the category. Some things you just have to try out, if it is helpful.
Einstein already said: The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

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Peter, Vladimir Sadovnikov just announced here that his LSP Plugins v1.2.4 released :slight_smile:
Probably all the pro people are on this board, and here you have the best chance to get pro answers/recommendations derived from experience.

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I agree with Stefan, a category ā€œpluginsā€ here would always or mostly have to do with plugins in ARDOUR. If one has a problem/suggestion belonging ardourANDplugins s/he would obviously post it here. So, why not keep a kind of order by adding this category ?
To be honest , the proposed other forums - in terms of quality - are far under the ardour standard :wink:

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I kind of see what you mean but if you look closely the one at Linuxmusicians forum is pretty good also often the developers of Linux FLOSS Plugins and the developers of some non-FLOSS stuff post there and either take suggestions or post help thereā€¦

An issue that often happens there is FLOSS v. non-FLOSS debates and arguments which I feel are unproductive and not ā€˜openā€™ but both sides hold strong views so if there was such a forum here it would need to specify whether all comers or only FLOSS developers are allowed to post and submit and put that sort of thing to rest right off the batā€¦

I donā€™t know about having a Plugins section here but I will say the open collaborative nature of a web forum is much better than wiki-style one-person databases by farā€¦ The internet graveyard is littered with so many of these type of sites that fizzled and died.

There are forum admins and we are watching this topic, however at this time we are not convinced that this is a good idea given the resources that already exist for discussing plugins. I would rather see problematic plugins that are Ardour specific reported as bugs in Ardour, and for discussion of Linux compatible plugins happen on forums that are more generally linux audio.

We already have people posting demonstrations of their work and screenshots and listing of plugins in doing so, that is a good reference for what people are using within Ardour itself. Bugs that cause plugins not to work need to be reported in the bug tracker, or to the plugin developer rather than discussed here that wouldnā€™t necessarily get anything done on them.

Now that isnā€™t to say my opinion (Or others) couldnā€™t change on this, and the discussion as to the merits of the idea are welcome here and might change an opinion, but as of right now I am not convinced this is a worthwhile idea for what is a fairly low volume discussion forum as is.

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I think all arguments are lying on the table (as we in Germany would say, and Iā€™m happy for this direct and false translation) :slight_smile:

Seams to be a matter of effort, let the admins decide.

Here is a good practice example how an entry could be and what the benefit is

In my case: I was able to update the old version (include in the ubuntu studio plugins) to the new and was able to install ist. Thanks for it.

Bugs have their right place in guthub or bugtrackers of the plugins.

My idea was, that also comercial plugins can presented here. It whould be a win-win situation for Ardour. Only if new user find good plugins for professionell productions, they move to Ardour.

But that is of course the decision of the admins here.

Perhaps Iā€™m changing the subject too much, but this is FOSS. We donā€™t need to talk about it, we need to DO it.

A more proactive move would be for someone to create a curated list of FOSS plugins (like GMaq has done for linux) and package them specifically for use in Ardour.

What I imagine is:

  • gather all the well-regarded FOSS plugins that can be built cross-platform
  • maintain a binary build for all the platforms+architectures supported by Ardour
  • liason with the plugin developer(s), keeping the plugins up-to-date and pushing fixes upstream
  • make these builds accessible from the Library Downloader
  • or maybe in special cases, contribute them directly to ardourā€™s git repo as ACE bundled plugins
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I think it would be a good idea to have a ā€˜Known tried and trueā€™ dedicated plugins section in the ā€˜Categoriesā€™ section/menu. Perhaps have a submenu in the ā€˜Pluginā€™ section broken down by operating system, Windows, Linux, etc.

It would be a good place for people to comment on plugins that work with their OS using Ardour. Iā€™ve come across a few that are supposed to work with Linux, but alas donā€™t. I also have found a lot of plugins that work really good with Ardour and I think a dedicated space for that kind of discussion would be at the very least convenient and at the same time informative and would prevent muddying up the other parts of the forum.

Iā€™m for it. It could turn out to be a very useful place for the newcomers and even for the experienced to share their knowledge.

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I really like this idea as a new user that wants to switch to Ardour and Linux. @stefan-franz mentioned Cubase as an example of DAW that has everything on board to get started right away - that is true and in my opinion really important. This is why I landed on it as my go-to to simply create music, but I intend to replace it with Ardour.
My biggest fear is about the quality of the plugins from DSP standpoint, UI scaling etc. For example recent interview with Robin shed some light for me about DSP of calf plugins.

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Yes. Good points everyone. A simple poll for favourite/best plugins (per type, say) could be useful, as well. The sheer amount and spread of Linux / F.O.S.S. plugins can be daunting for new users, especiallyā€¦

Generally its no better or worse than on other OS - Iā€™ve made a whole bunch of plug-ins specifically for Linux over at www.acmt.co.uk which you might like to try if you havenā€™t already - they have some nice features such as decramped filters, and smoothly interpolated controls so thereā€™s no glitching or ā€˜zipper noiseā€™ when adjusting the settings.

There are also some great free plug-ins out there, quality really depends on the developer (and even relatively big name companies get called out sometimes). Plug-in development requires a diverse range of skills from UI design, to DSP expertise, coding ability and often understanding of analogue designs too (I started in the pro-audio industry before affordable DSP was a thing, so analogue was just about the only option at that point)

Do we need a separate thread / area for plug-ins on this forum? Its always good to have new places to announce / showcase work (and Paul has been very generous in allowing this on the Ardour forum in the past) but I have concerns that it might become just another random collection of out of date information (There are many many threads on other forums typically ā€œLook at my great new plug-inā€, ā€œI tried it on XYZ distro and it crashedā€ which doesnā€™t really help anyone, especially if it refers to an out of date version)

Iā€™m not sure what the solution is - to do it properly requires a proper searchable database (this already exists, its over at KVR - they have plug-ins for all OS, including Linux, in all formats, from free or commercial developers) . The problem then, is that it just becomes like an App store - and the problem with App stores (even the well known ones) is that thereā€™s so much stuff you can never find anything, unless you already know it exists.

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