I’ve had a problem since upgrading to Ubuntu 25.04 a few months ago.
I have some Windows VST plugins that I use with Yabridge on my Linux system, and after upgrading to Ubuntu 25.04 (and Ardour 8.12), they stopped working.
The problem is this: when I run the VST scan in Ardour, the program doesn’t load the plugins. There’s no error message or crash; it just waits indefinitely for the scan to finish:
The problem is this: when I run the VST scan in Ardour, the program doesn’t load the plugins. There’s no error message or crash; it just waits indefinitely for the scan to finish:
At first, I thought it was a problem between Wine and Yabridge (on Ubuntu 25.04, WineHQ is version 10, instead of 9), but I can run Windows VST drivers with Carla! (with wine and yabridge)
Unfortunately, I can’t really answer your question because you seem to want to be able to run Ubuntu 25.4/Yabridge/Wine/Ardour perfectly. I’ll leave that to the Ardour developers.
Personally, since Ubuntu version 24 and even since Debian version 13, I’ve only had problems with Wine and Yabridge… so I decided to go back to the last decent version of Linux and Pro Audio I had, which is Debian 12, JACK with the KXStudio packages, Yabridge 5.1, and Wine version 9.21 Staging.
For me, this is the only satisfactory solution at the moment, and I’ve had to fight against this unfortunate tendency with Linux to absolutely want to go for the latest, most technologically advanced version with the latest 6.45875 kernel…
There’s a real problem with Wine 10 right now regarding audio, so I’m sticking with an LTS version that works until 2027 (I think), hoping that by then there will be a stable version and solutions created by the Wine developers to run something other than Steam.
So Debian 12 and Wine 9.21 still work very well.
The best is often the enemy of the good.
I know this doesn’t answer your question at all… so it’s a little bit off the topic… sorry.
Might not be the right time and place for this but if you want, you could list which Win plugs you use and people here could offer native-Linux alternatives…?
It’s not a Wine problem, as the plugins work with Wine.
There are several plugins that don’t have a Linux alternative, but that’s not the focus of this thread.
At first, I thought it was a Wine/Yabridge issue and was waiting for the Yabridge developer to fix it. However, the plugins work with Wine, so another question arises regarding VST3 plugins for Windows and Ardour: could it be a library or dependency issue? I’d like to debug it.
In the screenshot above, I show how Ardour can’t scan these plugins, and there’s no log information to debug the problem.
As a temporary workaround, I’m trying to run some VSTs in standalone mode (for example, a VST drum instrument) directly in Wine. In QPWGraph (a graphical interface for connecting Pipewire), I see that Wine has MIDI and audio connections, so I could integrate Wine-independent plugins into my workflow.
Wait are you using the distro build of Ardour? 8.12 has been out since March. If you haven’t already done so, it may be worth trying a binsry from ardour.org.
I had a similar problem in Arch a couple months ago using the binary from ardour.org. The version from the Arch repo worked though. I found out that if I symlinked libreadline.so in the /opt/ardour/lib folder to libreadline.so in /usr/lib it then worked.
When I said “I’ll leave that to the Ardour developers,” I meant “I’ll leave that to developers in general” because I’m not skilled in software development. (And since we’re on an Ardour forum…) So I wrote “Ardour developers” too quickly. I suspect there can’t be any other “official” positions regarding Wine, which is a hack. But it must also be admitted that Wine greatly contributes to the appeal of making music on Linux (despite the appeal of LSP, AirWindows, or ACMT, for example). And having tried Ardour on Windows, it works much better on Linux…
Despite everything, I still think the problem stems from Wine and Yabridge compared to the latest Linux distributions (Ubuntu 24 and Debian 13)… that’s why I’m staying on Debian 12 and Wine 9.21 until 2027… if a stable Linux solution hasn’t emerged by 2027 to continue with my Workflow, we’ll see then…
I still observe that when Steam announces a fully Linux machine based on the development of Proton, which is also a hack of Windows, everyone hails it as a stroke of genius for the development of Linux, and that we are much more timid when it comes to other areas like music, even though it is exactly the same principle.
Even though I hope that native Linux software will develop at the same time, particularly VST instruments, which are sorely lacking.
The development of samples for instruments is a game-changer (for example, with virtual drums, orchestral instruments, and software like Sfizz or Nam for guitar), but there are still gaps in vintage emulation plugins (I really like Analog Obsession), apart from ACMT plugins.
So, apart from having prohibitively expensive audio hardware at home, Wine remains a very interesting compromise for making music on Linux, given the current weakness of native Linux software development.
Alas, it is not. Steam’s ability to run Windows software is based on running Windows applications in their entirety. In the audio domain, that would be like firing up a version of FL Studio for windows on a machine running Linux (I’m told that this works quite well, BTW).
But what people are asking for is the ability to run Windows plugins inside a Linux host, which is entirely different. Yes, both are dependent on Wine, but beyond that there is not much similarity.
“In the audio domain, that would be like firing up a version of FL Studio for windows on a machine running Linux (I’m told that this works quite well, BTW)”
It would be akin to running the windows version of Ardour through wine hehe, has anybody ever tried that ?!
Is it? Running Windows plugins inside the Windows version of Ardour running in Wine might work better than trying to run Windows plugins inside the Linux version of Ardour using Yabridge.
Don’t expect it to make anything better ;). Plugins that do not work with yabridge will not work in ardour with wine either. I tried that a lonh time ago, I don’t know if this still works.
For many years you could self-compile Ardour with WinVST support and for a brief time Robin had a nightly build of it. It was some Frankenbeast that ran in Wine on Linux (ask Robin). I used it quite successfully for many years and with careful selection of Windows Plugins it was as stable as the Linux build.
Fast forward in time and both linVST and yabridge came along and made ‘ArdourVST’ pretty obsolete…
Anyway, if you are using Debian Trixie or child Distros (MX Linux, AV Linux, LMDE etc… I can’t say what Ubuntu versions may work) then using the official WineHQ repositories you can issue an apt command to download and install a specific version of Wine-Staging. As a relevant example you can specifically download Wine-Staging 9.21 (the last known properly working version), it is in the WineHQ Trixie repo…
So if you have gone to WineHQ and followed the instructions to add their Repository and you DON’T HAVE A NEWER VERSION THAN 9.21 on your system you can do this:
Then do this so you aren’t wiped out by an immediate update…
sudo apt-mark hold winehq-staging
For about to be released AV Linux 25 I had to make a little utility to automate this because Wine-Staging and yabridge are not in great shape currently…
Wine-staging is the testing repository for wine. Why use that and not a later full version with the staging changes incorporated? Is there some experimental feature which helps yabridge that was never incorporated into the main development stream?
As long as I’ve used yabridge it has recommended Wine-Staging and actually even further tweaked ‘Wine TKG’ builds that seemingly are only in Arch Linux. I’m sure vanilla Wine works too but Staging seems to be recommended. In our Studio a locked down Wine-Staging 9.21+yabridge works so well that I often forget that we don’t actually have Fabfilter on Linux…
hehe, has anybody ever tried that ?!
