I was looking in to one of those some time ago:
http://www.smproaudio.com/index.php/en/products/v-machines/v-machine
Don’t know how well they work, but it could be something to look in to.
I have heard they do not work well. I have never tested them though.
Seablade
It depended a lot on the actual plugin if it worked well or not.
I was interested in a vst with grand pianos, especially the Bösendorfer, but since I never could find out if it worked or not, I shelved the idea.
Would be fun to get my hands of one of those machines to experiment with.
My point is that from what I heard it works far worse than the Receptor for example, and is a somewhat poor choice for this. Obviously this is all heresay and conjecture at this point as I have never gotten my hands on one to test. On the flip side I doubt it would work much better than say AVLinux with Ardoue/Wine/WinVST installed for most people, but on the plus side at least if it crashed it wouldn’t take down Ardour with it:)
SeabladeYea, I have the same problem as you had, Ralf: I would be willing to buy an expensive vst, if I only knew I could get it to work. But well - now I will investigate these alternatives. (Sonatina is still the best native Linux orchestra out there, right?)
Just to complete this: I think I have finally found a solution: The Roland Integra-7. I’ll need to test it somewhere, but the reports are promising, and it may well also dissolve all my desires for other vst-instruments.
Id be curious to hear your take on the module, and using it with Ardour when you get some time to sit down with it for a while.
SeabladeI’ll be happy to report. It will be some time, until I will get round to it.
I have now looked into it: The orchestra sounds of the SRX 06 Board (that the Integra uses) don’t convince me. I am not even sure that I like them better than Sonatina Orchestra sounds, if they are boosted a bit in the mixing/mastering process. Roland’s string sounds in the RD700nx have never convinced me, and the SRX sounds are not better, maybe even the very same samples. It feels like they are optimised for simple chordplay, string layers in pop songs, but I think they just don’t work for complicated melodies. They are so straight, without any articulation, that they sound almost artificial, I find. No comparison to Demos of EastWest or Vienna. I admit, my testing was only brief, but it has discouraged me already to buy such an expensive piece of hardware. Well - so I remain in search of a good linux-compatible orchestra. But I think I should open a new thread about this.
Artur.-
Why dont you try Airwave VST bridge on Linux, its like Festige, you can load Windows VST, if i could only install it on Fedora…
@Artur Have you given LinuxSampler a look? It can load three different sample formats, including the outdated .gig format. I think Akai and Soundfonts are supported too. It is kinda a bear to figure out how it all works as a plugin to Ardour, but once you figure it out, it works very nicely! It also has an instrument editor, if your into modeling your sounds, or creating them from scratch.
You didn’t mention what orchestral samples are running, but maybe they could be converted. There are a few commercial products out there that do this sort of thing, Chicken Systems comes to mind as one. If the conversion is accurate, all your layers should remain intact too.