I’ve been trying to make ZL plugins work in Ardour 9.8, on Debian 13 xfce.
Equilzers work normaly - Equilizer 2 and Spectrum Equlizer.
But, all the rest of the ZL series - Compressor, Limiter, Splitter only show this:
…and the log window only says - failed to instantiate plugin.
I tried changing different .lv2 vesions (generic and avx2 versions) - same thing.
I’ve tried creating new mono and stereo tracks and then inserting - no difference.
?
And did you check the log window for possibly more details?
Did you try VST3 versions in addition to LV2 version?
For those of us who have never heard of ZL plugins before, is this what you mean?
If so I downloaded the compressor plugin and it uses quite a few shared system libraries, which should be expected to cause problems:
$ ldd libZL\ Compressor.so
linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007f4600272000)
libasound.so.2 => /lib64/libasound.so.2 (0x00007f460010b000)
libfontconfig.so.1 => /lib64/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x00007f45ff984000)
libfreetype.so.6 => /lib64/libfreetype.so.6 (0x00007f45ff8a8000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /lib64/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f45ff400000)
libm.so.6 => /lib64/libm.so.6 (0x00007f45ff78c000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib64/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f46000db000)
libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007f45ff202000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f4600274000)
libxml2.so.16 => /lib64/libxml2.so.16 (0x00007f45ff0b9000)
libz.so.1 => /lib64/libz.so.1 (0x00007f46000b1000)
libbz2.so.1 => /lib64/libbz2.so.1 (0x00007f460009d000)
libpng16.so.16 => /lib64/libpng16.so.16 (0x00007f45ff74f000)
libharfbuzz.so.0 => /lib64/libharfbuzz.so.0 (0x00007f45fef4b000)
libbrotlidec.so.1 => /lib64/libbrotlidec.so.1 (0x00007f45ff740000)
libglib-2.0.so.0 => /lib64/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f45fede7000)
libgraphite2.so.3 => /lib64/libgraphite2.so.3 (0x00007f45ff720000)
libbrotlicommon.so.1 => /lib64/libbrotlicommon.so.1 (0x00007f45ff6fd000)
libpcre2-8.so.0 => /lib64/libpcre2-8.so.0 (0x00007f45fed35000)
Try compiling the plugins with as many dependencies as possible linked statically in the plugin.
Also the ALSA library should not be needed for a plugin, that may be a mistake left in from the stand alone build.
Yes, those are the ones (ZL Audio Plugins).
Log windows only says - failed to instantiate plugin.
I haven’t tried vst3 versions, but i will.
Just reading thru the list of shared libraries you just provided, no wonder i ran into troubles…
And just for the record, their EQ’s seem great, from what i’ve seen in a couple of minutes.
That means the .so cannot be loaded.
Chances are that this is because the plugin is dynamically linked and depends on external, system-wide resources that cannot be met. Then again I also expect ZL Eq to have that issue… In some cases there is more info on stdout, stderr (launch Ardour from a terminal).
I will, when i get the chance again 
… i’m not in front of computer right now, just writing from my phone.
Yes, it’s weird i know, but both eq’s do work - Equilizer 2 and Spectrum Equilizer also. Compressor, Limiter and Splitter don’t.
Just tested ZL Compressor (0.6.1), ZL Equalizer (1.4.1), and ZL Spectrum Equalizer (0.1.1) with Ardour 9.8 under Debian 13. All the plugins work fine.
Indeed, there must be something else going on, since the plugins seem to link against exactly the same set of libraries:
$ ldd LV2/ZL\ Compressor.lv2/libZL\ Compressor.so
linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007f232d34e000)
libasound.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libasound.so.2 (0x00007f232cadf000)
libfontconfig.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x00007f232d2d1000)
libfreetype.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6 (0x00007f232ca0f000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f232c600000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f232c91f000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f232d2a2000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f232c40c000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f232d350000)
libexpat.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 (0x00007f232c8f1000)
libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007f232c8d1000)
libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 (0x00007f232c8be000)
libpng16.so.16 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng16.so.16 (0x00007f232c885000)
libbrotlidec.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbrotlidec.so.1 (0x00007f232c877000)
libbrotlicommon.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbrotlicommon.so.1 (0x00007f232c3e9000)
$ ldd LV2/ZL\ Equalizer\ 2.lv2/libZL\ Equalizer\ 2.so
linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007f7e6f9d2000)
libasound.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libasound.so.2 (0x00007f7e6f882000)
libfontconfig.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x00007f7e6f834000)
libfreetype.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6 (0x00007f7e6ef30000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f7e6ee40000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f7e6ea00000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f7e6f805000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f7e6e80c000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f7e6f9d4000)
libexpat.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 (0x00007f7e6ee12000)
libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007f7e6edf2000)
libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 (0x00007f7e6eddf000)
libpng16.so.16 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng16.so.16 (0x00007f7e6eda6000)
libbrotlidec.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbrotlidec.so.1 (0x00007f7e6ed98000)
libbrotlicommon.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbrotlicommon.so.1 (0x00007f7e6ed75000
Also, note that the number of libraries differs from what @ccaudle showed above, but maybe the versions are different.
I checked the build which can be downloaded from GitHub. If the version you checked was built by Debian perhaps the build options are slightly different.
Where did you get the plugins from?
If you got them from ZL Audio it could be that you downloaded the AVX2 versions of the Compressor, Limiter and Splitter, and your CPU doesn’t support that (my i7-3770 doesn’t )
It could also be that your CPU is fine but those binaries for some reason are corrupt, so you could try an older version and see if that works better.
No, there are no official Debian ZL packages, I believe. I downloaded the ZIP files from their website, which points to the GitHub releases page. Got exactly these:
https://github.com/ZL-Audio/ZLCompressor/releases/download/0.6.1/ZL.Compressor-0.6.1-Linux-x86-64-AVX2.zip
https://github.com/ZL-Audio/ZLEqualizer/releases/download/1.4.1/ZL.Equalizer.2-1.4.1-Linux-x86-64-AVX2.zip
$ sha1sum *.zip
d53c87a51e5357958462d5fc0dd2395a2ca167e0 ZL.Compressor-0.6.1-Linux-x86-64-AVX2.zip
757c39d9b7f584c863bdb597c1a84c4fd83abf08 ZL.Equalizer.2-1.4.1-Linux-x86-64-AVX2.zip
Also checked the non-AVX2 version, but there was no difference there either:
$ ldd Compressor-0.6.1-Linux-x86-64/LV2/ZL\ Compressor.lv2/libZL\ Compressor.so | wc -l && ldd Compressor-0.6.1-Linux-x86-64-AVX2/LV2/ZL\ Compressor.lv2/libZL\ Compressor.so | wc -l
15
15
I got it from ZL’s site, and tried both versions(for old cpus and also newer than 4th gen intel), no luck. Immidiately checked for avx2 support of my laptop’s cpu (i5-6300U) it is supported, but anyway, there was no difference in behaviour of either versions of plugins(for older or newer processors).
maybe…there’s something about where i’ve put the plugin folders…as i remeberer i’ve put them in my user folder …in my case it was something like:
ljuba/.lv2/and-then-specific-plugin’s-folder
But i’ve got other plugins installed this way…Surge for example, and they all work normally in Ardour. I also rescaned all plugins each time i tried new version and Ardour finds them, and also tried to create completely new session…nope, doesn’t work.
Yeah, the files need to be in a subfolder of ~/.lv2 . I’m not sure if that subfolder needs to have a .lv2 extension (like “ZL Compressor.lv2”) or if its just a common practice.
You should have four files in that subfolder : dsp.ttl, libZL Compressor.so, manifest.ttl and ui.ttl
Run ls -la in that folder and make sure your user has rights to read (r) the .ttl files and to at least read and execute (r-x) libZL Compressor.so