vstplugin v0.3.2

This project allows you to use VST plugins in Pd and SuperCollider on Windows, MacOS and Linux. It includes a Pd external called "vstplugin~" and a SuperCollider UGen called "VSTPlugin" (+ various SC classes).

Features:

• supports all VST2 and VST3 plugins (audio effect, MIDI effect, instruments, etc.)
• search and probe plugins in the standard VST directories or in user defined paths
• automate plugin parameters programmatically (sample accurate for VST3 plugins)
• arbitrary number of inputs/outputs + VST3 side chain inputs/outputs
• use either the native VST GUI (WIN32, Cocoa, X11) or a generic editor
• preset management: read/write standard VST preset files or set/get the plugin state as raw data to build your own preset management
• MIDI input/output
• basic sequencing support (for arpeggiators, sequencers etc.)

NOTE: 64bit VST plugins can only be loaded with the 64bit version of [vstplugin~] / VSTPlugin.scx and vice versa.

See the help files (vstplugin~-help.pd and VSTPlugin.schelp) for detailed instructions.

Please report any issues or feature requests to https://git.iem.at/pd/vstplugin/issues

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Known issues:

• VST3 preset files created with vstplugin v0.3.0 or below couldn't be opened in other VST hosts and vice versa because of a mistake in the (de)serialization of VST3 plugin IDs. This has been fixed in vstplugin v0.3.1. You can still open old "wrong" preset files, but this might go away in future versions, so you're advised to open and save your old VST3 presets to "convert" them to the new format. But first make sure to clear the plugin cache and do a new search to update the plugin IDs.

• The Supernova version of VSTPlugin only works on SuperCollider 3.11 and above (not released yet at the time of writing).

• On macOS, the SuperCollider/Supernova VST GUI only works on SuperCollider 3.11 and above (not released yet at the time of writing). Otherwise you get a warning if you try to open a plugin with "editor: true".

• On Windows and Linux, the native GUI window runs in a dedicated UI thread, which means that GUI updates shouldn't have a noticable effect on audio performance. On MacOS, however, because of technical limitations the GUI must run on the main thread¹ - which happens to be the audio thread in Pd... Until we've found a better solution, Pd users on macOS are adviced to keep native GUI windows closed in low-latency realtime situations to avoid audio hick-ups.

• If you build a 32-bit(!) version with MinGW and the host (Pd or Supercollider) has also been compiled with MinGW, exception handling might be broken due to a compiler bug. This only seems to happen if either the plugin or the host link statically against libstdc++ and libgcc. By default we link statically, so we don't have to ship additional DLLs. This generally works fine (because Pd is statically linked and Supercollider is nowadays built with MSVC), but it might cause troubles if you build a dynamically linked 32-bit Supercollider with MinGW. In this special case you should run cmake with -DSTATIC_LIBS=OFF so that 'VSTPlugin' also links dynamically. To sum it up: MinGW <-> Visual Studio should always work, but MinGW (32-bit, dynamically linked) <-> MinGW (32-bit, statically linked) causes big troubles. Yes, it's ridiculous!

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Licensing:

The source code for the Pd external and Supercollider UGen is permissively licensed, but note that you also have to comply with the licensing terms of the VST SDK(s) you're using!

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Build instructions:

This project is built with CMake, supported compilers are GCC, Clang and MSVC. (On Windows, you can also compile with MinGW; it is recommended to use Msys2: https://www.msys2.org/)

By default, the project is built in release mode. You can change CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE from RELEASE to DEBUG if you want a debug build, for example.

If you only want to build either the Pd or Supercollider version, simply set the 'PD' or 'SC' variable to 'OFF'.

When compiling with GCC on Linux we offer the option STATIC_LIBS to link statically with libstd++ and libgcc; the default is 'OFF'. You might want to turn it on ('-DSTATIC_LIBS=ON') if you want to share the binaries with other people because they might not have the required library versions installed on their system.

Prerequisites:

VST SDK:

For VST2 support, get the Steinberg VST2 SDK and copy it into /vst. You should have a folder vst/VST_SDK/VST2_SDK/pluginterfaces/vst2.x with the header files aeffect.h and affectx.h.

The VST2 SDK has been officially discontinued by Steinberg. If you have a VST2 license but lost the files, you can get them with .git-ci/get_vst2.sh. Otherwise you can try free alternatives like FST (https://git.iem.at/zmoelnig/FST.git - copy "fst.h" into vst/VST_SDK/VST2_SDK/pluginterfaces/vst2.x and set the 'FST' option to 'ON'). Use at your own risk!

For VST3 support, get the Steinberg VST3 SDK and copy it into /vst. Actually, you only need vst/VST_SDK/VST3_SDK/pluginterfaces/ (If you have git installed, run .git-ci/get_vst3.sh)

The default setting is to build with both VST2 and VST3 support. If you only want to support a specific version, you can set the 'VST2' and 'VST3' variables in the CMake project. E.g. if you want to compile without VST2 support, run cmake with -DVST2=OFF.

In case you already have the VST SDK(s) installed somewhere else on your system, you can provide the path to CMake by setting the 'VST2DIR' and 'VST3DIR' variables.

Pd:

Make sure you have Pd installed somewhere. If Pd is not found automatically, you can set the paths manually with -DPD_INCLUDEDIR="/path/to/Pd/src". On Windows you would also need -DPD_BINDIR="/path/to/Pd/bin"; you can set both variables at the same time with -DPD_DIR="/path/to/Pd".

By default, [vstplugin~] is installed in the standard externals directory, but you can override it with -DPD_INSTALLDIR="/path/to/my/externals".

SuperCollider:

Get the SuperCollider source code (e.g. https://github.com/supercollider/supercollider). SC_INCLUDEDIR must point to the folder containing the SuperCollider source code (with the subfolders common/ and include/).

With -DSC_INSTALLDIR="/path/to/my/extensions" you can choose the installation directory, which would typically be your SuperCollider extensions folder.

Set 'SUPERNOVA' to 'ON' if you want to build VSTPlugin for Supernova, but note that this doesn't work yet because of several bugs in Supernova (as of SC 3.10.3). However, this might be fixed in the next minor SC release.

Build:

1. create a build directory, e.g. build/.

2. cd into the build directory and run cmake .. + the necessary variables or set the variables in the cmake-gui and click "Configure" + "Generate"

3. in the build directory type make

   MSVC: open VSTPlugin.sln with Visual Studio and build the solution.

4. type make install to install

   MSVC: build the project INSTALL to install

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Final words

Now comes the mystery.

Footnotes

1. to make the GUI work for Pd on macOS we have to 'transform' Pd into a Cocoa app and install an event polling routine, which is a bit adventurous to say the least. ↩