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Comment by boffinAudio | Hacker News Reader

All of this is great advice to this 30+ year veteran of synthesis. One thing I'd add: instead of buying new synths, buy effects (pedals or rack or whatever). You'd be surprised how amazing the difference can be between a synth and a synth+foot pedals .. its like upgrading the signal flow by taking on another module.

Also, if you're getting into synths and haven't encountered VCVRack yet, you are in for a huge treat: http://vcvrack.com/

Get it, install it, log in and tick all the boxes for every free module in the list. There is nothing quite like starting a new VCVRack project and having close to a thousand new modules to play with and experiment around with.

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Good call out - I was also going to make a comment about the importance of effects, but as the article is trying to keep things simple, I didn't want to complicate matters!

The Valhalla DSP effects are fantastic value, and SuperMassive, my absolute favourite, is also free as in beer. I suspect Sean reads HN https://valhalladsp.com/

If only Valhalla effects came in Linux VST version... I've been futzing around with linvst but it's a horrible kludge (and still doesn't work). I'd happily pay the regular buckaroos for a few professional plugins. Maybe these could get delivered through Steam?

It's really a shame that more developers don't compile their VSTs for Linux. The good news is that if you look around there are plenty that do and give you everything you need to make music on Linux.

https://www.kvraudio.com/marketplace/linux/new-to-kvr-market...

Got to say I sympathize with those that don't. All of mine including legacy stuff support LinuxVST (2.4) but it doesn't look like the KVR marketplace has me listed. Maybe they don't count free/OSS stuff?

There are whole little communities that do, but you have to dig for 'em. I recently joined Unfa's patreon (reviewer and popularizer of OSS and Linux music-making gear) and joined his discord server. Only to discover they had an emote of my face, due to my OSS plugin making and because they liked my catchphrase 'I'm Chris from Airwindows and hey… you can do this!'

And so you can. The stuff is out there, and if you look around it's absurd what you can do. My favorite discoveries lately are Bespoke, and the Surge Synth ecosystem (hugely impressive and helpful to other OSS projects of all types)

But you'll find it's a bit of a media freeze-out as far as people TELLING you any of this is happening. I can attest that if you do compile your stuff for Linux, you'll hear almost nothing about it, including from the folks you are supporting. I've got a Mediafire mirror for my stuff that tracks downloads across all my updates. Signed MacOSX bundle supporting M1 machines, 3023 downloads. LinuxVST, 325 downloads.

You do Linux support because you care about it as a concept, not because you're going to get any benefit from it. It doesn't pay, it costs (in dev time that won't be compensated, any more than if you were developing one of the little libraries upon which all the Internet depends). You have to have other work lined up to support you while you do the added Linux support.

Airwindows plugins are amazing! If you haven't tried Chris' plugins, you're missing out.

I buy music and other software to use on Linux all the time. A few individuals willing to play for software might not be significant but I just signed up with your Patreon so hopefully now you're at least partially incentivised to keep releasing your plugins on Linux.

Oh, I'm not doing that for money, or even thinking it will help me survive :)

The question is more whether I'll be compelled to stop work because I'm NOT surviving, but so long as I am, my incentive to release plugins on Linux is because it's the right thing to do. Also, I think it matters to have stuff out there where the barrier to entry is ability and education, not capital. I think basing everything off only how much capital you start with and are able to exploit, distorts things in very unpleasant ways.

Fortunately, so long as I'm alive and have internet I'm able to do something about it. Maybe, so can you! :D

Chris! So lovely to see you here - I love not only your plugins, but your attitude and videos. Thank you!

Honestly there are times when I think the attitude is more useful than anything I do code-wise. And I still care a lot about some of the stuff I've come up with in code ;) but these days, more is needed.

It's worth thinking about why this is. I am very determined to stick with the kind of messaging and attitude that I like. I also have a strong intuitive feeling that it's not a good match to what platforms and competition and basically internet capitalism want to see out of me, and they've got enormous pressure to bring to bear, and many ways to direct me towards becoming what's useful to them, and indeed punish me for not doing so.

That would mean that if it's in any way hard to find 'that attitude' you're appreciating, it's because it is reserved for people who both have it and are willing to take a beating to keep it. As we think about stuff like that, think about what ways platforms would like you to be more, I dunno, Logan Paul or PewDiePie etc in nature, for engagement, and in what ways they're able to deliver pressure and advocate for those on their platform to take on that form.

Check out the Zynthian, it is a monster of an FX box and has a lot of quality stuff built in - plus, it has the ability to host VST's and in fact is set up to do that out of the box for the PianoTec VST's, so it may not be that difficult a stretch to get Valhalla running under Zynthian, too .. and once it is, you'll find yourself in a whole universe of power. ;)

http://zynthian.org/

Zynthian looks cool but it runs Linux on Raspberry Pi 4, so it probably won't be any easier trying to get Windows plugins to run it than on a Linux desktop system.

The Zynthian crew already set it up, so once you enable it, its a lot easier than you think.

But if you don't want the hassle, look at the Effects that it already has onboard - maybe Valhalla VST's aren't that necessary, anyway:

https://wiki.zynthian.org/index.php/Zynthian_Supported_Synth...

There is this open source CloudSeed reverb, which has a C++ and C# version, I prefer the C++ one. With some knob fiddling it gets closer to infinite reverbs, like in Valhalla and Strymon Big Sky clouds.

https://github.com/ValdemarOrn/CloudSeed

I guess it can be compiled for Linux with some kung fu build skills. I ported it over to Electrosmith Daisy STM32, which is very cool too: https://www.electro-smith.com/daisy

I'm far from a pro producer, but I use tracktion's daw essentials for tasteful fx. Tal has some free old school chorus and cheesy(in a good way) reverbs, then of course there's Uhe.

I haven't tried there standalone fx, but if their built in synth fx are any indicator, you should be able to get some nice sounds from the standalone fx. I do feel like Uhe fx tend to be a little more opaque in terms of the names and values. E.g. having a filter that goes from 0 - 100 instead of just putting the cutoff frequency is a bit too old school. Having a parameter on a delay that's just called "wow" is not very helpful.

In any case all of these companies support Linux, and they all produce software worth taking a look at.

IMHO, adding an FX pedal to a synth rig is one of the easiest, simplest ways to upgrade that synth and give it a new echelon of dynamics.

I also have to say that the Zynthian is probably one of the best modules for this you can find, but that would definitely be a degree of complexity higher than the article tries to maintain. Still, an amazing FX box that really pushes the value of the F/OSS FX/DSP community (http://zynthian.org/)

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