https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridgeProgram that bridges API calls from Windows VST in Wine to DAW
I heavily recommend using u-he plugins if you don't care about using proprietary software, especially the new Zebra3 (a CPU hog but sounds sublime and insanely versatile), Repro-1 and 5 (Prophet-5 and Pro-One emulations) and Uhbik2 (great suite of effects).
A lot of people swear by Diva, and Bazille is also pretty interesting if you are into weird modular sounds.
TAL also make good plugins with Linux native versions. Haven't tried AudioDamage stuff, but I've heard it's good too.
Otherwise, with yabridge, ValhallaDSP plugins run perfectly for reverb and delay. I had good experiences with the FabFilter suite in the past too. Native Instruments stuff generally works okay. Lightweight plugins from small companies that don't use iLok kind of shit DRM tend to work pretty well too, like Madrona Labs' Aalto or AberrantDSP SketchCassette II and Digitalis.
However, I had no luck with Serum 2 and Lexicon plugins, but I can do without them.
The only thing that sucks is that yabridge hasn't been updated in a long while, and it has a mouse cursor glitch with the latest versions of wine-staging, but it works fine with the normal version in Mint's repos. Let's hope they eventually fix this problem, but so far, I think there is everything needed to make great sounding tracks on Linux.
No Ableton Live and Max For Live sadly (there is Bitwig and PlugData tho), and tinkering and random bugs can be pretty annoying sometimes, but I think there is something really satisfying about having an audio setup working fine on Linux. It used to be much more complicated and restrictive 10 or 15 years ago.
Good article series on synthesis:
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/whats-sound>>33831Ah, good shout. Need to toss some money their way, probably for Uhbik 2.
https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/lv2/the packages that require lv2 list is a nice catalog of arch linux plugin packages
i recommend calf, distrho-ports, x42-plugins, and eq10q
You're always gonna suffer if you're trying to replicate professional audio workflows on linux. For basic MIDI sequencing and recording (muh real hardware synths autism) I use Muse because sequencing on Ardour used to suck even more. Made a lot more tracker music (mostly 4 channel mods in milkytracker, some in schism). I want to try out Radium, it's a tracker inspired DAW that's free if you build from source. Total spaghetti clusterfuck shitshow codebase with a bundled python2.
>>34382Not much suffering since Pipewire came out. And even before then, JACK was probably alright. And I'm fine with the smaller plugin ecosystem, especially since my favourite synth, Vital, is Linux native anyways.
>because sequencing on Ardour used to suck even moreFor me, it's alright since I found out how to open the piano roll window. Still a little awkward workflow wise, but eh.
https://manual.ardour.org/working-with-midi/pianoroll-window/ >>34384The suffering was never in the audio server. JACK on alsa plus realtime kernel was always amazing compared to windows. The moment you go for anything under wine whether it's plugins or DAW it's a bad time. The new pianoroll looks good in Ardour, but that wasn't there when I was shopping around for a DAW. I also prefer to have a grid sequencer for my drum machine as well.