JackLab/Ardour with VST

From openSUSE

HOWTO: Build ardour2 with VST support on jacklab/openSUSE 10.1/10.2/10.3

You can do all of this as normal user, except installing the generated rpms.

For 10.1 users, some additional steps are necessary as mentioned below.

For 10.0, even more steps might be necessary, I can't verify that right now so please post to the jacklab forum or contact us at #jacklab on irc.

You can install both ardour2 and ardour 0.99.3. Ardour2 creates backups of ardour 0.9.x session files under a name like "<session-1>.ardour".

Currently it is not possible to have a plain and a vst-enabled rpm version of ardour2 installed at the same time.

DISCLAIMER:

THE RESULTING BINARY RPM IS ONLY FOR PERSONAL USE! IT'S ILLEGAL TO DISTRIBUTE THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

We from jacklab want to help our userbase to legally obtain a working ardour2/vst install, but license issues force us to do it in such a way now. sorry!

1. Get the sources

Open a terminal window and cd to a directory where you want to keep the downloads. (our example user stays at his home)

a) ardour source rpm

 snafu@jad:~/> wget http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/jacklab/SUSE-10.2/RPMS/src/ardour2-2.4.1-0.jacklab.1.src.rpm

b) VST SDK 2.3

URL: http://www.steinberg.de/331+M52087573ab0.html

Proceed to the license agreement page, At the bottom, choose "I AGREE (Download Version 2.3)"

Download the file to your working directory.

 snafu@jad:~/> unzip vst_sdk2_3.zip
 snafu@jad:~/> rm vstsdk2.3.dmg vstsdk2.3.sit vst_sdk2_3.zip

c) (only SUSE 10.1 users) Download and install glib2:

 snafu@jad:~/> wget http://people.jacklab.net/edogawa/files/10.1/rpms/glib2-2.12.3-23.i586.rpm
 snafu@jad:~/> wget http://people.jacklab.net/edogawa/files/10.1/rpms/glib2-devel-2.12.3-23.i586.rpm
 snafu@jad:~/> wget http://people.jacklab.net/edogawa/files/10.1/rpms/glib2-doc-2.12.3-23.i586.rpm

Install as root:

 snafu@jad:~/> su -c "rpm -U glib2.*.rpm"

2. Install build requirements

Most of the needed devel packages missing on the openSUSE dvd/cd edition, so you have to setup the yast installer for the internet installation source (openSUSE OSS repository).

a) compiler environment

Go to yast2/install software choose the filter Patterns (Schemata)

Check the box for the pattern Development/Basis Development (Entwicklung/Grundlegende Entwicklung)

Choose the filter Search (Suchen)

Search for "scons" and mark it for installation

Same for "update-desktop-files"

b) devel packages:

Like above, search for "-devel" and mark:

alsa-devel, jack-devel, curl-devel, gettext-devel, libxml2-devel, libxslt-devel, libart_lgpl-devel, libsamplerate-devel, raptor-devel, liblrdf-devel, gtk2-devel(which pulls in pango-devel, atk-devel, cairo-devel), glib2-devel, boost-devel, libsndfile-devel, liblo-devel, gtkmm2-devel, libgnomecanvas-devel, wine-devel, fftw3-threads fftw3-devel

Click "Accept", also accept any automatic selections and watch yast installing the changes.

3. Build and install ardour2 from src.rpm

 snafu@jad:~/> rpm -i ardour2-2.4.1-0.jacklab.1.src.rpm
 snafu@jad:~/> cp vstsdk2.3.zip /usr/src/packages/SOURCES
 snafu@jad:~/> cd /usr/src/packages/SPECS
 snafu@jad:/usr/src/packages/SPECS> rpmbuild -ba ardour2.spec

After unpacking, scons starts and presents you with a very personal question which you hopefully know how to answer. ;)

Have a coffee, or five of them, or maybe start dl'ing VSTs. If everything goes well, rpmbuild finishes by writing new binary, debug and src rpms and cleaning up the buildroot directory.

Congratulations! You have a working ardour2/VST binary, which you now can install:

 snafu@jad:/usr/src/packages/SPECS> su -c rpm -i ../RPMS/i586/ardour2-2.4.1-0.jacklab.1.i586.rpm

4. Clean up the rpm build tree:

 snafu@jad:/usr/src/packages/SPECS> cd ../SOURCES/
 snafu@jad:/usr/src/packages/SOURCES> rm -R ../BUILD/ardour-2.4.1/
 snafu@jad:/usr/src/packages/SOURCES> rm ardour*

And, after having saved a copy of the vstsdk for your future ardour2 updates:

 snafu@jad:/usr/src/packages/SOURCES> rm vstsdk2.3.zip

5. Dealing with VST plugins locations

The environment variables VST_PLUGINS and/or VST_PATH can be set up so that they point to several vst plugin dirs of your choice. Ardour2 looks at both variables, in this order, and if neither is set ardour2 searches /usr/local/lib/vst and /usr/lib/vst.

To avoid the need to become root whenever you want to add a plugin, you can use one of the two strategies below:

a) don't touch the variables, and set up a symlink to your ~/vst

As root, create a symlink from your home to the system dir:

 snafu@jad:~/> su -c "ln -s /home/snafu/vst /usr/lib/vst"

Now you can, as normal user, copy any vst dlls to your ~/vst/ to make them available systemwide.

b) set up VST_PLUGINS and/or VST_PATH

Most other apps only look at VST_PATH.

To see if the variable is set:

 snafu@jad:~/> echo $VST_PATH

Set it up to point at your plugin dirs, like usual with colons as path seperators:

 snafu@jad:~/> export VST_PATH=/home/snafu/vst/effects:/home/snafu/vst/instruments:/usr/lib/vst

To make this permanent put the "export VST_PATH=..." statement in your ~/.bashrc, using a text editor.

Restart X to let your desktop recognize the changes.

To unset the variable:

 snafu@jad:~/> unset $VST_PATH

and remove the export... line from .bashrc

If ardour2 sees VST dlls for the first time, it creates corresponding .fst files. beta10 crashes while doing that, after having written a few .fsts. Therefore you will need to restart ardour until it has processed all of them...

6. Setting up a MIME type for *.ardour session files (in KDE)

In konqueror, right-click/Properties on a .ardour file

Click at the tool icon at the right of "Type:"

In the lower field "Priority of executing programs", press "Add..."

Type "ardourvst" or select Multimedia/Recording/Ardour2/VST

If you want to read ardour's messages, there's an option to run it from a terminal window, and an additional checkbox to keep that window open after program exit.

Press OK here and in the previous dialog.

Now you can click a session file and ardour will fire up and load it.