Install Wine-TKG to improve Windows VST plugin performance on Arch Linux

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 11:13:58 +0200

I do all of my production work on Arch-based Linux systems these days. This is generally a pleasent experience since Reaper started supporting native Linux builds and yabridgectl made bridging Windows VST Plugins quite breezy and effective. Once setup correctly, this offers a performance experience and workflow that I think is quite close to native.

One advice that I kept hearing again and again though was to install wine (the Wine program that lets you use Windows software on Linux) using wine-tkg, a customized build system for installing. The TKG system makes it easy to add patches during installation that increases performance and was, as far as I can tell, made for gamers who wanted to squeeze the best possible performance out of Linux systems (thanks, gamers!). The main patch we are interestd in here is the one that adds support for fsync which uses some kernel trickery to reduce cpu usage. The increased performance is relevant for audio work as well (see this post for performance results using yabridge on Ubuntu).

How to install Windows VST Plugins on Arch Linux and Manjaro

Fri, 02 Oct 2020 12:20:40 +0200

One of the big hurdles for me when switching from a Mac based audio setup was the potential loss of access to my expensive collection of VST plugins (because a lot of developers still ignore the Linux platform as if it was 1995 even though it has never been easier to make and release cross platform plugins). Little did I know that almost all of them would run just fine on Linux using the wine Windows compatibility layer and the yabridge or linvst VST plugin bridging software.

Vst on Mads Kjeldgaard — Composer and Sound Artist

Install Wine-TKG to improve Windows VST plugin performance on Arch Linux

How to install Windows VST Plugins on Arch Linux and Manjaro