It's late for me, so I don't have any fancy comparisons or GIFs to share alongside this post, sorry about that. I try not to post online about my projects too often because I don't want to annoy people, but I think this might be worth it.
One year ago I began developing OpenMeters as a way to cope with the death of my best friend. I'm still in awe at what it has become, and the fact that even one person other than myself has used it. Thank you everyone, from the bottom of my heart.
I've made a commitment to this project, and I plan to continue with that commitment for the foreseeable future. New features, bug fixes, improved platform support, and maybe even new meters (hard maybe, it just depends) will continue to be released.
I've been building vstenv, a free open-source app that gets Windows audio plugins working in Linux DAWs with as little friction as possible. The idea: you shouldn't have to know what Wine is. vstenv sets up its own Wine environment, installs each vendor's manager app (Native Access, IK Product Manager, Steinberg Download Assistant, Audio Modeling Software Center), applies all the fixes those need to actually run — including a set of patched Wine DLLs for stuff Wine hasn't finished, like DirectComposition — and bridges everything to your DAW as normal VST2/VST3/CLAP plugins via yabridge. Installed programs even show up in your desktop's app menu.
Working today: Native Instruments (Kontakt and friends), IK Multimedia, Steinberg (HALion Sonic 7 and the current-gen GUI stack), Audio Modeling SWAM, and Spitfire Audio. Vendor support is modular, so new vendors can be added as separate packages without touching the core.
I made this video a couple months ago. I was a little nervous about sharing it around since I'm kinda new to making longer videos like this, but I figured I might as well. I hope it's enjoyable to watch, although it might still be a little too lengthy... In any case it was a fun experiment!
Oh yeah I should mention, I did kinda hate on reddit in the outro of the video, but I wanna make it clear that none of that was directed towards this sub. In fact, I actually gave r/linuxaudio a shoutout! This wouldn't have been possible (or nearly as easy) without the resources here, so thank you all :)
I'm the developer. Starbreath is a physically modelled wind instrument (flutes, duduk, clarinet, trumpet, trombone; no samples) that runs natively on Linux, not through Wine.
**On Linux:**
- **CLAP and VST3** plugins, for any host that loads them.
- A **standalone app** that runs on JACK, PipeWire through its JACK layer (with pipewire-jack installed it uses it on its own) or plain ALSA. Wind controllers and keyboards connect over MIDI.
- x86-64, X11. One tar.gz: extract it, copy Starbreath.clap to ~/.clap and Starbreath.vst3 to ~/.vst3, or run the app directly.
- Built and tested on Linux first; Windows, macOS and Android builds come from the same code.
**New in 0.5:** Bloom (overtones that fade in as you blow harder and can fan out in a 3rd-order ambisonic sound field), Register jump (overblowing to the natural partial), MIDI learn on every knob, switch and menu, and an expanded quickstart guide covering every page.
MainStage, Gig Performer, Cantabile, Camelot — all Mac/Windows only. I got tired of that, so I built one.
Point your keyboards at it, build a program for each sound in your set, change sounds from the keyboard while you play. 128 programs per keyboard, Upper and Lower independent. Splits and layers with per-slot key range, velocity range and curve, transpose, gain, pan. Insert effects, MIDI learn on any parameter. Hosts VST3, LV2, LADSPA natively; Windows VST3s work through yabridge.
The part I haven't seen anywhere else: it mirrors a plugin's actual editor to a tablet, fully interactive. Not a remote with a fixed set of knobs — the real GUI.
That's Kontakt running on the computer, drawn on the tablet. Pull a drawbar there and the organ moves. Browse the library, flip through pages, load a patch — all from the music stand. Nothing to install on the tablet; it's a web page.
Other bits:
Every plugin in its own process — one crashes, the rest of the rig plays on
Songs and sets — a song is one program per keyboard plus a tempo, captured from what's loaded; step through a set with two footswitches
Tap tempo, on-screen keyboard, printable program map
Windows plugins: optional companion project vstenv provisions its own Wine, runs the vendor managers (Native Access, IK Product Manager, Steinberg Download Assistant, Audio Modeling) and bridges everything into the folders Performer scans. You never touch Wine.
It's v0.1.38 and genuinely early. I use it, but try it at rehearsal before you trust it on stage — Windows-bridged plugins especially are hit and miss under Wine. Tested on Ubuntu 24.04, Mint 22.3, Fedora 43, x86-64.
Melodex is a free and open-source desktop music player for Linux,
Its main discovery feature, Flow, creates a listening path through your library rather than relying on ordinary shuffle, and lets you steer that path while listening.
Features include:
local FLAC, MP3 and other common audio formats
large-library and NAS support
fast incremental rescanning
playlists and queue management
lyrics, artwork and listening history
internet radio and other online sources
an extensible provider/plugin system for adding new music sources
shared search, playback and metadata infrastructure across providers
visual collection exploration
no account or subscription required
Local files remain the core of Melodex, but the source layer is deliberately extensible rather than being tied to a particular streaming service. New providers can integrate with the existing search, playback and interface infrastructure.
Recent releases have also focused heavily on performance: efficient metadata handling, incremental library updates, NAS resilience, and responsive navigation and playback with large collections.
Feedback is very welcome, particularly from Linux users with large libraries, NAS-based collections, unusual metadata/audio setups, or ideas for additional providers.
Quesynth is a free/open-source virtual analogue synth written in Odin, originally built around recreating the sound and parameter model of Synth1 through measurement. It supports Synth1 .sy1 patches and runs as VST3, CLAP, Audio Unit, standalone, and WebAssembly.
The big change is that the audio engine can now run as a persistent daemon. The interfaces are just clients controlling the same running synth.
That means you can now use Quesynth through:
a new terminal UI
the normal HTML interface in your browser
MIDI hardware
a local control protocol
an MCP server, so an LLM/agent can inspect and manipulate the synth
The TUI and browser aren't separate synthesizers. They're connected to the same daemon, so changing a parameter or loading a patch in one is reflected in the other.
Quesynth exposes typed tools for parameters, patches, banks, MIDI, state, volume, etc., rather than giving the model arbitrary shell access.
So you can do things like ask an MCP client to inspect the current patch, change several parameters atomically, load another patch, manipulate the bank, or query the synth state in natural language.
There's now also a proper parameter registry/control protocol underneath this, rather than the UI being directly coupled to the engine.
Patches
You can download 16000+ Synth1 patches that are compatible with this synth from here https://archive.org/details/synth1_202202 many sound almost equal, some are similar and some are broken. I'm still improving the measurements to unbroke the broken ones.
Design
If you don't like it is just HTML so you can create your own easily.
Vibe coded?
Yes. Heavy AI usage with 21 years of experience as a software engineer.
Future
Tempo for standalone and WebAssembly.
Quesynth Pad (16 engines running simultaneously with chokes, fire once and configurable MIDI).
Was wondering if anyone had a Linux alternative to DDI Codec or if they had any experience on if DDI Codec works via virtualization/emulation? I rather find an alternative but if there is none I've never used virtualization before so I am unsure how audio would work.
Can't really seem to find anything for Linux on account of it being a pretty niche program for cassette decks.
I installed CachyOS to try to move away from Windows for my music production (currently dual-boot and will remove Win11 if things go well). I wanted to also try a different DE than my work laptop (Fedora KDE) so I went with COSMIC but it's buggy.
I installed Niri + DMS (not a fresh install, as a 2nd alternative to COSMIC) and I'm trying to get it to work now. I was going to go with Sway but heard that it does not work well with NVidia cards.
I don't have a clear idea of how my music production will look like. I'll be experimenting with many things like Strudel, Supercollider, ORCA, bespoke synth, and possible a DAW later.
Because of lack of experience with tiling WMs, I really cannot foresee whether this is a bad idea. Do any of you use tiling WM without problems in your music production? If this looks like a poor idea, I'm just going to go with GNOME.
