psycha0s / Airwave

About

Airwave is a wine based VST bridge, that allows for the use of Windows 32- and 64-bit VST 2.4 audio plugins with Linux VST hosts. Due to the use of shared memory, only one extra copying is made for each data transfer. Airwave also uses the XEMBED protocol to correctly embed the plugin editor into the host window.

Requirements

• wine, supporting XEMBED protocol (versions greater than 1.7.19 were tested, but earlier versions also may work). To solve the blank window issue you can apply this patch to wine.
• libmagic
• Qt5 for the airwave manager application (GUI)

Building the source

1. Install the required packages: multilib-enabled GCC, cmake, git, wine, Qt5, libmagic.

• Arch Linux (x86_64) example:

  sudo pacman -S gcc-multilib cmake git wine qt5-base
  

• Fedora 20 (x86_64) example:

  sudo yum -y install gcc-c++ git cmake wine wine-devel wine-devel.i686 file file-devel libX11-devel libX11-devel.i686 qt5-devel glibc-devel.i686 glibc-devel
  

• Ubuntu 14.04 (x86_64) example:

  sudo apt-get install git cmake gcc-multilib g++-multilib libx11-dev libx11-dev:i386 qt5-default libmagic-dev
  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install wine1.7 wine1.7-dev
  

2. Get the VST Audio Plugins SDK from Steinberg. I cannot distribute it myself due to the license restrictions.

3. Unpack the VST SDK archive. Further I'll assume that you have unpacked it in your home directory: ${HOME}/VST3\ SDK.

4. Clone the airwave GIT repository

git clone https://github.com/phantom-code/airwave.git

5. Go to the airwave source directory and execute the following commands:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Release" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/airwave -DVSTSDK_PATH=${HOME}/VST3\ SDK ..
make
sudo make install

Of course, you can change the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX as you like.

Usage

1. Run the airwave-manager
2. Press the "Create link" button on the toolbar.
3. Select desired wine loader and wine prefix in the appropriate combo boxes.
4. Enter a path to VST plugin DLL file in the "VST plugin" field (you can use the "Browse" button for convenience). Note, that the path is relative to the selected wine prefix.
5. Enter a "Link location" path (the directory, where your VST host looks for the plugins).
6. Enter a link name, if you don't like the auto-suggested one.
7. Select a desired log level for this link. The higher the log level, the more messages you'll receive. The 'default' log level is a special value. It corresponds to the 'Default log level' value from the settings dialog. In most cases, the 'default' log level is the right choice. For maximum performance do not use a higher level than 'trace'.
8. Press the "OK" button. At this point, your VST host should be able to find a new plugin inside of the "Link location" directory.

Note: After you have created the link you cannot move/rename it with a file manager. All updates have to be done inside the airwave-manager. Also, you should update your links after updating the airwave itself. This could be achived by pressing the "Update links" button.

Under the hood

The bridge consists of four components:

• Plugin endpoint (airwave-plugin.so)
• Host endpoint (airwave-host-{arch}.exe.so and airwave-host-{arch}.exe launcher script)
• Configuration file (${XDG_CONFIG_PATH}/airwave/airwave.conf)
• GUI configurator (airwave-manager)

When the airwave-plugin is loaded by the VST host, it obtains its absolute path and use it as the key to get the linked VST DLL from the configuration. Then it starts the airwave-host process and passes the path to the linked VST file. The airwave-host loads the VST DLL and works as a fake VST host. Starting from this point, the airwave-plugin and airwave-host act together like a proxy, translating commands between the native VST host and the Windows VST plugin.

Known issues

• Due to a bug in wine, there is some hacking involved when embedding the editor window. There is a chance that you get a black window instead of the plugin GUI. Also some areas might not update correctly when increasing the window size. You can workaround this issue by patching wine with this patch.

Compatibility

The following list is not complete. It contains only plugins, that have been tested by me or by people, who sent me a report. Please note about d2d1.dll mentioned in the list: currently I know that only one version of d2d1.dll is working:
version: 6.1.7601.17514
size: 827904 bytes
md5 hash: 3e0a1bf9e17349a8392455845721f92f
If you will get success with another version, please contact me and I will update this information.