[64studio-devel] VST and VSTi How-to (for 32-bit systems)

[Daniel James]

Hi Dave,

> The VST SDK 2.3 was not written with 
> 64-bit platforms in mind

Right, you need VST 2.4 and ASIO 2.2 for that, but it seems most of the 
proprietary plugin manufacturers haven't gone that far yet. Native 
Instruments supports Windows Vista now, but only the 32-bit version.

(Interesting to note that from browser statistics, Vista, OS X and Linux 
all have similar market share on the desktop, in the low single figures. 
Windows XP still has over 80% market share, which I interpret to mean 
that most Windows users are in no hurry to try Vista).

> If you do manage to build a 64-bit chain for the VST support you'll only 
> be able to run 64-bit plugins. The Wine 64-bit build is very specific 
> about its application, it will not run 32-bit binaries.

Yes, we need the Wine side of things to stay 32-bit for now. But 
nspluginwrapper proves that a 32-bit plugin can run in a 64-bit host 
(albeit without the added complication of Windows API support).

> However, there is another (partial) solution. I installed the wine and 
> libwine packages for 0.9.34 (amd64) from 
> http://packages.debian.org/etch-backports/ and I can now run Reaper with 
> some VSTs. I do not claim to know how or why this works. Note that only 
> the target machine is amd64, the build is actually for 32-bits. I assume 
> it's making use of the emul32 stuff.

It must be, otherwise it would refuse to run. This does sound the most 
promising angle for now - we have all the packages (for the Linux side) 
in our i386 repository. There's also the possibility that we could 
package the LGPL version of VSTHost for Windows somehow.

> Wine will not currently compile on 64Studio, the package 
> gcc-4.1-multilib needs installed along with its devel package.

We'll have to look into that. We have packages of 0.9.44 in the testing 
branch, in the meantime.

> If someone does master the 
> 64-bit VST tango, I hope they'll illustrate the steps for the rest of 
> us. :)

Naturally - maybe we can get some of those paper cut-out footprints that 
you stick on the floor ;-)

Cheers!

Daniel