Plugins
OOM supports LV2 (effects), and Ladspa effect plugins.
Note: The LV2 plugin format is going forward at a rapid pace. SLV2 has been replaced with Lilv. We run OOM with SLV2 NOT installed, and use the new Lilv lib instead with success. If you have SLV2 installed, OOM will use it, but your mileage may vary, and as SLV2 will no longer be developed, we won't support any SLV2 oddities that may occur.
Please Note. The CALF plugin team have been providing Linux users with excellent LV2 plugins. We've had a report that a couple of the older versions are a little problematic at the moment. The latest git builds are being used at OpenOctave, and they work fine. You can find the git repository at:
git clone http://repo.or.cz/r/calf.git
This is their development repo, and occasionally the build will fail. Your packaging specialist will most likely know how to sort this out.
Please ask (nicely) your distro packaging specialist if they can update their CALF packages, if their current version is a bit dated. Thanks.
This page contains the following sections:
- Add a Plugin
- Plugin Menu
- Plugin Manager
- IR LV2 Plugin
- Notes
The options for adding plugins to your project, using an Audio track as an example, is as follows:
Select an Audio Track. Select the FX tab. Rightclick on an entry in the list, and a menu will appear.
Note that you can add a plugin to any Audio Track or Buss type in the Mixer or MixerDock as well.
- New or Change add a new plugin, or replace an existing plugin in the slot you've chosen.
- Move Up This action moves the plugin up the list order
- Move Down This action moves the plugin down the list order
- Remove Removes the plugin from the slot
- Bypass Bypasses the plugin, disabling the effect or effects.
- Show GUI Shows the OOM created GUI
- Show native GUI For those plugins that support it, like some LV2 and DSSI plugins, this action shows the plugin's native GUI.
- Save Preset Saves the preset for the plugin.
When New or Change is selected, a new browser dialog opens listing the LV2, and Ladspa plugins correctly installed on your system.
Next to each listed plugin is the definition True or False. If the Audio track type you're adding the plugin to is Stereo, then all stereo capable plugins will show as True, and mono or multichannel plugins will show as False. If the Audio track type is mono, then all those plugins built to be used as Mono, will appear as True.
You can narrow your search further with the 4 radio buttons on the left of the dialog, and the text editable search box above them. You can also refined your search using the plugin format type dropdown menu at the top left of the dialog.
When you've chosen your plugin, and added it to your track, you can choose the GUI type you want from the FX rightclick menu.
At the OpenOctaveProject, we worked hard to build an LV2 framework that would host as many LV2 effects plugins as possible, despite differences in plugin construction, and GUI toolkit developer preferences.
For the OOP pipeline, we chose the IR LV2 plugin as part of our setup, as our convolution plugin of choice.
The IR LV2 was built by Tom Szilagyi as an LV2 host and "player" for convolution samples, and it does the job well, with a decent set of convolution tools in its interface.
We use the IR LV2 in an Aux Buss, which opens it to all Audio tracks and Busses in an OOM project, and with some tweaking and experimentation from the user, can do a decent job with different styles of music. The controls have proved precise, and features like Stereo Width, and Pre-Delay, help make what might be a challenging task during mixing a lot more accessible to users. The layout is easy to understand, doesn't use excessive resources when running.
Convolution Samples can loaded from bookmarked directories, which the user can assemble from their own collection of IRs, and samples will appear in a visual representation in the top panel.
More about the IR LV2 Plugin can be found here:
Plugins added to Audio track types are also added to your Automation list in the corresponding track header. The parameters you can automate in a track depends on the plugin, and your mileage may, and probably will, vary. Some plugins expose all their parameters, regardless of the potential state of those parameters for automation.
We can only suggest you experiment with the plugins you want to use in OOM, and forward your experiences, or potential challenges, to the plugin developer. We'd like to hear about the good ones that work well for you, so we can share that information with other OOM users.
We are particularly interested in getting together a list of reliable LV2 plugins that work well with OOM, without problems.
So far we've had a reasonably good run with the latest Git build of Calf LV2 plugins (and their native GUIs), after some effort we have the IR LV2 plugin working ok (with it's native GUI), and Invada plugins (with their native GUIs).
Important
OOM does not yet handle LV2 synth type plugins, or midi plugins. At the moment we're supporting Audio only LV2 effects.