[Linuxsampler-devel] State of Linuxsampler on macOS and Apple Silicon

[TJ L. <tjl...@ma...>]

Hi, I just wanted to check in on the state of LinuxSampler on macOS and Apple Silicon. To my knowledge there is no way to run LinuxSampler on a recent version of macOS or an Apple Silicon machine.

My question is, has anyone successfully managed to do this? And if so, how?

Here’s a semi-exhaustive list of my findings trying to use LinuxSampler on an M4 Mac Mini Pro running macOS Sequoia 15.7.4

- AU plugin: This plugin will not scan properly in almost all DAWs except for Reaper. Although Reaper is able to scan the plugin, it cannot open it. All other DAWs I’ve tried such as Logic and Plogue Bidule the plugin fails to scan properly.

- VST2 plugin: No DAW I have tried properly scans the VST2 plugin so I can’t test whether it works. I’ve tried recent wrappers as well including this one, which unfortunately did not work even though it can load older plugins such as the Camel Audio VST2 plugins.

https://github.com/mannixsquared/vst-wrapper


Graphical Front Ends:

- QSampler: The latest build will not load due to not being able to load QtSvg.

"Library not loaded: QtSvg.framework/Versions/5/QtSvg”

QtSvg has been installed via homebrew as well as Qt@5. However, QSampler still can’t find it.

Previous builds of QSampler would not work unless you symlinked the latest libgig dylib file and renamed it to an older version (e.g. symlink libgig.11.dylib and rename it to libgig.10.dylib)

- Fantasia: The Fantasia version that installs with the latest build will only run if you right-click the app, go to Show Package Contents and navigate to Contents/MacOS/Fantasia and open the jar file directly. The Universal Java Application Stub trick from a few years back where you renamed the current JavaApplicationStub and replaced it with the Universal one no longer works.

The self-contained Java version released here:

https://github.com/grigoriliev/jsampler-fantasia/releases

will launch if you unquarantine the app, but the LinuxSampler backend needs to be started manually or you will get an error message saying the backend cannot be launched. This does not happen when running the jar file included with the build downloads.

When launching the jar file directly or the self-contained version, coremidi and coreaudio devices can be assigned. However, although midi input is received to a loaded instrument, Fantasia will not play anything out the audio device, even though the assignments are correct. The built-in Fantasia keyboard shows the instrument is triggering as well but again no sound is sent out the Coreaudio device (I tried several). Therefore I cannot test if an instrument can be played in Fantasia standalone.


Most importantly, without a working updated AU or VST, there doesn’t seem to be a way to use Linuxsampler via a DAW on macOS. If Fantasia or QSampler correctly played out a CoreAudio device, one could use a virtual midi port to trigger the instruments and then use a Netaudio AU to send back to the DAW. However, this is much less convenient than sending the audio from Fantasia or QSampler directly back into the plugin/DAW as it has previously done - and still does on Windows and Linux - as well as launching Fantasia when the plugin is instantiated.

I realize this is a pretty niche user base, especially on MacOS. However, there is currently no other way to play gig instruments and it really has been a fantastic tool in the past. For someone like me with a large amount of custom giga libraries, it would be really great to see this working again on latest Macs/Apple Silicon. If there’s any more information I can provide, please let me know.

Best,

TJ Lindgren