audio-plugins-nix

A nix flake providing a home-manager module for VST emulation with yabridge, and a set of packaged audio plugins.

WARNING

These are very proprietary plugins that I'm packaging, and they don't typically allow hosting the plugins yourself. As a result, the download source is often an unstable link. You may encounter incorrect hash errors for certain plugins, or find that others fail to download altogether (Ferric-TDS is, horrifically, downloaded from a google drive link).

example usage

flake.nix:

{
  # add as an input
  inputs.audio-plugins.url = "github:the-argus/audio-plugins-nix";
  
  # add audio-plugins to flake inputs like so
  outputs = {self, nixpkgs, home-manager, audio-plugins, ... }@inputs:
  {
    # and finally add the module to home-manager imports, and mpkgs to extraSpecialArgs:
    homeConfigurations.${username} = home-manager.lib.homeManagerConfiguration {
      configuration = {pkgs, ...}: {
        imports = [ audio-plugins.homeManagerModules.${pkgs.system} ];
      };
      extraSpecialArgs = inputs // {
        mpkgs = audio-plugins.mpkgSets.${pkgs.system};
      };
    };
  };
}

configuration examples

Minimal home manager configuration example:

{ pkgs, mpkgs, ...}:
{
  programs.yabridge = {
    enable = true;
    plugins = with mpkgs; [
      effects.ferric-tds
      synths.ct0w0
    ];

    nativePlugins = with mpkgs.native; [
      effects.fire-bin
      synths.dexed
    ];
  };
}

MAXIMUM configuration example (where unstable is an import of nixpkgs-unstable):

{ pkgs, unstable, mpkgs, ... }:
{
  programs.yabridge = {
    enable = true;
    package = unstable.yabridge;
    ctlPackage = unstable.yabridgectl;
    plugins = with mpkgs; [
      effects.ferric-tds
    ]
    ++ mpkgs.sets.heckscaper
    ++ mpkgs.sets.TAL;

    nativePlugins =
      let
        # plugins packaged in audio-plugins-nix
        internal = with mpkgs.native; [
          effects.fire-bin
          synths.dexed
        ];
        # plugins packaged in nixpkgs already
        unwrapped = with unstable; [
          ChowPhaser ChowKick ChowCentaur CHOWTapeModel
          airwindows-lv2 odin2 tunefish
        ];
        # these plugins use mpkgs.lib.wrapPluginPath to only copy
        # the folder containing the vst binary, and exclude things
        # like the standalone version.
        wrapped = with mpkgs.lib; [
          (wrapPluginPath pkgs.zam-plugins "lib/vst")
          (wrapPluginPath pkgs.surge-XT "lib/vst3")
          (wrapPluginPath pkgs.oxefmsynth "lib/lxvst")
          (wrapPluginPath unstable.cardinal "lib")
        ];
      in
      internal ++ wrapped ++ unwrapped
      # all the TAL plugins that run natively on linux
      ++ mpkgs.sets.native.TAL;

    extraPath = "${homeDirectory}/.wine/drive_c/yabridge";
  };
}

extraPath is an additional, optionally out-of-store path, and will only take effect if you run yabridgectl sync after building your HM configuration. It is intended to point to a folder in your users wine prefix where you install plugins that cannot be packaged with nix. Another example might be /home/user/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Steinberg.

Bringing emulated VSTs into your DAW

Add the path previously specified in extraPath to your DAWs VST plugin search path, as well as ~/.vst, or the directory you specified with programs.yabridge.vstDirectory.