Hi,
I’m using MG 3 and want to point it at my VST folders. It says it has to be run standalone to add the VST folder locations, but when I run it standalone, I cannot get past the ‘Not receiving any audio from the interface’ screen, when all I want to do is add the VST folder locations and then run it as a plugin again.
I have a setup where I can’t have the interface ready for standalone mode. Is there any way to get the VST folders added in without an audio interface present at the point of running standalone?
That must be a very strange setup! I assume you are on windows. What if you close the application that is occupying the interface and its driver to run MG3 in standalone and to add the paths? If you don’t want to do that you can still open MG3 with a open source driver like ASIO4all, KoordASIO or FlexASIO.
Below screen shot shows Cubase exclusively using the connected audio interface but MG3 standalone can still be opened with a ASIO driver mentioned above.
Yes, that worked. I tried ASIO and it then loaded the interface. Thanks.
The actual VST I am trying to load is DecentSampler into MG3. Has anyone got that working?
I have! I am on a Mac, but that shouldn’t make any difference. It works fine. Dond forget to go into FILE/INSTRUMENT SETTINGS to enable MPE (and change the MPE channels to 2-7)
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Thanks for all your help. I’ll explain a bit more about what I’m trying to achieve here: I have been a long-time user of MG2 and I successfully run it under Bottles on Linux. Same with MG3, and I thought I’d try getting any other native windows VST3’s I use to load into my MG3 VST3 plugin instance, so that I can use the ‘fly-leads’ to connect to parameters of those VST3 synths in MG3 directly.
It all works really well, except when I try to directly load other VST3’s inside MG3. In standalone it is fine - It can see the other VST3’s in Windows Program Files\Common\VST3, and it can load them into the interface and use them fine. However, as a plugin, MG3 no longer sees any of those other VST3’s. It just shows ‘Found 0 VSTs’ under Plugins.
When you initially load MG3 as plugin in your host application you should get a message in the patch selection window saying “Click here to scan for plugins”. If you hit that message MG3 will scan custom folders etc. and load all VST’s as you specified earlier in the standalone mode.
Thanks. I tried that but it still hasn’t found any of them.
Please check the data folder if you have entries under “Plugins” and “Plugins64”. There should be a text file for each VST, this file is empty but it’s an evidence that MG3 scanned it. The first file “screening.txt” shows the locations of the scanned VST’s.
Yes, these show up in there after scanning (standalone):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<PLUGIN name="DecentSampler" format="VST3" category="Instrument|Synth"
manufacturer="Decidedly" version="1.12.5" file="C:\users\steamuser\AppData\Roaming\JamOrigin\VST3\DecentSampler.vst3"
uniqueId="dbfba9a1" isInstrument="1" fileTime="19398b086f0" infoUpdateTime="1939ba04deb"
numInputs="0" numOutputs="0" isShell="0" hasARAExtension="0"
uid="7774ff59"/>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<PLUGIN name="Soundpaint" format="VST3" category="Instrument|Synth" manufacturer="Soundpaint"
version="3.2" file="C:\users\steamuser\AppData\Roaming\JamOrigin\VST3\Soundpaint.vst3\Contents\x86_64-win\Soundpaint.vst3"
uniqueId="f3d48c05" isInstrument="1" fileTime="1932fbe6860" infoUpdateTime="1939ba04eec"
numInputs="0" numOutputs="2" isShell="0" hasARAExtension="0"
uid="b7f88e75"/>
And a screening.txt (0 bytes).
BUT, I just noticed I have a steamuser and a luke user in my Wine Bottle, and both have JamOrigin appdata! So I tried copying the Plugin folder to ‘luke’ and now it sees the plugins when using the MG3 plugin. So for some reason, when run standalone, it uses ‘steamuser’ and as a plugin it uses ‘luke’
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For anyone interested in MG3 on Linux:
Soda 9 has a bug where it creates a new ‘steamuser’ when it should rely on the existing user name, so MG3 will write into different AppData folders on Windows for standalone and plugin modes.
To get round this, use Soda 8 for now, which works well.
You also need the ASIO driver present, just to get the standalone MG3 to run (to add the VST’s in).
I can confirm that VST3 loading now works in MG3 on Linux (Using a Wine Bottle and Soda 8).
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thank you for posting your linux solutions. can you elaborate on the advantages / disadvantages of bottles as compared to running in ‘standard’ wine?
Bottles offers a better UI and a ‘packaged’ experience, where you can keep apps in different Windows environments, with different set-ups, and also snapshot those as you go to ensure you don’t break anything. It gets better with every release. You can also use Carla on Linux to load native Windows VST’s from your Bottles seamlessly, and in Ubuntu Studio you have the pipewire audio now, which is extremely low latency. There are also some very good (free) Linux synths and effects as native Linux plugins, and Ardour is an excellent DAW that ships with Ubuntu Studio.