PoC Demo: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TiVY8SblXGQ

Hello, Varcain here! In case you missed one of my older posts - I released an open source guitar LV2 plugin host that has working GUIs and it's available at:

https://github.com/Varcain/GuitarRackCraft

original release post: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxaudio/comments/1rg5zup/guitar_rackcraft_android_gplv3_lv2_host_with/

Today I'm happy to share with you a glimpse of what I've been working on lately. Main idea is simple: ability to load Windows VST plugins on an Android phone for some real time guitar doodling fun. It turns out it's possible and it works pretty nicely! Tech details below, there is still a lot of edge cases to cover to enable as many plugins as possible, but the PoC shows this is perfectly doable.

I tested few plugins successfully, for example Lepou ampsims (LeCto, Le456, etc.) but surprisingly enough I was able to also get Kazrog's AmpCraft running (demoed in youtube clip above).

Once this is in good enough shape I plan to integrate a windows VST plugin loader into GuitarRackCraft app so it will be possible to have both native LV2 plugins and WIndows VSTs in same chain.

I know the GUI looks small, it can be remedied by flipping to landscape mode. Also planning to add a magnifier glass feature for such plugins.

Some technical details:

- Patched Wine 10 (will source release once it lands in GuitarRackCraft)

- FEX for x86/64 translation. I initially tried with box64, but it turns out modern Android Qualcomm phones disable 32-bit instructions and because of that box64 based setup was not able to work with 32-bit VST dlls. FEX is able to handle this case nicely. One observation: amd64 plugins work faster than x86 ones under FEX with my phone

- vsthost program running under Wine prefix which is responsible for loading and executing a plugin. Currently one vsthost per plugin (with separated wine prefixes)

- Patched C++ X11 server from GuitarRackCraft for mobile phone friendly plugin gui experience. Turns out it can handle Wine and windows plugin too!

- Plugins which rely on OpenGL/GPU acceleration work, and demoed AmpCraft is a great example of that

- Currently only VST2 (this is my biggest collection of plugins), but VST3 will be added later too

If you like GuitarRackCraft and/or this VST work I would really appreciate you dropping your Google Play Store e-mail address in my DMs. I am trying to publish it on Play Store but need closed testers (14 testers that have app installed from play store for 2 weeks) - this requires me to manually invite testers through their e-mails.