Old 07-29-2020, 12:09 PM   #1
Glennbo
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So I decided to install Surge since I'll be building my new AMD 3700X tomorrow, and the .deb installer completed without error, but no synthesizer shows up in REAPER. Only the Surge Effects Bank shows up. This is on Xubuntu 18.04, and I can see in the .vst3 folder there is both a .so for the synth and another one for the FX.

Edit: Well I tried the older version from KX Studio and nothing shows up in REAPER from it. I've decided to blow this off for now, since I will be knee deep in building, then setting up my new DAW tomorrow and in reality, I don't need another synth anyway.
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Old 07-29-2020, 04:57 PM   #2
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The latest Surge deb file (and previous one from February) both work on Xubuntu 20.04 and Mint 20.04. I think I had also installed a previous version on Xubuntu 19.10. I don't think I ever ran a distro based on Ubuntu 18.04 though (since I started with MX Linux and used that for a while before moving on); the minimum I'd have used would've been 18.10.

It's a very good synth and uses low CPU at that. If you can get it working, you'll probably appreciate it.
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Old 07-29-2020, 05:05 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JamesPeters View Post
The latest Surge deb file (and previous one from February) both work on Xubuntu 20.04 and Mint 20.04.

It's a very good synth and uses low CPU at that. If you can get it working, you'll probably appreciate it.
Thanks James. I'll have to try later because the machine I'm on now, won't be in service for much longer. When I get my parts for the new machine tomorrow, I'll have to yank the SSDs, HDD, video card, and power supply and move them to a new case for the new machine.
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Old 07-29-2020, 05:23 PM   #4
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The Surge deb install did require adding some cursor and font packages (2 small packages that it told me about, then pulled in after I ok-ed it) but otherwise I was running a mostly "stock" Mint 20.04 XFCE. I guess I also have "additional codecs" package as well from the distro's initial install. Anyway I suspect 18.04 has some older package of something (GCC, who knows) which Surge doesn't quite jive with. A number of plugins made in the last few years have been made targeted to a base beyond 18.04, so it wouldn't surprise me.

Surge covers a lot of ground, and it improved in its last release in some ways that will be fairly noticeable if you make patches. I could use Surge instead of many other synths, especially those ones suited to 80s sounds (and more). Even if I were going to use it for those sounds, it's capable of what those synths do but also has a lot more flexibility, a better UI, and lower CPU than some of the most "miserly" synth plugins I've used (but that's dependent on the patch itself of course).
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Old 07-29-2020, 06:07 PM   #5
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If the new machine will boot on my existing SSD, I'll stay on 18.04 until it expires in April 2021, but I may have to go to 20.04 if it won't boot a drive that was setup with a different brand of CPU, different chipset, and totally different motherboard.

I made an identical clone of my SSD boot drive to an older and identical sized HDD so I can experiment initially to see what it will do. If it blows up, it will be on a copy of the real drive.
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Old 07-30-2020, 08:38 AM   #6
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Hmmm, that sounds like the vst3 .so file ended up in a different location than the one set in Reaper. It happened to me at some point with other Vstis, in Ubuntu Studio. Right now, in Mint 20, I have both the vsti and the effects bank on /usr/lib/vst3 (latest 1.7 version). Do a search with Catfish or whatever you use for another vst3 folder somewhere else, I'd say...
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Old 07-30-2020, 09:02 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Soli Deo Gloria View Post
Hmmm, that sounds like the vst3 .so file ended up in a different location than the one set in Reaper. It happened to me at some point with other Vstis, in Ubuntu Studio. Right now, in Mint 20, I have both the vsti and the effects bank on /usr/lib/vst3 (latest 1.7 version). Do a search with Catfish or whatever you use for another vst3 folder somewhere else, I'd say...
The newest 1.7 version put the VSTs in my home .vst3 folder, but the older one I downloaded from FalkTX installed only the synth to /usr/lib/vst3 and to /usr/lib/vst. I guess the effects part hadn't been added yet in that version.

I just tracked my parts for the new machine, and they are out for delivery, so I'll be gutting my current machine and moving all the drives, power supply, and video card over later today. Once I get the new machine up and running stable, I'll have another go at installing Surge. I liked the video with Roger Linn playing it with his weird touchscreen midi controller.

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Old 02-14-2021, 06:18 PM   #8
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Late to this almost-zombie thread, but I just installed Surge on my 18x-based linux (Linux Lite, which is Ubuntu based) and after adding the right VST3 entry to the plugins path it worked perfectly. This makes me really happy, because I've used Surge quite a bit on my main music machine, which is a Windows OS. I just wanted something that would do better than ReaSynth, but Surge is a real synth in every respect. Since I don't have a midi interface on the linux computer, it's really only for playback and practicing (I'm a guitar player and it's nice to have chords to play to sometimes), but I'm quite pleased, after reading this thread, to see that it works on my system. And of course, I can create things on the Windows computer using Surge and then port them over to the linux box.
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Old 02-16-2021, 09:15 PM   #9
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Just a quick FYI about Surge; There is a new version 1.8.1 that has a *bunch* of new presets and a gorgeous new theme! (the old theme is still available, if you prefer)
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Old 02-17-2021, 10:49 AM   #10
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Yeah, that's what I have on both of my machines. I like the new theme, too. Surge is quite powerful, and in some ways easy for me to understand. In others, not so much, but I'm not very good at programming these things. There are some wonderful patches though, you're right.
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Old 02-18-2021, 08:31 AM   #11
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Installed Surge today and it seems very nice indeed. I'm not into the "analogue" sound making yet, but the presests sound mighty fine to me. I've used Zynfusion/ZynAddSubFX for a while now and Surge seems prettier with a better interface.

(Reaper 6.23.0215 dev. Will soon try 6.24.rc1)
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Old 09-20-2021, 03:57 AM   #12
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Tried to install the deb package 1.9.0 and it gives errors:


Preparing to unpack ./surge-linux-x64-1.9.0.deb ...
Unpacking surge (1.9.0) over (1.9.0) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of surge:
surge depends on libxcb-cursor0; however:
Package libxcb-cursor0 is not installed.
surge depends on libxcb-util1; however:
Package libxcb-util1 is not installed.
surge depends on fonts-lato; however:
Package fonts-lato is not installed.
surge depends on zenity; however:
Package zenity is not installed.
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Old 09-20-2021, 05:56 AM   #13
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Run 'apt -f install' on a Debian or Ubuntu based Linux distro and all missing packages will be installed.
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Old 09-20-2021, 05:57 AM   #14
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You'll need to install those packages that are missing. They probably should be available in your distro's repository.

Erm, there might be a way to do it automatically, but I'm not quite familiar enough with apt to remember how off the top of my head... But installing them all manually should also work...

EDIT: and swindus replied with the answer while I was writing mine, so just ignore this.
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Old 09-20-2021, 06:36 AM   #15
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Thanks,
I did apt -f install
and it only removed surge

The following packages will be REMOVED:
surge
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.


then trying to install surge again and same problem with dependencies...
Maybe it is not compatible with Debian.
I've tried to install it in Manjaro(my main system is MX Linux based in Debian, but I'm also testing Manjaro on a external drive) and it works.
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Old 09-20-2021, 07:28 AM   #16
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I have it installed on Debian without issues.

You could try installing the missing packages manually, and then install Surge...

Code:
apt install libxcb-cursor0 libxcb-util1 fonts-lato zenity
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Old 09-20-2021, 07:46 AM   #17
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I finally got Surge working while trying to fix the KV1 plugin.

For me, it was libxcb-cursor.so.0 that was missing.

https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.ph...4&postcount=11

.
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Old 09-20-2021, 09:05 AM   #18
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It's in the official repo in Manjaro.

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend running a distro based on Debian stable. If you want the latest software or hardware support, you'll be jumping through hoops like this often.
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Old 09-20-2021, 09:57 AM   #19
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These packages should be available in even pretty ancient Debian versions, though. Just install the packages.
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Old 09-20-2021, 10:17 AM   #20
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yes... I was able to install them except libxcb-util1 which is bot found. But testing in MX Linux 21 beta and it all works. It really seems MX linux 19 is very old. I need to wait for MX 21 release or migrate to Manjaro or Arch Linux. Thanks everyone!
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Old 09-20-2021, 12:14 PM   #21
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Huh, yeah, double checking Debian's repos, it appears libxcb-util1 wasn't added until the most recent stable, which was only released this summer... I assumed it would have worked with slightly older distros, because Surge's documentation claimed it was built on Ubuntu 18.04, but I guess either the documentation is wrong or there's bigger differences between Debian and Ubuntu than I thought...
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Old 09-20-2021, 12:22 PM   #22
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This isn't the first time I've seen this sort of thing with Debian stable. It lags behind other common distros. It's always possible to make it work, but it'll require the user to be ready to deal with issues like this.
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Old 09-20-2021, 12:44 PM   #23
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Surge works fine on Mint 20.1 (Ubuntu 20.04)
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Old 09-20-2021, 12:48 PM   #24
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JamesPeters View Post
This isn't the first time I've seen this sort of thing with Debian stable. It lags behind other common distros. It's always possible to make it work, but it'll require the user to be ready to deal with issues like this.
Oh, I entirely agree, and I've used Debian testing for ages because it's a little more current. But I'm just confused why it's the issue in this particular case, when Surge is supposedly built on an older version of Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is, of course, a Debian based distro...
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Old 09-20-2021, 01:07 PM   #25
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It's possible issues such as these are under-reported, since most people using Debian stable seem more concerned with "stability" than they are with using newer software or hardware.
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Old 09-20-2021, 01:55 PM   #26
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I'm using Surge in Manjaro right now... I'm nicely setting up Manjaro with all the recommendations, RT kernel etc

I've noticed the LV2 version of Surge doesn't resize with the window, and if you set a manual zoom from the Surge menu, when you close the window and reopen it, it goes back to small 100% zoom, But the VST3 version works well regarding the zoom issue.
Maybe it is a bug to report for REAPER regarding LV2 plugins? or just a Surge LV2 thing?
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Old 09-20-2021, 02:15 PM   #27
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Some LV2 seem to remember their size after resizing, and some don't. I mentioned this as an issue for LSP Plugins, and it seems to be about how the LV2 is made plus also an issue in the LV2 specification which leads to this (vagueness about defining such things).

Anyway Surge LV2 has some technical limitations that the dev team pointed out here (at the bottom of the page). Besides that I've noticed the LV2 version only has 2 outs whereas the VST3 has 6 outs.
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