Nostr notes by

Personal anecdote, but I am pretty certain most of the recent CI ...

2026-05-23T17:32:42Z

Personal anecdote, but I am pretty certain most of the recent CI build failures I have seen in the past few weeks in projects of mine have been due to some breakage in GitHub.
It is more than 50% chance, to the point where I don't really care much about failures. It usually means I need to re-run/retry the build at some later point.

If not GitHub, also often it's something being offline or throwing server errors.

Maybe around 5-10% are real issues.

My FOSDEM presentation ia now possible to watch online! 🎉 ...

2026-02-04T07:25:25Z

My FOSDEM presentation ia now possible to watch online! 🎉
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/JYGFRE-modular-in-the-daw/

A small talk about Cardinal's history/beginnings, differences vs Rack Pro and some tips&tricks.

See you all next year again!

A small update on the KXStudio repositories this month(ish). Just ...

2025-10-31T15:57:03Z

A small update on the KXStudio repositories this month(ish).

Just a few updates, but added new "hamburger" distortion plugin.

https://kx.studio/News/?action=view&url=kxstudio-project-update-august-october-2025

Yay for audio plugins under Wayland. Non-embedded type for now, ...

2025-09-05T21:31:14Z

Yay for audio plugins under Wayland.

Non-embedded type for now, but one step at a time we will get there.

Also, today I answered a question I had for a long time...
If an X11 host running under XWayland calls Wayland-native APIs manually, would it be able to load Wayland-UI based plugins?
The answer is yes - Carla running under Qt xcb "platform" can still show Wayland UIs.

The reverse is also true (Qt wayland "platform" with X11 UIs through XWayland)

Future is bright 🌄

Wayland and audio plugins... it's possible! 📸 ...

2025-09-05T17:41:30Z

Wayland and audio plugins... it's possible! 📸

Made a whole new plugin in just a few hours today 🎉 ...

2025-08-08T17:03:11Z

Made a whole new plugin in just a few hours today 🎉

https://github.com/Darkglass-Electronics/anagram-midi-control

It would actually be < 1 hour if I didn't have to fix a few things on the framework first.

It's not really useful for users at all in general, this is just a testing tool for the Darkglass Anagram unit.

But I like to do things openly and there are no secrets on this one - all it does is send out MIDI - so why not have it open?

KXStudio July 2025 project update ...

2025-07-31T19:21:01Z

KXStudio July 2025 project update
https://kx.studio/News/?action=view&url=kxstudio-project-update-july-2025

It is basically:
- J2SC first release, which superseeds Cadence
- Carla 2.5.10 release
- WineASIO 1.3.10 release

If you have not noticed, I have silently abandoned the Cadence ...

2025-07-19T17:12:07Z

If you have not noticed, I have silently abandoned the Cadence project. It was one of my first projects so code quality was/is quite poor.

I do like the JACK configuration tool from it quite a lot and want to keep it, so I have "forked" my own old project, removed a bunch of stuff and made "J2SC" for "JACK 2 Simple Configurator".

https://github.com/falkTX/j2sc

No release just yet, but did a bunch of work on it today and it is close.
Requires PyQt6 to run.

Tentative first 0.0.1 release next week.

Anybody knows someone working at Ableton? Ableton Live crashes ...

2025-07-14T13:13:19Z

Anybody knows someone working at Ableton?

Ableton Live crashes when picking Darkglass Anagram as USB interface because of its odd-number of IO (3 capture, 9 playback).
It expects USB IO to be stereo, but there is no such restriction in the spec afaik

> error: Windows Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION
> info: Exception: Fatal Error: Unhandled exception

Cubase and Reaper work ok with it.

#ableton #abletonlive #usb

Any wayland experienced developers can help out diagnose a crash ...

2025-07-13T19:56:06Z

Any wayland experienced developers can help out diagnose a crash in libwayland-client?

clone https://github.com/falkTX/wayland-audio-plugin-test
make && ./test-crash

(needs quite a few deps because its a test repo, should be obvious to any developer)

valgrind reports in the attached picture.

I suspect the load, unload and load again to be the issue.

Got gtk4 client-side window decoration size details dynamically ...

2025-07-12T00:05:07Z

Got gtk4 client-side window decoration size details dynamically now - https://github.com/falkTX/wayland-audio-plugin-test/blob/51b301ef46fc9d20d96716a3ce1c5589b66344cf/gtk4-host.c#L31-L62

No need for super hacky "render window offline and then fetch position based on pixels", instead it is just:
1. create dummy window
2. fetch its initial size (200x200 on my laptop)
3. add a title bar
4. get title bar size and updated window size
5. x,y offsets are (new size - old size) / 2

picture shows this working nicely, I have an intentional 20px padding around the yellow rectangle

For context: ...

2025-07-10T19:43:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…yrkk
_________________________

For context: https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-news/fl-studio-2025-whats-new-2

Never thought I would see a damn AI chatbot inside a DAW as an ...

2025-07-10T19:41:05Z

Never thought I would see a damn AI chatbot inside a DAW as an official feature 😕

This is not going to stop is it... 😞

Curious thing... Font, window-title-bar and shadow size are ...

2025-07-10T17:45:00Z

Curious thing...
Font, window-title-bar and shadow size are different between gtk3 and gtk4.

This is on a stock Gnome desktop, installed today, no settings changed at all.

They look similar but have their inconsistencies.
Yay for client-side decorations! 🎉 😢

Lazily loading gtk4 symbols in order to create a dummy window ...

2025-07-10T17:40:05Z

Lazily loading gtk4 symbols in order to create a dummy window seems to work.
Also on gtk3.

Bless be wayland subsurfaces! 🙏

Hmmm very usable yes... ...

2025-07-10T15:03:36Z

Hmmm very usable yes...

Yeah I really hate client-side decorations 😡 From top to ...

2025-07-10T14:58:41Z

Yeah I really hate client-side decorations 😡

From top to bottom:

1. Firefox is able to follow Gnome desktop settings, as it uses Gtk on the lower level 👏

2. Konsole being KDE and based on Qt is not Gtk related, just makes assumptions on what decorations should be used

3. Carla being Qt behaves the same

4. Steam does its own thing, but also assumes what decorations should be used

I really thought Qt&KDE apps would behave better 😔

PS: Yes I prefer my window buttons on the left side

I mean, the app can request the compositor to have ...

2025-07-10T14:20:13Z

I mean, the app can request the compositor to have "server-side decorations" but this is treated as optional protocol.
See https://wayland.app/protocols/xdg-decoration-unstable-v1

It is implemented on all major desktops except Gnome 😭

So now all apps need to implement their own decoration, user resizing, etc feels very backwards and wasteful.

The way some compositors implement some features and some not is a bit annoying, but the main features are well supported overall.

Now to get DPF to support wayland... 😁

2 / 2

After a few days writing code and running tests directly with ...

2025-07-10T14:10:25Z

After a few days writing code and running tests directly with wayland APIs... I like it! 👏

It is quite different from X11, but so is doing Windowing and events on macOS and Windows. So it is kinda like another platform altogether.

The way of dealing with "protocols" feels a little weird at first, but I can really appreciate the extensibility provided and a centralized place for them.

So far there is only 1 thing I hate - client-side decorations.

1/2

embedding custom wayland UI stuff on top of gtk3 and gtk4 based ...

2025-07-04T21:45:00Z

embedding custom wayland UI stuff on top of gtk3 and gtk4 based applications works! 🎉

the gtk APIs to get down to the wayland surface are a bit awkward, but at least its accessible.
I tried the same with Qt6 and couldn't find a way to have it return the underlying wl_surface pointer. 🤷

I got an LV2 plugin UI with this setup working, but no hosts to try it out against.
Modifying jalv.gtk3 is likely the easiest path... 🤔

WIP test code dump at https://github.com/falkTX/wayland-audio-plugin-test

well those are in a similar situation too, I think we can count ...

2025-06-29T23:15:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…3zf0
_________________________

well those are in a similar situation too, I think we can count with our hands the amount of maintained open-source audio editors.

I was thinking of more generic terms, for any standalone audio tool (like a synth) for "apps".

I did mention "apps and plugins" on purpose, standalone-only audio tools are not very common, luckily

Related to this, I see a lot of JUCE based projects that seem ...

2025-06-29T23:10:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…prvm
_________________________

Related to this, I see a lot of JUCE based projects that seem nice in principle but if the author has not updated between versions (say using older JUCE6) it becomes difficult to package and argue in their favour.

JUCE breaks their API quite a lot, even between minor versions. So projects that rely on older versions don't have e.g. fixes for high-dpi screen support or linux vst3.

Updating them to new JUCE versions can be quite complex sometimes.

Not good prospective for long-tern support...

Checking on the status of opensource audio apps and plugins ...

2025-06-29T22:58:28Z

Checking on the status of opensource audio apps and plugins (previously known to me) is quite the sad sight, quite a lot of them have been abandoned 😔

I am thinking of tagging anything that:
1. has no stable release in 10 years
AND
2. has no single dev commit/change in 5 years
as "abandoned".
Alternatively if the project owner publicly states it is no longer maintained.

The amount of projects that fit into this criteria is not small. And I feel 10 & 5 year thing is quite generous..

KXStudio June 2025 project update ...

2025-06-29T16:08:28Z

KXStudio June 2025 project update
https://kx.studio/News/?action=view&url=kxstudio-project-update-june-2025

Very short this time, writing these always takes me way too long, so I will try to go with this more formal format for the moment and see how it goes...

My big commit of the day: ...

2025-06-28T17:37:42Z

My big commit of the day: https://github.com/wineasio/wineasio/commit/8d0d748efd4db6fed0e97b59db0bb21210fca367

Remove ASIO dependency from WineASIO 😱

It was only a few definitions, and since the core codebase was unchanged for so long we can safely replace a few structs with API-incompatible but ABI-compatible variants.

Seems to work just as before

My biggest kernel patch so far: ...

2025-06-27T11:54:42Z

My biggest kernel patch so far: https://github.com/Darkglass-Electronics/radxa-kernel/commit/cc8f13b0504c290e3cb83a7334e9f1d4e3809c4e

Changing the Linux USB audio gadget to use a very-fast mmap vs the old virtual ALSA card approach, plus also sharing 1 clock for both playback and capture (default implementation uses 1 for playback and 1 for capture, which makes them appear as separate devices - very ugly)

Culmination of 1 month of work, but due to how hacky it is I will have to maintain it forever.
But it's cool, gives the Darkglass Anagram unit a more unique feel!

Finally getting back to do some KXStudio repository updates. ...

2025-06-08T12:44:20Z

Finally getting back to do some KXStudio repository updates.

First order of business, cleaning and updating the basic libraries
https://launchpad.net/~kxstudio-debian/+archive/ubuntu/libs/+builds?build_state=all

The LV2 stuff changed from waf to meson, the deps are very sequential so it takes a while to confirm successful builds. The stack is basically:

zix -> serd -> sord -> sratom -> lilv

Updating PawPaw project (for easy win/mac/wasm static builds) along the way to match
https://github.com/DISTRHO/PawPaw/commits/main/

That pretty much takes away my Sunday 😅

Why can't Windows be normal? The USB audio interface feature ...

2025-05-09T16:10:49Z

Why can't Windows be normal?

The USB audio interface feature works pretty much as per standard on Linux and macOS, but on Windows it's a damn mess.

When investigating issues it was funny to see this written on an alternative usb audio implementation:

> Microsoft Windows USB Audio 2.0 driver available since Windows 10, release 1703 expects Full-Speed explicit feedback endpoint wMaxPacketSize to be equal 4, which violates the USB 2.0 Specification.

and other similar things...

🤦‍♂️ 😡

For the curious ones, kernel diff ...

2025-04-30T20:59:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…09f6
_________________________

For the curious ones, kernel diff https://github.com/Darkglass-Electronics/radxa-kernel/commit/1c99fb0a7788811a4eb212c3c0bdcb64dc9d955f

and user-space side https://github.com/falkTX/audio-bridge/blob/main/src/audio-device-impl-linux-mmap.cpp

The things we do for a few milliseconds of latency... Like today, ...

2025-04-30T20:57:40Z

The things we do for a few milliseconds of latency...

Like today, patching the Linux kernel to create a memory-mapped buffer that both the kernel and a JACK client can use at the same time.
(the previous/mainline code was using an alsa virtual device to expose the audio data)

Reduced latency of the "task" by around 20ms ✨

Now just need to deal with ARM memory barriers and other details to ensure a good sync, I think...

Look internet, I am on video! 😀 ...

2025-04-23T12:18:39Z

Look internet, I am on video! 😀

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzaVPM_Ja3U

Very glad and proud to be part of #darkglass team. 🚀

Since I am the only one in the company that has dealt with ...

2025-04-22T18:08:02Z

Since I am the only one in the company that has dealt with opensource software licenses before, I am the one doing the page that lists the licenses used.
There's so much stuff hah 😱

How it looks so far: https://www.darkglass.com/pablito-licenses/

Still WIP, but what do you think?
Specially interested on opinions from other opensource developers.
Thanks for the feedback in advance!

After pretty much 1 year of work the result is finally public. ...

2025-04-22T13:45:33Z

After pretty much 1 year of work the result is finally public.

For those that don't know, in early 2024 I joined the Darkglass Electronics company. Bringing the expertise developed through many years with MOD Devices / MOD Audio and my own projects, and started to create together with them a super fancy new Linux-embed based product.

This runs JACK2 inside with mod-host and LV2 plugins. Very soon to start opening up to external plugin developers.
Very exciting! 🎉

https://www.darkglass.com/creation/anagram/

A teaser video of an upcoming product... ...

2025-04-08T07:25:33Z

A teaser video of an upcoming product... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k18pJAMYSTA

The results of ~1 year of work finally becoming public.
Real announcement later in the month.

Found a nice way to quickly test the webview handling in DPF - a ...

2025-03-23T16:18:21Z

Found a nice way to quickly test the webview handling in DPF - a very minimal web browser plugin UI with a manual URL entry! 😱

Loading the online plugin project page inside the plugin itself 😀

I know, nobody asked for this, but its a nice way to test that the feature works. More of a dev tool than being useful for end users.
It's also cool :)

If anybody wants to try: https://github.com/DISTRHO/dear-plugins

Loading Linux plugins on Windows hosts through Wine. Because a ...

2025-03-09T21:02:06Z

Loading Linux plugins on Windows hosts through Wine.
Because a half-step is better than no step.

To be more clear... it's hard to leave FL behind but don't really want to dual-boot or starting relying on Windows plugins.
Its possible to do plugins such that:
- Windows host loads a small shim
- shim loads Linux plugin
- do some little odd XEmbed things to get UIs on Windows host side too

I might make this a "use it if you want, no support whatsoever" project, because Wine breaks too often... 🤔

It's release day! 🚀 ...

2025-03-02T16:57:09Z

It's release day! 🚀

https://github.com/trummerschlunk/PodcastPlugins

> Podcast Plugins are easy-to-use plugins for speech enhancement, specifically designed for podcasters who can't or don't want to dig deeper into the craft of sound engineering.

Excited to help bring another set of plugins to life! Thanks trummerschlunk (npub15av…8c9u) for the trust and opportunity, and somehow always managing to get the funds for these projects 😅

🎉 🎉 🎉

Next plugin UIs are getting to final stages... Colors still TBD ...

2025-02-18T23:26:35Z

Next plugin UIs are getting to final stages...

Colors still TBD but looks good already I think.

Installed https://jellyfin.org/ today and I am quite surprised ...

2025-02-08T18:37:38Z

Installed https://jellyfin.org/ today and I am quite surprised how well it works. 👏

Playing media files feels instant, unlike nextcloud that takes several seconds to start video playback...
And finally something for group watching 👏 👏

Also handles music quite nicely.
Makes me want to buy more now haha

Can recommend! #jellyfin

Being able to tweak plugin UI colors is always a treat. UwU mode ...

2025-01-30T00:06:28Z

Being able to tweak plugin UI colors is always a treat.

UwU mode activate! ☀️ 💥 🌈

Want to be able to save such colors as user preferences, so it becomes more usable than just for testing.

Doing another little project with @npub15av…8c9u Coming soon... ...

2025-01-29T23:14:17Z

Doing another little project with trummerschlunk (npub15av…8c9u)

Coming soon...

I wonder if it already looks like a real plugin 🤔
My UI skills are a bit lacking, also not a whole lot of time until this needs to be done.
It works nicely though.

PS: Colors to be defined

New release of Cardinal is out! ...

2024-12-15T14:59:15Z

New release of Cardinal is out!
https://github.com/DISTRHO/Cardinal/releases/tag/24.12

Lots of module updates this time, and also some important macOS/AU related fixes.

The online version at https://cardinal.kx.studio/live is updated as well

Trying to dynamically load and call a C++ shared library is some ...

2024-09-02T23:05:45Z

Trying to dynamically load and call a C++ shared library is some serious challenge.

mangled names everywhere, vtable shenanigans and if dealing with Qt also qobject/qmetaobject weirdness...

But it works! I am able to dynamically create a QApplication, spawn a QWebEngineView, set some parameters and create a fake QObject class to receive some events.
All without linking to Qt directly, and compatible with both Qt5 and Qt6.

This way if the system does not have gtk3 webkit, Qt is fallback.

🎉

A little milestone achieved, Carla is working with Qt6 now! 🎉 ...

2024-08-11T19:49:56Z

A little milestone achieved, Carla is working with Qt6 now! 🎉

I wish to be doing other things than updating to new frameworks to stay relevant, but at least Qt5 -> Qt6 compatibility is quite okay.
The annoyance is more on PyQt side that loves to break backwards compat. And Python somewhat too.

I regret having chosen Python for the frontend but a bit too late now since there is quite a lot of code...