The IEM Plug-in Suite is a free and Open-Source audio plug-in suite including Ambisonic plug-ins up to 7th order created by staff and students of the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics.
The suite provides plug-ins for a full Ambisonic production: encoders, reverbs, dynamics including limiter and multi-band compression, rotators, and decoders for both headphones and arbitrary loudspeaker layouts, and many more. The plug-ins are created with the JUCE framework and can be compiled to any major plug-in format (VST, VST3, AU, AAX).
All the plug-ins can be built as standalones, e.g. for use with JACK or virtual soundcards.
For more information, installation guides and plug-in descriptions see:
- Website: https://plugins.iem.at
- Repository: https://git.iem.at/audioplugins/IEMPluginSuite/
The IEM Plug-in Suite can be built using CMake (see commands below) and already comes with the JUCE dependency as a git submodule. You can still build the plug-ins using the Projucer projects (*.jucer), however consider this deprecated, the Projucer files will no longer be updated.
The BinauralDecoder plug-ins uses fast convolution for decoding the Ambisonic signals to binaural ear signals. Fast convolution relies on the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) to make the convolution more efficient. There are several DFT engines around, Apple comes with VDSP, and also JUCE comes with one, which should be considered as a fallback as its not very optimized. For the remaining platforms Windows and Linux the fftw3 library](http://fftw.org) is recommended. On Linux, you can simply install the libfftw3-dev package (for the static library) and you should be all set.
On Windows, you will need to download the source code from http://fftw.org/download.html (e.g. fftw-3.3.10.tar.gz) and unpack it into an fftw directory in the root of this repository, so that the FFTW's CMakeLists.txt is placed into <directoryofthisreadme>/fftw/CMakeLists.txt. That way, the IEM Plug-in Suite CMake project can find it!
Take a look at CMakeLists.txt, in the top you can select which plug-ins you want to build. Either leave it unchanged to build all of them, or comment non-wanted out.
Per default, he plug-ins will be build as VST3 plug-ins, as the VST3 SDK already comes with JUCE. However, there are some drawbacks with the VST3 versions (see below).
Additionally, you can build VST2 and standalone versions of the plug-ins. Either change the IEM_BUILD_VST2, IEM_BUILD_VST3, and IEM_BUILD_STANDALONE options directly in the CMakeLists.txt, or use cmake command line flags to change them:
cmake .. -DIEM_BUILD_VST2=ON -DIEM_BUILD_VST3=OFF -DIEM_BUILD_STANDALONE=ONMore on using cmake below!
That's how it all began, however, time has passed and now you'll need to get hold of the VST2SDK to build the VST2 version of the suite. In case you are successfull, you unlock the full potential of the IEM Plug-in Suite, as the VST3 version have some drawbacks (as already mentioned, see below).
To let the build system know where to find the SDK, use the VST2SDKPATH variable:
cmake .. -DIEM_BUILD_VST2=ON -DVST2SDKPATH="pathtothesdk"If you want to use the plug-ins outside a plug-in host, standalone versions can become quite handy! With them enabled(-DIEM_BUILD_STANDALONE=ON), executables will be built which can be used with virtual soundcards of even JACK.
In case you don't want the with JACK support, simply deactivate it: -DIEM_STANDALONE_JACK_SUPPORT=OFF. JACK is only supported on macOS and Linux.
Okay, okay, enough with all those options, you came here to built, right?
Start up your shell and use the following:
mkdir build # creates a build folder, recommended!
cd build # enter it
# execute cmake and let it look for the project in the parent folder
# use CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release for optimized release builds
# feel free to add those optiones from above
# for using an IDE use cmake' s -G flag like -G Xcode
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build . # build the plug-ins / standalones
# alternatively, open the xcode project, msvc solution, or whatever floats your development boatLet's talk about the elephant in the room: VST3.
There's an issue with the channel-layout behavior of the VST3 versions of the plug-ins. This issue comes down to the VST3 SDK and has to be fixed by Steinberg. You'll find the issue here.
But there are also good news: The VST3 versions have been tested with REAPER and it seems that they work very well up to 6th order. There's still something strange happening if the track width is set to 64 channels, however, the high spatial resolution of 7th order is required very rarely. If it is, you better use the recommended VST2 versions.
- https://git.iem.at/pd/vstplugin/releases: to use the plug-ins in PD and SuperCollider
- https://git.iem.at/ressi/iempluginosc: to control the plug-ins using the OSC interface but without an OSC connection