Help with adding virtual instruments and loops please

Technical Support
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1

I installed Zrythm from Flatpak, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get more than the default instruments into the app. There was a list of them I wanted to screenshot, but starting it up again just has the instrument I used as a test. [I am kind of scared I accidentally deleted them somehow by trying to get the program to autoscan for new instruments]

I’m trying to learn how to use this DAW and stumbling on the first step to get it to behave the way I want it to.

I’m used to using GarageBand on Apple Merch and this program was recommended to me as a reasonable substitute now that I’ve switched to a Linux platform.

I’ve already attempted to edit the plugin paths as instructed in one set of hints and tips I found. That should have made it autoscan. An attempt to add the screencap will be made.

I’ve also found a github link to extra instruments - I think… but the instructions on the page baffle me. [GitHub - flathub/org.freedesktop.LinuxAudio.BaseExtension]

Thanks for your time and patience with me.

Attempted Screenie:

Screenshot_20250502_135730
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2

I wonder if this is a latpak permissions issue? You could try installing Flatseal and ensuring that the Zrythm flatpak has permission to access those directories.

3

I found Flatseal and it doesn’t see Zrytthm. Now what?

4

Well, you’re going to have to troubleshoot that, aren’t you?

5

Those plugin search paths seem wrong for flatpak. Did you change the defaults? IIRC the defaults should detect flatpak-installed plugins.

6

Troubleshooting doesn’t seem to solve the issue of Zrythm being the only one that doesn’t show up on Flatseal. Thanks for the sass though. Made me grin.

7

The defaults I had for those paths were blank. Nothing there. I’ve tried restoring that default and restarting Zrythm afterwards. That’s brought back the original default stuff, hooray.

Still not certain how to add other instruments or sound loops.

8

Troubleshooting doesn’t seem to solve the issue of Zrythm being the only one that doesn’t show up on Flatseal.

Yea, I have no idea on this one.

Still not certain how to add other instruments

This depends on your distro, I think? I’m using EndeavourOS / Arch, so I install new instruments through the default package manager, Pacman, or from the AUR if they aren’t available in the main repos yet.

I think most sane distros probably install plugins to usr/lib/…, but I also have a local user directory added to my paths in zrythm, like so: /usr/lib/vst3:/home/my_username/.local/lib/vst3. Not sure when these get used, so it may be worth adding those just in case.

Hopefully then, depending on your distro, new plugins should just show up when installed from your package manager. If you are installing plugins through flatpak, I’m not sure where they would go.

or sound loops.

As for samples, you can use the file browser on the right side of the window; when you’ve found a directory where you store your samples / loops, you can right click and bookmark it.

Screenshot_20250512_101435
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10

I’m on CachyOS and I don’t think I have a plugin manager at all. Is it a separate app? As I said earlier, I am very new to all of this.

Thanks for your time and help so far <3

11

Ok, so it looks like CachyOS is Arch based, and it ships with the Pacman package manager, and Octopi, which is a graphical package manager.

Arch is designed for people who have a little more technical knowledge (or who aren’t afraid to learn via trial by fire). As a result, when you’re using Arch based distros, it’s generally much safer to use the command line interface (CLI) to install and uninstall packages, because the installation process is designed to be interactive, rather than fully automatic, so you might have to answer some questions to install something. Skipping these questions or letting some GUI package manager steamroll the process is a great way to bork your system. So feel free to use octopi, discover, pamac, etc. to discover software, but I wouldn’t use any of them to install anything myself.

Fundamentally, you’ll install audio plugins like you would any other software: through the package manager. I don’t know whether CachyOS gives you access to the regular Arch repos (which are massive) or not, so I don’t know what software you’ll have access to, but I can tell you some basics on using Pacman to manage software:

Search:
pacman -Ss package_name

Search installed:
pacman -Qs package_name

Install:
sudo pacman -S package_name

Uninstall:
sudo pacman -Runs package_name

I’d recommend reading up on Pacman on the Arch Wiki to understand what these flags do.

In terms of things to install, you could start by installing the Linux Studio Plugins suite. Use pacman -Ss lsp-plugins to see your options, and then install whatever one you want using sudo pacman -S package-name.

Again, I don’t know whether you’ll have access to everything here, but you can search packages on the Arch website. Check out the pro-audio section. Some other audio plugins to look for in the repos:

  • calf
  • cardinal
  • carla
  • geonkick
  • surge-xt

If that’s not enough software for you, or if you need something specific that’s not in the repos, you can always install flatpaks, and/or enable the Arch User Repository (AUR) and install something like yay to help you install packages from there, but just know that the AUR is the wild west as everything there is user submitted.