https://github.com/elk-audio/sushi
Elk Audio OS Plugin host and DAW
https://github.com/elk-audio/sushi
daw elk elk-audio plugin-host sushi vst
Last synced: 3 months ago
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Elk Audio OS Plugin host and DAW
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/elk-audio/sushi
- Owner: elk-audio
- License: other
- Created: 2019-12-06T15:28:42.000Z (over 6 years ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2025-07-04T20:58:32.000Z (about 1 year ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-07-04T21:35:35.230Z (about 1 year ago)
- Topics: daw, elk, elk-audio, plugin-host, sushi, vst
- Language: C++
- Size: 7.93 MB
- Stars: 139
- Watchers: 10
- Forks: 19
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Changelog: HISTORY.md
- Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md
- License: COPYING
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README
# SUSHI
Headless plugin host for ELK Audio OS.
## Sushi as Library
Sushi can be used as a standalone terminal application, and can now also be used as a library.
For more information on the latter, refer to the [LIBRARY.md] (docs/LIBRARY.md) file in this repository.
## Usage
The Sushi standalone project, and consequently the produced binary, reside in the `./apps/` sub-folder of this repository.
See `sushi -h` for a complete list of options.
Common use cases are:
Test in offline mode with I/O from audio file:
$ sushi -o -i input_file.wav -c config_file.json
Use Core Audio on macOS for realtime audio, with the default devices:
$ sushi --coreaudio -c config_file.json
Use JACK for realtime audio:
$ sushi -j -c config_file.json
With JACK, Sushi creates 8 virtual input and output ports that you can connect to other programs or system outputs.
## Sushi macOS
Since version 1.0, Sushi can be built natively for macOS as a native binary with all the dependencies statically linked to it.
There is a new Core Audio frontend (selectable with the `--coreaudio` command-line option) to interface directly with Core Audio. As an alternative, a Portaudio frontend is also available (with the `--portaudio` flag).
With Core Audio, you can select other devices than the default with the `--audio-input-device-uid` and `--audio-output-device-uid` options. To find out the right number there, you can launch Sushi with the `--dump-audio-devices` together with `--coreaudio` to get a list in JSON format printed to stdout.
MIDI support is provided through RtMidi and can access CoreMidi devices directly.
LV2 support is currently not available for macOS.
## Sushi Windows
Since version 1.2, Sushi can be built natively for Windows.
The suggested audio frontend for Windows is Portaudio (selectable with the `--portaudio` option), which can use most available sound device apis on Windows. You can select which devices to use with the `--audio-input-device` and `--audio-output-device` options. As with Core Audio, to find the id corresponding to a device, launch Sushi with the `--dump-audio-devices` option together with `--portaudio` to get a JSON formatted list printed to stdout.
By default, Portaudio does not support Asio, to build with Asio support, pass the `-DPA_USE_ASIO=ON` flag to cmake. This will download and build the Asio SDK automatically.
LV2 support is currently not available for Windows.
## Example Sushi configuration files in repository
Under `misc/config_files` in this repository, we have a large variety of example Sushi configuration files.
The first one to try to check if everything is running properly, would be this one that uses the internal sequencer & synthesizer to generate a sequence:
```
$ ./sushi --coreaudio -c config_files/play_brickworks_synth.json
```
(on Linux with JACK, replace `--coreaudio` with `--jack`).
Many of the examples use the mda-vst3 plugins which are built when building Sushi. If you are running one of the prebuilt packages (available on the releases sections on GitHub), you have everything inside the `sushi` folder there. For example, on macOS you should be able to get a simple working synthesizer with:
Otherwise, if you are building from source, the plugins used by the examples can be found under:
`build/debug/VST3/Debug`, or `build/release/VST3/Release` respectively, for debug and release builds.
To run Sushi with an example configuration, you simply invoke it while pointing to one of the above paths.
On Ubuntu that could be:
```
$ ./sushi -j -c ../../misc/config_files/play_vst3.json --base-plugin-path VST3/Debug
```
Or, from a macOS terminal:
```
$ ./sushi --coreaudio -c ../../misc/config_files/play_vst3.json --base-plugin-path VST3/Release
```
## Extra documentation
Configuration files are used for global host configs, track and plugins configuration, MIDI routing and mapping, events sequencing.
More in-depth documentation is available at the [Elk Audio OS official docs page](https://elk-audio.github.io/elk-docs/html/sushi/index.html).
## Building
Sushi builds are supported for native Linux systems, Yocto/OE cross-compiling toolchains targeting Elk Audio OS systems, and macOS.
Make sure that Sushi is cloned with the `--recursive` flag to fetch all required submodules for building. Alternatively run `git submodule update --init --recursive` after cloning.
Sushi requires a compiler with support for C++17 features. The recommended compilers are GCC version 10 or higher, and clang version 13 or higher.
### Native Linux dependencies
Sushi handles most dependencies with vcpkg (or as submodules) and will build and link with them automatically. A few dependencies are not included however and must be provided or installed system-wide. See the list below (debian packages names):
* libasound2-dev
* libjack-jackd2-dev
* For VST 2:
* Vst 2.4 SDK - Needs to be provided externally as it is not available from Steinberg anymore.
* For LV2:
* liblilv-dev - at least version 0.24.4. Lilv is an official wrapper for LV2.
* lilv-utils - at least version 0.24.5.
* lv2-dev - at least version 1.18.2. The main LV2 library.
The official Ubuntu repositories do not have these latest versions at the time of writing. The best source for them is instead the [KX Studio repositories, which you need to enable manually](https://kx.studio/Repositories).
* For LV2 unit tests:
* lv2-examples - at least version 1.18.2.
* mda-lv2 - at least version 1.2.4 of [drobilla's port](http://drobilla.net/software/mda-lv2/) - not that from Mod Devices or others.
### Building with vcpkg (native Linux & macOS)
To build from a terminal, use the commands below. Vcpkg also integrates nicely with CLion and other IDEs though must manually set the toolchain file.
```
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ ../third-party/vcpkg/bootstrap-vcpkg.sh
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../third-party/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake ..
$ make
```
This might take a while the first time since all the vcpkg dependencies will have to be built first.
**Note:** if using Cmake 4 on MacOS, you might need to set the environment variable SDKROOT to *macosx* in order to build the vcpkg dependencies correctly:
```
SDKROOT=macosx cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../third-party/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake ..
```
### Building with vcpkg (Windows)
Building on Windows is similar to Posix and macOS, with the addition of the triplet configuration.
To build from a terminal, use the commands below. Vcpkg also integrates nicely with CLion and Visual Studio, though you must manually set the toolchain file for vcpkg integration.
````
$ mkdir build ; cd build
$ ../third-party/vcpkg/bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE="../third-party/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake" -DVCPKG_OVERLAY_TRIPLETS="../triplets/" -DVCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET=win-custom-x86-64 ..
$ cmake --build ./ --config Release
````
### Building with Yocto for Elk Audio OS
Sushi can be built either with the provided [Elk Audio OS SDK](https://github.com/elk-audio/elkpi-sdk), or as part of a [full Elk Audio OS image build with bitbake](https://github.com/elk-audio/elk-audio-os-builder).
Follow the instructions in those repositories to set up a cross-compiling SDK and build Sushi for a given target.
### Useful CMake build options
Option | Value | Notes
--------------------------------------|----------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUSHI_AUDIO_BUFFER_SIZE | 8 - 512 | The buffer size used in the audio processing. Needs to be a power of 2 (8, 16, 32, 64, 128...).
SUSHI_WITH_RASPA | on / off | Build Sushi with Xenomai RT-kernel support, only for ElkPowered hardware.
SUSHI_WITH_JACK | on / off | Build Sushi with Jack Audio support, only for standard Linux distributions and macOS.
SUSHI_WITH_PORTAUDIO | on / off | Build Sushi with Portaudio support.
SUSHI_WITH_APPLE_COREAUDIO | on / off | Build Sushi with Apple Core Audio support.
SUSHI_WITH_ALSA_MIDI | on / off | Build Sushi with Alsa sequencer support for MIDI (Linux only).
SUSHI_WITH_RT_MIDI | on / off | Build Sushi with RtMidi support for MIDI. Cannot be selected if SUSHI_WITH_ALSA_MIDI is set.
SUSHI_WITH_LINK | on / off | Build Sushi with Ableton Link support.
SUSHI_WITH_VST2 | on / off | Include support for loading Vst 2.x plugins in Sushi.
SUSHI_WITH_VST3 | on / off | Include support for loading Vst 3.x plugins in Sushi.
SUSHI_LINK_VST3 | on / off | Link Vst3 SDK (statically) if Vst3 is included. Turn this off if Sushi is linked statically as a library, into an application which already links Vst3's SDK.
SUSHI_WITH_LV2 | on / off | Include support for loading LV2 plugins in Sushi.
SUSHI_WITH_RPC_INTERFACE | on / off | Build gRPC external control interface, requires gRPC development files.
SUSHI_BUILD_TWINE | on / off | Build and link with the included version of [TWINE](https://github.com/elk-audio/twine), otherwise tries to link with system wide if the option is disabled.
SUSHI_TWINE_STATIC | on / off | Link statically against TWINE (not recommended, useful only in a few cases).
SUSHI_WITH_UNIT_TESTS | on / off | Build and run unit tests together with building Sushi.
SUSHI_WITH_LV2_MDA_TESTS | on / off | Include LV2 unit tests which depends on the LV2 drobilla port of the mda plugins being installed.
SUSHI_VST2_SDK_PATH | path | Path to external Vst 2.4 SDK. Not included and required if WITH_VST2 is enabled.
SUSHI_WITH_SENTRY | on / off | Build Sushi with Sentry error logging support.
SUSHI_SENTRY_DSN | url | URL to the default value for the Sushi Sentry logging DSN. This can still be passed as a runtime terminal argument.
SUSHI_DISABLE_MULTICORE_UNIT_TESTS | on / off | Disable unit-tests dependent on multi-core processing.
SUSHI_BUILD_STANDALONE_APP | on / off | Build standalone Sushi executable.
SUSHI_BUILD_WITH_SANITIZERS | on / off | Build Sushi with google address sanitizer on. Default is off.
The default values for many of the options are platform-specific (native Linux, Yocto/OE, macOS).
_Note_:
before version 1.0, the CMake options didn't have the `SUSHI_` prefix. The old names (e.g. `WITH_JACK`) are not supported anymore and should be changed to the new format.
## Running Unit tests separately
Some Sushi's unit tests depend on test data, which is found through the environment variable `SUSHI_TEST_DATA_DIR`.
You will need to define this if you want to run the unit test explicitly, e.g. while debugging:
`$ export SUSHI_TEST_DATA_DIR=/path/to/sushi/repo/test/data`
Moreover, the battery of tests for VST3 plugin support, build and use the example plugins of the VST3 SDK.
While the automated tests running as part of the build find these plugins automatically, when running the `unit_tests` binary manually, you may need to set the working directory to: `/path/to/sushi/build_folder_name/test`,
for the path to resolve correctly.
## License
Sushi is licensed under Affero General Public License (“AGPLv3”). See [LICENSE](LICENSE.md) document for the full details of the license. For contributing code to Sushi, see [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md).
Copyright 2017-2023 Elk Audio AB, Stockholm, Sweden.