Nektar Impact LX+ Control Surface DLL on Linux?

[Matt Mayfield]

Hi everyone,

I recently purchased a Nektar Impact LX88+ MIDI controller, which has some really powerful DAW integration features in MacOS and Windows.

It's usable with normal CC controls but becomes much more flexible and powerful when paired with a custom control surface plugin, in this case reaper_csurf_ImpactLX88+ReaperDAWControl64.dll.

1) I've reached out to the Nektar company to ask if they will be releasing a Linux .so file equivalent, but of course I don't expect a response this weekend.
2) Does anyone have experience developing or compiling these kinds of shared libraries as DLLs for Windows, or know how they integrate with REAPER? Is it conceivable there could be a way to create a Wine wrapper for a control surface DLL, similar to how LinVST wraps VST DLLs?

Thanks,

Matt

[vivantart]

+1

I own a GX61 and only on Ardour and Bitwig I'm able to use the controls.

[4duhwinnn]

You can try the windows version of Reaper in wine, and might get lucky.
Wine-staging 6.22 seems pretty good in early tests. I install the windows reaper in .wine/drive_c/users ...and link the executable to /home/me

and launch it with

wine reaper.exe

Cheers

[Matt Mayfield]

Originally Posted by vivantart

+1

I own a GX61 and only on Ardour and Bitwig I'm able to use the controls.

Interesting - I'm able to use the controls just fine as a generic MIDI control surface; it's just that the Nektar-specific features don't work on Linux REAPER. Maybe do you have the Control Messages disabled in MIDI setup in REAPER?

Originally Posted by 4duhwinnn

You can try the windows version of Reaper in wine, and might get lucky.

Yes, that was something I tried early on, and it does work. There's no kernel-level driver; just a regular userspace extension (like SWS for example) that listens to ordinary MIDI messages and controls REAPER via its API.

They compile it as a .DLL for Windows and a .dylib for macOS, and from what I can tell, there's no technical reason they couldn't compile it as a .so for Linux...but I imagine they don't want to deal with support tickets, frustrated users, and all the other overhead that comes with officially supporting another platform.

The rep who responded to my ticket asking about a Linux version said that they have no current plans but are "looking into it." I'd suggest that anyone who would appreciate a Linux version of their integration ask them about it via their support system, so that they can get an accurate idea of how many people want it.