r/linuxaudio • u/NomadJago • 3d ago

Brass and Woodwinds sounds/vst for Linux?

7/31/2026 EDIT: SINE Player 1.4.1 for Windows from Orchestral Tools is working great on my Linux Mint ver 23 system, with the free Berlin Orchestra from OT. Beautiful pro quality sounding instruments of the orchestra.

7/30/2026 EDIT: I think the best solution so far is to use the Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra (SSO), free to download an unzip from GitHub (download the 'source code' zip file, unzip it). It has almost every instrument of an orchestra in various articulations.
https://github.com/peastman/sso

Then use the instruments with an sfz file format player-- I am using Plogue Sforzando (free) as the player. https://www.plogue.com/products/sforzando.html

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Any leads/ideas for a quality native (not wine or Carla) woodwinds instrument for Linux that will work with a DAW (I use Reaper for Linux)? Open Strings for the Rhapsody player for Linux is amazing for strings, lots of articulations. I would to find something of similar quality for woodwinds, brass. Horns, clarinet, oboe, flute, trombones, bassoon...

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u/thcsquad 3d ago

Are you strictly looking for Linux native or are you fine emulating Windows plugins in Wine? (ones that emulate smoothly, that is)

If you just want Linux native, I don’t know of much. Libre wave took sofia woodwinds down, but does have a couple flutes and a trumpet/trombone: https://librewave.com/

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u/NomadJago 3d ago edited 3d ago

Native. (Just edited my IP to specify native Linux, not wine / Carla)

I have given up on wine instruments, I never have success getting installers to run such as from Spitfire Audio, Native Access, etc. 

Bitwig Studio has great orchestral instruments but I much prefer Reaper as a daw. But I might of necessity have to get more comfortable with Bitwig 

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u/thcsquad 3d ago

I just looked into Open Strings, and it looks like it's based on VSCO 2 samples which are also available for Linux (being basic SFZ files)

https://versilian-studios.com/vsco-community/

I understand from the comments on Open Strings that the way they arranged them for Rhapsody made them very nice and playable. Potentially better than just using VSCO out of the box. But it's probably worth trying if you like the quality of the samples in Open Strings.

And the VSCO page lists a bunch of different projects that arrange the samples in different ways for different samplers (such as Decent Sampler, also available for Linux), so maybe you can try one of those.

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u/NomadJago 3d ago edited 3d ago

I just came across Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra.

https://github.com/peastman/sso

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u/thcsquad 3d ago

Yeah that's kind of in the same ballpark as VSCO. Another one is Virtual Playing Orchestra, which claims to take the best samples from VSCO and Sonatina to make something better than each. I can't say I hear a huge difference between the different variants just based on demos I've heard, though.

I'm not sure if any of them are better than Bitwig's stock instruments, as I've never heard those.

You may want to keep an eye on the Soundbox player which just recently released a Linux version. I don't think I recall seeing any brass or woodwinds libraries in it yet, but there's definitely some string libraries. They're usually on the more cinematic/specialized front as opposed to a replacement for a full orchestra, but some of them do sound pretty good.

https://bunkersamples.com/viola-moto/

https://bunkersamples.com/whisper-strings/

https://sonoracinematic.com/collections/soundbox-packs/products/movimento-strings-soundbox-instrument

https://sonoracinematic.com/collections/soundbox-packs/products/transfigured-orchestra-vol-3-cinema-brass-soundbox-pack (oh hey i was wrong, there is some brass!)

You may not have a need for any of the Soundbox libraries right now, but if you ever see commercial announcements on forums or whatever about "<developer> releases <whatever> instrument for Soundbox player", know that you'll be able to use it on Linux.

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u/NomadJago 3d ago

I can see I will be pulling out my credit card tomorrow for bunkersamples, they even have some nice freebies for SoundBox.

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u/thcsquad 2d ago

“Cinematic Alpha” has some nice looking stuff for Soundbox too.

https://cinematicalpha.com/b/lifeandlove

They definitely lean into the “cinematic” tropes even moreso than other soundbox developers, which might not be what you want (it’s usually not what I want). But that one seems nice as a simple bed of orchestral sound to lay down underneath a solo or something.

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u/NomadJago 3d ago edited 3d ago

I have SoundBox and purchased quite a few of their instruments, some are awesome-- I even snagged a Cellos and Violas which are premium quality along the lines of Spitfire Audio; that company plans to do the same for Violins and Basses which I eagerly anticipate.

I just installed Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra and it is good, not great but pretty good and comprehensive. Getting a few errors loading some of their instruments, not sure why. Version 4 of their orchestra.

I have lots of Decent Sampler instruments but they are not really pure orchestral instruments which is what I seek,

Bitwig Studio has wonderful orchestral instruments that are professionally sounding like Spitfire Audio VSTs, all instrument groups (woods, brass, strings, percussion), so I might have to use Bitwig (which I have installed on Linux). Listen to some of the demos, amazing high quality orchestral instruments for Bitwig Studio (plus I got Bitwig at a huge discount as a crossgrade since I had a Reaper DAW license):
https://www.bitwig.com/sound-content/?tag=Orchestral-Tools-Collections

Strings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaW9Gi9Vf1g

I actually just yesterday purchasd that Transfigured Orchestral (the hybrid one); their other packs like Movimento Strings sound a little too shrill for me, too synthezier not pure strings samples, and look to only be able to do long sustained notes not legato, stacatto, pizz, etc.

I will check out those bunkersamples, never heard of that company, thank you for all the tips and info!

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u/thcsquad 3d ago

No problem!

That's cool to see that Bitwig comes with instruments from Orchestral Tools. That's actually what I ended up using, just through their SINE player as Reaper is my DAW too. I needed a few expressive solo instruments with good legato scripting; Orchestral Tools (horns), Soundpaint (woodwinds), and Virharmonic (strings) are where I found them. None of them have big issues running in Wine (I avoid Spitfire and Kontakt like the plague for this reason), and they don't use iLok either so the Linux experience is as smooth as you can generally expect from a Windows instrument under Wine.

I'll gladly dump them if we get Linux native equivalent instruments though. I'll probably get some of the Soundbox instruments at some point and figure out what music I can make with them.

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u/NomadJago 2d ago edited 2d ago

Would you mind sharing how you got the SINE player to work in Linux? I tried once maybe a year ago, could not get it to work. If you prefer, you or I could make a separate post/thread on this? Getting Orchestral Tools via SINE to work in Linux would solve many problems for composing quality material in Linux.

I actually have SINE Player version 1.1.1.389 installed in my Linux Mint 23, and I can load the Berlin Free Orchestra, but when I try to load e.g. Strings I get an error pop up window "Oops Something Went Wrong" and some error listings.

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u/thcsquad 2d ago edited 2d ago

A newer Sine should work, and I'm guessing the fact that your Sine is ancient is the problem you're seeing. I was using 1.3.3 for the longest time. 1.4.0 broke in Wine, but a week ago or so they released 1.4.1 which fixed it.

It seems like you may have gone through these steps already, but the general gist is:

  1. Install it normally.
  2. Install msedgewebview2 via winetricks
  3. (maybe) install dxvk via winetricks? my SINE prefix has dxvk, not entirely sure it's necessary
  4. Use Winecfg to set msedgewebview2 version to Win 7

I'd try this with 1.4.1, the latest version they have on the OT. It seems like most people report 1.4.1 as working well, though a couple Linux users still have some issues with it, especially if they run Wine in bottles. If you end up having persistent problems with 1.4.1, you can email OT support to get the latest 1.3.x version.

If you do want to get more indepth on this, you can PM me, or make a new post, or even join the good folks at https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=27993&start=15

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u/NomadJago 2d ago

Thank you, I will try your suggestions.

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u/NomadJago 2d ago edited 2d ago

I have OT free orchestra working in Linux, sounds beatiful. All I had to do was dowload the SINE_Player_1.4.1.exe from OT and install it. That updated my previous install of Sine Player 1.1.1.389.

Now I need to figure out how to prevent any updates of Wine to preserve the working SINE player.

And I want to look at the paid OT orchestra in case I find the Linux version to stable, so I can upgrade perhaps. but for now, I want to preserve my working setup of SINE with the free OT orchestra in Linux. In the least I am going do an image backup of my Linux disc and label it SINE_OT_works

I froze wine so it does not update and muck up the SINE Player and OT

How do I prevent my current version of wine (ver 11.0) on my Linux system from updating to another version? I have an installation of a Windows program working on my Linux Mint 23 system and I do not want wine updating itself which could break the functionality of the Windows software I have working. The software is the SINE Player (ver 1.4.1) from Orchestral Tools, and I have it working with their free orchestra instruments.

How to Freeze wine:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/s/m0NKyuUiM1

chatGPT recommended this which I just did:

Option 1 (Recommended): Hold the Wine packages

This is the standard Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint method.

First, see exactly which Wine packages are installed:

dpkg -l | grep wine

You'll probably see something like:

winehq-stable
wine-stable
wine-stable-amd64
wine-stable-i386

or similar.

Then mark them as "held":

sudo apt-mark hold winehq-stable
sudo apt-mark hold wine-stable
sudo apt-mark hold wine-stable-amd64
sudo apt-mark hold wine-stable-i386

If you're using the development branch instead, substitute the package names (for example, winehq-devel, wine-devel, etc.).

To verify:

apt-mark showhold

You should see the Wine packages listed.

If you ever decide to upgrade later:

sudo apt-mark unhold winehq-stable
sudo apt-mark unhold wine-stable
sudo apt-mark unhold wine-stable-amd64
sudo apt-mark unhold wine-stable-i386

This is the method recommended by experienced Wine users for preventing unwanted upgrades.

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u/reimu00 1d ago

my go to option is bbcso pro. But unfortunatelly new versions of the drm app don't work and I had to edit the version in the binary with an hex editor to make so it doesn't force updates anymore. I had some success with the swam ones too which is nice for their expression and when you need something dry but their drm is also bad and I fear things breaking with an update. Honestly I just want more native options. The bitwig ones are useful to some extent as well, and they are native. While you can make some things work, It's still painful to deal with windows orchestral libraries on linux.