Being able to code and design MIDI and Audio effects right in the DAW is a very nice feature, yet there isn’t that many solutions to do this in a way that could be ported into other DAW. This would require the code to be run in a dedicated plugin. We can think of Blue Cat’s Plug’n Script, elegant but proprietary, Osar Protoplug (unsupported since years)…
In REAPER, we have the very nice JSFX script plugin format, which is pretty efficient (you can do a lot with few lines of code). REAPER comes out of the box with more than 200 of these, (showcased here in the article Native JSFX Complete List with Screenshots), and lot of users have made even more advanced JSFX, most of the time for free. Some of these are also showcased here on ReaLinks JSFX category.
But what if we could run these JSFX inside another DAW? This would unlock hundreds of free effects to other DAW users!
This is in fact possible since a long time, via ReaJS, from the ReaPlugs FX plugins suite. ReaPlugs is a pack of some native REAPER plugins, shared for free, so that they can be used in other DAW. Among these, ReaJS is a VST to host JSFX file. It is really great to have this, but I didn’t promoted it here because ReaPlugs didn’t get a lot of attention from the devs recently (no MacOS / Linux version, no up to date compared to last REAPER version since years etc), despite user requests. It is totally understandable that the devs priority are REAPER itself and not free plugins, though being able to load JSFX in another still could be nice…
… And that’s where YSFX come to play! (See the screenshot above showcasing my MIDI Drum Pad JSFX remapper inside of Ableton Live!)
YSFX is a free and open source plugin project, which allow to host JSFX in other DAW… Yes, just like ReaJS, but more modern, and actually supported! The initial project was originally launched jpcima in 2021, thanks to JSFX being open source (if I understood correctly), but it is now on sai’ke hands, one of the most advanced JSFX scripter out there, which is perfect to be sure that YSFX behaves as expected, even with the more demanding JSFX!
YSFX even feature a pretty advanced code editor, so you can modify (or create) JSFX right in these other DAW! I only miss syntax color, but that is not a real issue, as JSFX dev will surely design their plugins in REAPER, and use the code editor only to quickly modify or test things elsewhere.
Sai’ke seems very prudent when chosing YSFX version number: current version is v0.0.26, highlighting the fact there are still some edge cases or untested situations for which a particular JSFX might not works well (don’t hesitate to send him feedback in this case). However, the few I have tested were good, so it seems pretty solid to me so far!
You can download YSFX on the YSFX GitHub release page, and get more info on the project in general, for users and for dev, in the link below.
Enjoy! ⭐
