RAVE vst on MacOS

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This page details how to build IRCAM’s RAVE VST plugin on MacOS arm64 platform. This will build and create a VST3 plugin you can load into a DAW.

Create your folder. On my system I created a folder in \Users\$username\work\ircam

1. check that xcode is installed

xcode-select --install

2. install git and cmake

brew install cmake git

3. clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/acids-ircam/rave_vst.git

4. change into the new folder.

cd rave_vst


5. run git submodule

git submodule update --init --recursive --progress

6. Edit and fix CMakelists.txt. I use the text editor vim. But you should be able to use any text editor.

Find and change these lines:

set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-fPIC")
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 20)
# Torch does not compile with C++ standard 20 on Windows
if (MSVC)
  set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)
endif (MSVC)

change them to:

set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-fPIC -D_LIBCPP_ENABLE_CXX17_REMOVED_FEATURES=1")
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)

Fine these lines and remove the “AU” format:

from

if(APPLE)
  set (formats AU VST3 Standalone)
else()
  set (formats VST3 Standalone)
endif()

to:

if(APPLE)
  set (formats VST3 Standalone)
else()
  set (formats VST3 Standalone)
endif()

7. Change torch and bump it up to 2.4. Edit file cmake/add_torch.cmake

set(torch_version "2.4.0")

change the download URL

elseif (UNIX AND APPLE) # OSX set(torch_url "https://download.pytorch.org/libtorch/cpu/libtorch-macos-arm64-${torch_version}.zip")

8. Build it. Create folder build

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release 
cmake --build . --config Release -j 8

9. Once complete you should have the VST3 content files and just move it to the VST3 folder.

sudo cp -r build/rave-vst_artefacts/Release/VST3/RAVE.vst3 /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/