BBCSO black screen and Superior Drummer 3 broken drop down menus

[sclewis900]

Thanks for giving yabridge a shot!

• I read through both the troubleshooting and the known issues sections, and my issue wasn't listed there

Problem description

BBCSO is a black screen and Superior Drummer 3 has unresponsive drop down menus. Both can play sounds, but with the GUI handicapped I can't change presets. I had to use Claude and wayback machine to even get installers that work.

What did you expect to happen?

Following yabridge github page for solutions, expecting them to make BBCSO and Superior Drummer 3 usable.

What actually happened?

Black screen for BBCSO in REAPER FX window and unresponsive drop down menus in Superior Drummer 3 in REAPER FX window.

Operating system

Arch

How did you install yabridge?

AUR

yabridge version

5.1.1

yabridgectl version

5.1.1

Wine version

9.21

Plugin

Spitfire BBCSO, Toontrack Superior Drummer 3

Plugin type

VST3

Plugin architecture

64-bit

Host

REAPER

Desktop environment or WM

Hyprland End4 Illogical Impulse

GPU model

AMD 7900XT

GPU drivers and kernel

amdgpu, 6.18.9-arch1-2

Debug log

yabridge.log

Anything else?

Included above are screenshots of what I am seeing. Also included is a log from Claude on steps I have taken thus far:

reaper-yabridge-session-2026-02-24.txt

[Desidiosus]

BBCSO is likely #386. Wine doesn't implement the required Direct2D APIs and they have black screens instead. The recent comments in the issue say that JUCE has patched it to fallback to software rendering but that requires the plugins to upgrade JUCE once a new version with the fix has been released.

Do you get the SD3 issue on other DEs or with X11? Does it happen with the latest Wine and the yabridge build from https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge/actions?query=branch%3Anew-wine10-embedding?

[sclewis900]

BBCSO is likely #386. Wine doesn't implement the required Direct2D APIs and they have black screens instead. The recent comments in the issue say that JUCE has patched it to fallback to software rendering but that requires the plugins to upgrade JUCE once a new version with the fix has been released.

Do you get the SD3 issue on other DEs or with X11? Does it happen with the latest Wine and the yabridge build from https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge/actions?query=branch%3Anew-wine10-embedding?

I was thinking it was a JUCE8 issue, but when i contacted Spitfire I was told:

"If the app was previously working on your system, there have been no updates for nearly two years so nothing has changed. It wasn't built in JUCE8.

We have never provided compatibility with Linux so not much I can do in terms of rollbacks of plugins. Although BBCSO plugin pre-dates JUCE8, so this may not be the issue.

Our engineers are now using JUCE8 as standard for future builds so may need to wait for Linux/Wine to catch up to industry standard."

I have not tried another DE but was considering doing that, but still not an optimal solution for me, as I very much like my current DE and would like to keep all work within there if possible. I did use claude to launch REAPER with X11, but that introduced more errors, so I rolled that back.

When I upgraded Wine to versions past 9.21 I found errors with other plugins that work fine in 9.21.

Another note, I had found a Reddit post that helped me even get the installer working. Current spitfire installer had a black screen, but thankfully someone linked a wayback machine old version of the exe with some instructions to get it working:

https://www.reddit.com/r/spitfireaudio/comments/1felyfv/guide_how_to_downgradefix_the_spitfire_labs/

" JUCE has patched it to fallback to software rendering but that requires the plugins to upgrade JUCE once a new version with the fix has been released."

So, if a plugin is currently JUCE8 it will use software rendering?

Thank you for your response, I appreciate it.

[sclewis900]

When I ask Claude if juce-framework/JUCE@5179690 would be a solution I am told:

Why BBCSO has the issue despite not using JUCE8:

The rendering problem isn't JUCE8-specific — it's a fundamental Wine/hardware-rendering incompatibility that exists in older JUCE too (and other frameworks). JUCE8 just added
detection + automatic fallback that older versions lack. BBCSO's old JUCE hits the same underlying failure, it just has no recovery mechanism. The black screen is the result.

But actually BBCSO's UI is CEF-based (Chromium Embedded Framework), not JUCE's own OpenGL renderer. So the rendering failure is in Chromium's GPU process inside Wine — JUCE is just
the plugin shell around it. That's a separate problem from what the JUCE8 commit fixes. Even if Spitfire rebuilt with JUCE8 today, it likely wouldn't fix BBCSO's black screen
because the broken path is CEF's GPU acceleration, not JUCE's renderer.

Would the JUCE fix help SD3?

No. SD3's issue is window management, not rendering:

• The menus appear (they render fine)
• They're at wrong coordinates and unresponsive
• Root cause: XWayland's handling of Wine override-redirect windows (popup menus)

The JUCE8 commit addresses GPU rendering fallback — it wouldn't touch how Wine popup windows are positioned or receive input under XWayland. That's a compositor/X11 protocol
problem.

In short:

• BBCSO: JUCE8 irrelevant, CEF is the actual renderer
• SD3: JUCE8 irrelevant, wrong problem domain entirely

---

[Desidiosus]

Is there a standalone version of BBCSO? It sounds like it's more of a Wine issue rather than a yabridge issue. Could be also a case of a missing windows component from the Wineprefix.

I have not tried another DE but was considering doing that, but still not an optimal solution for me, as I very much like my current DE and would like to keep all work within there if possible. I did use claude to launch REAPER with X11, but that introduced more errors, so I rolled that back.

I was asking about the DE because it could be a bug in Hyprland. KWin and Mutter both have problems with the popup/dropdown menus too in latest Wine with XWayland (https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59345#c7).

" JUCE has patched it to fallback to software rendering but that requires the plugins to upgrade JUCE once a new version with the fix has been released."

So, if a plugin is currently JUCE8 it will use software rendering?

Currently they don't as there is no new JUCE version with the the software rendering fallback for Wine. They try to use the Direct2D API that hasn't been implemented and that results in the black GUI. Once there is a new JUCE release, plugins would need to update to that version to start working with Wine.

[pawel-ulita]

BBCSO has been updated several times in the recent months and it uses JUCE 8 now. However, the official Spitfire docs don’t mention these updates. Did you maybe talk to someone called Jules? That’s a Spitfire AI bot that seems to mislead regularly.

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/spitfire-audios-bbcso-updates-discussion-potential-hard-hat-area.165939/page-28#post-5832327

https://support.spitfireaudio.com/en/articles/11815926-version-history-bbc-symphony-orchestra

[sclewis900]

BBCSO has been updated several times in the recent months and it uses JUCE 8 now. However, the official Spitfire docs don’t mention these updates. Did you maybe talk to someone called Jules? That’s a Spitfire AI bot that seems to mislead regularly.

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/spitfire-audios-bbcso-updates-discussion-potential-hard-hat-area.165939/page-28#post-5832327

https://support.spitfireaudio.com/en/articles/11815926-version-history-bbc-symphony-orchestra

It was someone named Tom. I will link what Claude has found. we need an update from Spitfire with JUCE 8.0.9+ at this point. I get a white screen now, and apparently my samples are all loaded, so just need a GUI fix.

I did manage to get SD3 working, I will link Claude logs and they should hopefully have the fix we used to get it working. There is still some buginess in sd3 with mouse in open drop down menu, but that can be mitigated by using arrow keys once they are open (I can live with that for now). I can actually select presets and choose library and midi paths.

REAPER-yabridge-Wine-Hyprland-troubleshooting.md

Is there a standalone version of BBCSO? It sounds like it's more of a Wine issue rather than a yabridge issue. Could be also a case of a missing windows component from the Wineprefix.

I have not tried another DE but was considering doing that, but still not an optimal solution for me, as I very much like my current DE and would like to keep all work within there if possible. I did use claude to launch REAPER with X11, but that introduced more errors, so I rolled that back.

I was asking about the DE because it could be a bug in Hyprland. KWin and Mutter both have problems with the popup/dropdown menus too in latest Wine with XWayland (https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59345#c7).

" JUCE has patched it to fallback to software rendering but that requires the plugins to upgrade JUCE once a new version with the fix has been released."
So, if a plugin is currently JUCE8 it will use software rendering?

Currently they don't as there is no new JUCE version with the the software rendering fallback for Wine. They try to use the Direct2D API that hasn't been implemented and that results in the black GUI. Once there is a new JUCE release, plugins would need to update to that version to start working with Wine.

You were totally right about this, just have to wait for Spitfire to release a JUCE8 version. I don't have a standalone version. Just a waiting game now, but happy I made progress.

[sclewis900]

So Tom from spitfire emailed me back and said he had learned BBCSO did indeed switch the JUCE8, so he sent me version 1.7 of the bbcso plugin and they work! If anyone can't get it to work, contact spitfire.

[GitHubbet]

So Tom from spitfire emailed me back and said he had learned BBCSO did indeed switch the JUCE8, so he sent me version 1.7 of the bbcso plugin and they work! If anyone can't get it to work, contact spitfire.

Hi there
I did contact Tom a few months ago, but it seems 'either he does not care any more' or has been told NOT to send 1.7v !
Now using SINE, but prefer BBCSO.

Linux users keep getting pushed aside... as lesser beings, when Linux is the best environment for anything.

I got no help at all.

Thanks

PS any way you can contact me here and get it? Going insane, i have a number of Bitwig Projects where I used parts of BBCSO in it - I am an hobbyist, I may be less of a human to them, I guess!