Installing Native Access/Traktor on Steam Deck using Bottles?

Hi man!

This is not an obscure use case from my point of view. Because of the powerhouse that Steam Deck is it's more than suitable for DJ:ing and music creation. That is the one use case that I had in mind when I bought the whole thing and so far the ableton has quite the community around this matter already. I think they are working mainly on Proton interface (the one that bottles also uses) and they can be found through the "Community releases" of Proton.

I have a software development background and altough this all seems like a hassle I think it's fully worth it after you get it up and running.

So the problem with the steam deck is to get the programs to actually run (even after you have done it once or twice..) Another problem is updating the program which takes you all over the installation progress again.. I would try to use software that does not need updating (ie. something else than NI software) however I would love to use my NI synths and software in Steam Deck.

Even tough I have had this in mind for a while I haven't still looked into it.. I mean I have run bottles and Battle.net/Overwatch on the deck succesfully now for a while I haven't yet installed Ableton or tested my Push with it (That's my other use case).

As it is, I would try to contact the people from the Ableton group and ask them what revision of Proton should be used for the Traktor and if they have any tips with installation of the dependancies. I'm a little afraid that the only solution would be to build another revision just for Traktor that fixes these problems or have something setup with preinstalled dependancies without the need to run NTKDaemon.

(Now when I checked it out google tells me that: "it is a background application that serves a specific purpose, and has no impact on users who do not wish to use the Sounds.com integration features.". However it might have some needed dependancies and must be installed in multiple cases)

The problem is probably that Native Instruments Software do not recognize being run in a virtual environment and acts off because of that.

I did some more googling (all this done in 15 minutes) that the Wine apparently has better support for Traktor. ("Traktor 3 itself works quite well on Wine, confirmed by winehq. The splashscreen doesn't vanish, but that's the only problem I've noticed.")

Further googling took me to youtube video with title "Installing Traktor Pro 3 on Ubuntu" which uses the FL Studio Asio Drivers, as the guys from Fruity Loops have somehow made the only working Asio drivers that works on both mac and Linux, as they run through FL-Studio which was somehow virtually ported to Mac and Linux.

There is also this guy on the forums that has it already up and running: https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/4073/traktor-on-steam-deck

Let's try to put something together shall we? Have you made any progress?

I'll try to install the traktor to my steam deck tonight and let's see how it goes.

So I downloaded the latest JRE and tried to install it multiple times through bottles. Every time I failed I needed to restart bottles.

For some reason the UI of the Java installation does not appear. For this you need to do "Silent Installation" which can be achieved by adding /s to the "Launch Options" from the gear right to "Run Executable".

I made sure that I had my virtual desktop on again and when I (once again after failed installation restarted bottles) ran the JRE executable I had no prompts and went for the program files I saw Java had popped up there. I was really getting my hopes up.

I started the NA with virtual desktop with no errors and files loading in the background. I was already hyped to the max but also at the same time I knew I actually had no idea what I was doing. So after couple of restarts changed back to Caffe (Runner) and turned off the Virtual Desktop and once again here we are with the Java Script error.

Starting to doubt myself if the error has anything to do with Java as the Java Script is totally different thing from JRE.. Found a page from Native Instruments: https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/210296525-Windows-Error-Message-Runtime-Error- which instructs you to install all the needed Visual C++ redistributable packages (2015, 2017 and 2019) Usually these are installed by the software wizards as the NA installer did install one of them but any case..

I move back to the bottles, choose dependacies (These are the one mentioned in my first post. You might want to install them before anything else if you want to try and replicate my steps).

I only found 2015 and 2019 and went on with the installation.. No effect. Still the same Java Script error message.

I went on with everything I found interesting (vcredist2013, vcredist6, vcredist6sp6). You should be able to install all of these without any problem. They are usually more useful than in a way. No Effect.

Went through the dot nets I saw necessary: dotnet35, dotnet46, dotnet48, dotnetcore3. Actually failed in the first installation.. Not worth it. Let's continue..

Getting pretty hopeless and joining some guy from india for a video tutorial. Moving to the point where we need to make changes to the registry.. (I don't like this) Oh it's the services.. And the tutorial is for the Discord. Waste of time..

Getting back to basics and trying to install ALL the dotnets.. Usually they need to be installed in order and before doing anymore debugging I decided to go with all of them and see what happens. If (when) this fails I will get deeper into the Java Script error.

Great Success! I was able to login to the Native Access. The icons didn't show up (edit: until 10 minutes or so) but I have Traktor Pro 3 installing now through Native Access 1.14.1.

I downloaded couple of the dotnets but apparently their (or one of their) installations corrupted the system files and I couldn't start the virtual computer anymore. I resinstalled the dotnet 4.5 and it started up again but Javascript error was still showing up. Decided to scratch evertyhing and start a new bottle.

So let's try to go through this as carefully as we can..

I installed the bottle as a "Custom" bottle using Wine (sys-wine-7.0.1) instead of the two other options. I left everything as it is (named it Native Access) and installed vcredist 2015 and 2019 from the dependecies window before turning anything on. Then I started the Native Access 1.14.1 installer and when I was about to set the parameters I realized it was already running the installation.. So I went through with the installation and no error messages popped up. Not even the ISO driver freeze that was apparent during the last iteration.

The installation window closed so I thought it would be time to create the shortcut for the Native Access.

I went to /home/deck/.var/app/com.usebottles.bottles/data/bottles/bottles/Native-Access/drive_c/Program Files/Native Instruments/Native Access/ and chose the Native Access.exe without any parameters this time either. Native Access showed up so I logged in and started installing Traktor Pro 3.

Repeated the steps to add Traktor Pro 3 as a shortcut and keeping the Native Access on the background (it has appeared to the right side corner in SteamOS). I started the Traktor Pro 3 and it's working!

I've been meddling with the settings but don't seem to be able to get any sound out of the device. The Pulse Audio device should be the one used with the built-in speakers but when I choose them as audio devices (L & R) it says "Disabled". Maybe something else is using the device (OS Maybe?) as I'm running the bottle in desktop mode.

Unfortunately I cannot continue testing for the moment as I don't have my usb-c adapter with me but I would imagine that with the hardware handling the sound everything should work as supposed.

As an extra I set up Warpinator (Winpinator for windows) for Steam Deck to transfer any music files WIRELESSLY to Traktor. (Set the path to the bottle C drive and create a folder for your songs) It uses your LAN network with you can setup also without 3rd party programs but this being more or less an open source project it seemed legit. You could also install the Winpinator inside the bottle (which I tried but the deck didn't find my computer even though my computer found the deck) but with Warpinator being native Linux and the fact that you can set the path straight to Traktor folder makes it meaningless and more tedious than necessary. Also you can run Warpinator without the bottle which speeds up the pre-production phase as you can only choose to move some files without opening the bottle itself.

Interesting note that while skimming the audio properties Traktor managed to install virtual Midi drivers on the background with no hassle. However installation of the plugins is a little too fragile as half of them seem to fail. Take note that I'm working with all kinds of thing at the same time which might affect the installation process. I'm able to download plugins nonetheless.

If you use this workflow I would maybe name the bottle "DAW-ENVIRONMENT" and try to install Ableton and FL-Studio on the same bottle as that would enable me to use all the installed NI plugins in a daw environment. However if we some day have a robust audio forwarding system on top of this all, the different programs could be run in a different bottles and be connected to each other by audio and midi only. This would need a midi sync implementation too so probably we won't be seeing this anytime soon.. However this would free us from the wonky windows sound drivers as every bottle would be using a different sound card (virtual or physical).

I will keep this topic alive with the future findings in this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/zw9zds/native_instruments_traktor_pro_3_on_the_steam/

I will also post here the results after testing the actual hardware as that's the only viable use case.