Plugdata is a rabbit hole, but thankfully you only need to learn a few dozen of the most common objects to start making things. It took me a week of low effort learning before I could make patches without needing tutorials or outside help. The built-in documentation is all you need after that.

Does that plugin have a distinct sound you like? To be honest I’ve never moved beyond my DAW’s stock eq and compressor. And god, iLok is a scourge.

Native Linux audio plugins are frustratingly uncommon. I’m gradually trying to replace my Windows plugins with Linux native ones but it’s hard to do sometimes. My thing lately has been building my own replacements with plugdata.