Biotek2 on Ardour

Installation & Configuration Linux
#1

Anybody here ever use or heard of the plugin called Biotek2?

This plugin seems to take at least 30 seconds to load-up in Ardour…

I’m wondering whether there could be an issue in Ardour or with the plugin itself to cause it to take a long time to load.

Also when enabling/disabling the plugin using its green-led in the track’s plugin list, it could take up to 60 seconds before the daw’s interface comes out of a seeming freeze.

Debian 10 64-bit, the latest updates on a 4-core i5-4670K system, – I’ve got 8gigs of ram on this system and it’s not too ancient of a system…

Not sure what is causing this – and where to make the report because Tracktion’s other plugins do not have this issue when using them in Ardour.

thanks

1 Like
#2

A shot in the dark: How many control ports does the plugin have?

Ardour 5.x creates automation lanes for all those. If there are more than a few hundred that can cause quite a delay (Ardour6 will allow to limit this).

PS. I’ve seen similar issues with VeeSeeVSTRack (10k automatable parameters, 10k automation lanes)

#3

I’m not sure what you mean by control ports, – do you mean automation things? I’m just about to file a new report on the tracker you will find very interesting in pertaining to automation-save-load states.

#4

It looks like it has at least 60, though I can’t be certain if I am seeing things correctly. There’s a tremendous slow-down when I click on ‘A’/Processor-Automation/Biotek2’ after scrolling the first-page.

I can open Biotek2 in the Waveform daw (both tracktion product), and it opens in a second.

I can open Hive2 (a similar plugin like Biotek2) and it opens in Ardour5 in a couple of seconds…

From what I can tell Biotek2 looks like it has about the same amount of controls so both should open around the same time.

#5

OK. If it’s less than ~1000, this stall must be due to a different issue, then.

#6

I just checked with Waveform which can list all of them… there’s actually way more (like hundreds) than having the plugin on Ardour…

though that shouldn’t explain why it can’t load successfully because this plugin loads within 15 seconds in Ardour6 prealpha. It wouldn’t show all the controls – and has at least 50 in-verbatim labels as “unknown” … just like Ardour5…

Instead of listing “hundreds” of proper-labelled controls as in Waveform, Ardour5 dramatically cuts the amount of available controls…

It looks like it is under a hundred in Ardour5, but it is hundreds when it is shown in Waveform.

^ perhaps there’s a VST spec issue going on here? There shouldn’t be “unknown” in-verbatim labels as I can see all of the controls available in Waveform.

Perhaps I should request an investigation into this for both daw and plugin.

Waveform shows all controls of Biotek2 (hundreds), but Ardour doesn’t look like it shows more than a hundred and shows most of them as “unknown” in-verbatim labels.

#7

^ tracktion got back to me on that… Perhaps this can finally be looked into to see what is causing all hundreds of automations(which should not be occurring according to staff). Waveform is not supposed to be doing this – and this other daw is made by the same company. I’ll see what happens by their account, perhaps there’s nothing more than the Biotek2 plugin that needs to be concerned about.

#8

Thanks for digging into this.

1 Like
#9

Apparently, the AU library has some kind of “workaround” protection for plugins that have a long list of automations.

With the Biotek2-AU plugin, the automation lists show up with proper labels and none say “unknown” — the plugin loads up in seconds…

The Biotek2-VST plugin on both Mac or Linux have the same issue of taking at least one minute to load though often not loading completely and causes ardour to stall.
(the Biotek2-VST plugin on the Mac also has the unknown label issue, just as with ardour on Linux.)

It doesn’t matter if the VST plugin is being used by Ardour on Linux or Mac, the problem is the same.

…
The AU library must have a workaround build into it to allow plugins with long automation lists to be skipped and allows the plugin to be loaded quickly. It takes a few seconds to scroll down to reach rock bottom (page-down or arrow-keys)., now after reaching the end of the list, it takes much longer to reach back to the top.(it would take many minutes actually but all the labels show correctly)

There are no “unknown” labels, and all labels load-up dynamically which originally do not show when navigating down the list, while navigating up the “missing” labels now get dynamically loaded into the list << this is how the AU plugin is presenting the long list to the end-user… and going through the automation lists entirely (up direction) would take much longer.

The VST format of the plugin on the other hand, either stalls or takes a very long time to load – if it manages to load into ardour it presents no more than around 200 items for its automation list, and most the items are labelled “unknown”…

– from tracktion somewhere::
“One problem is still there, though: upon loading an instrument, the macro parameter names change and these name changes are not updated in the automation parameter list.”

^ The AU plugin doesn’t have the incorrect labels, only the VST ones for both platforms.

I’ll have to wait and see what happens for further updates. I’m passing this over here in case anyone may have any ideas I can try to see if I can get things working more correctly for this plugin.

thanks

#10

Unfortunately even with the newest MixbusC v6, biotek2 still fails the same … I believe they are the same developers behind the JUCE framework… I’ve contacted to let them know they can try to reach out to mixbus if they can. It is now March 11th 2020, and exactly the same issue is still occurring. Completely brand new install, zero configuration set up, I try the Biotek2 plugin, and bam the daw crashes right away. I tell them, I should not be forced to use their Waveform daw just for Biotek2. VST should work in any daw… Why should I have to be forced to use Waveform just to use Biotek2? Can you guys reach out to Tracktion on this? It’s been several months and I really do not want to switch to another daw just to use one plugin.

Can you guys help me out on this? I just upgraded to Mixbus32C v6… and I really want this plugin to working correctly.

thanks

#11

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