I’m currently running into an issue where the CAPS tube preamp + EQ plugin zombifies JACK after a few setting manipulations.
The odd thing is, when I run top, it doesn’t say anything about a ‘zombie’ anywhere, although ardour ends up hogging around 70% of the processor.
Since I’m admittedly very new to the world of Linux-based apps…and, indeed, to Linux period…my question would be:
Is this a problem with ardour, JACK, or the plugin itself? How can I tell?
I love the sound of this particular plugin, at least in terms of how it copes with the sound of my currently half-assed front end. Where do I start my troubleshooting? Does it have anything to do with the fact that I’m running a 64-bit OS?
Thanks for reading this post. I’ve searched a bit, both here and online, and haven’t found any useful information as of yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
All of my problems with any plugin so far have been resolved by using an instance of JackRack for each desired plugin chain, routing it all through Jack, and (in my case) pulling the channel sends to the master out in Ardour. Works flawlessly, so far.
Is this telling me that I flubbed a configuration somewhere? I’m excited about getting it all to work, but I’m starting to think about a script that can simply open everything required with one command…
i am experiencing problems with running any caps plugin, no matter if i use ardour or jack-rack.
the plugin loads fine, but as soon i activate it, the sound stops playing and the playhead is running non-continuously.
perhaps it has to do with my alsa version, i ll try to update to 1.0.16.
Try loading the plugin in a different app (jackrack for instance) and see if you get the same problem.
If not, the problem has something to do with how the plugin and ardour interact. This may not necessarily be a bug, but can also have to do with how ardour and/or plugin were compiled.
If it does, then there is probably a problem with the plugin.
After some more experimentation, it looks like ALL of the CAPS plugins cause the same behavior, whether they are loaded in Jackrack or Ardour…
The plugins will load just fine. Then I get about 20 seconds of manipulation out of it…and then the ‘zombified’ message coupled with the Ardour popup describing how it is starved for data.
Note: I’m still running Ardour 2.0.6 (the version that came with my Ubuntu Studio distro). I’m very new to Linux period, so I’ve avoided compiling the latest version until I get a better feel for things.
It sounds to me like you’re running into the denormalization problem. Some plugins don’t deal well with zero input levels, and chew up lots of CPU trying to process what isn’t there.
The CAPS plugins are supposed to deal with this well, but you may need to re-build them for your system depending on your hardware.
Check out the CAPS Audio Plugin Suite site for some info on this, and details how to get and re-build them for your system.
OK…so I downloaded and recompiled the plugins, and they exhibit the exact same behavior. I can load them up and activate them, however as soon as I tweak a parameter, Jack disconnects. I don’t know how to get more debugging information…but I haven’t run Ardour from the command line as of yet. I’ll submit a bug report and try some terminal business…although, like I said before, I’m reasonably unfamiliar with the process…has anyone else had this specific issue? Is there something specific I should watch for?
Thanks for the reply.
Later: damn. I didn’t run configure.py. I’ll try that…