Multiple serious plugin problems and with playlists.

Installation & Configuration Linux
#1

A problem I thought was project-specific isn’t project-specific after all :frowning:

I have multiple problems that all appeared at the same time, after getting MIDI going in Ardour. I don’t know that getting MIDI running caused the problems; I also did an apt-get update/upgrade that brought in newer versions of Calf plugins which does not preceed the first occurance of the problems but does seem to be involved in some way.

First: on loading many projects, I get a nontrivial pause, during which time disc space is shown to be 0h 0m 0s remaining, and the title bar project name alternates between askterisked and non-askterisked. This cycle of asterisk/non-asterisk appears to repeat the same number of times as I have Calf plugins plugged in across all tracks. So if I have an assortment of tracks N and a total of 10 Calf plugins across all tracks, it will cycle 10 times.

Pulling all the Calf plugins and plugging them back in again (same places, same setting) with LV2 versions makes this problem go away.

ALSO: projects with tracks with Calf (LADSPA) plugins don’t play, and LADSPA Calf plugins seem to be misbehaving; I get anywhere from muted to noise to distorted play. Replacing them with LV2 Calf plugins (I think - the ones not marked LADSPA) makes this go away as well. (Note: I have two copies of most of the Calf plugins (and have for some time - honestly I don’t know why, but the old ones go back to Ardour 2), some with (LADSPA) after the name, some without.)

Swapping plugins out is a bigger project than it may seem, because I have never, ever had presets load for me, despite having the subscriber version of Ardour. Checking the store, I see that the presets are saved, but they don’t get loaded. I don’t know why.

Now, once I do this, and have things playing and sounding right again, and no delay at startup, in these projects, I have very slow response to the record button (1.5ish seconds) and swapping playlists on tracks while playing results in that track going silent for 1.5ish seconds, and then resuming play, delayed from the rest of playback by the same amount of time.

To wit: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48493064/playlist-changing-delay.mov

That video quality is pretty weak; I can record it again with a desktop video recorder. But since Ardour is running output through my external interface and everything else uses the built-in motherboard sound, it wouldn’t be as useful for this case, because of no sound.

When playing that video, note the fiddler dropping out for about a second and a half, while the other playback continues; then the fiddle comes back in, picking up immediately where it left off, delayed from the rest. I did it twice; the fallback is cumulative.

On projects not (…yet…) affected, and until a couple of weeks ago, I could change playlists more or less instantly; I would do this to audition phrases and the like during comping.

This collection of problems has rather kicked my workflow and progress on my current projects in the knees, so … anybody? Help?

#2

Lots of plugins are still 32-bit only, so I’m sticking with 32-bit linux for another couple of years, sadly. My machine is quite a bit faster at 64-bit, but, well, plug-ins.

I’m also going to step back down to Ardour 3.4. 3.5 is costing me way too much work time. I’m getting so many routing problems that I’m no longer thinking it’s even plugin related. That permasolo thing is biting me in the ass now, too, and… yeah. I’m spending way too much of my time trying to figure out workarounds to surprise new problems. :frowning: Hopefully 3.6 will be better.

What plug-ins do you use in place of Calf, anyway?

#3

Oh, I’ve had more than my fair share of run-ins with Ubuntu. I’m going to re-survey once LTS support runs out for 12.04 and move to something else. What, I don’t know. But something, because yeah.

I don’t care about (or, really, care for) Calf’s skumorphic UI choices. But I like the sound. I’m fairly fond of their compressor and very fond of their reverb. Choruser isn’t bad either; I use it for smoothing certain instruments. I guess I just need to make sure they don’t upgrade when I have a stable set. :-p

#4

I ditched the calf plugins a while ago in favour of others. Though they do work for me but last time the interface was well glitchy. The graph stopped responding to mouse so you couldnt adjust the eq curve on the graph.

But its a long way from back when ardour would just crash trying to open the guy.

As for alternative OS, id recomend AV-Linux though its only availible in 32-bit but that seems to be a bit more stable well for me atleast. But i am using kx-studio at the moment and that seems to be pretty solid.

#5

Late last night, swapping out Calf LADSPA plugins, I discovered that Calf Compressor LADSPA plug-ins were opening with wrong values - impossible ones, like compression ratio of 0. I would not be remotely surprised if this was related.

#6

Are these Ardour 2 projects being opened in Ardour 3? I believe that caused crazy settings on CALF plugins

#7

No, these are all Ardour3-native projects. (Well, all but one. The one case where I thought it was project-specific was a case of a project which was originally Ardour 2 but which I edited to turn into Ardour 3 - it had the dash-to-underscore issue - but it’s repeated on several 100% Ardour-3-always projects.)

#8

The CALF plugins have been responsible for almost as many problems for Ardour users as … oh, say … Ubuntu :slight_smile:

Seriously, these plugins have nice GUIs (in some versions) and appear compelling, but they also have bugs (at least when used with Ardour) that often make them more trouble than useful. On the other hand, when they do work, they can be fairly nice.

#9

Added, for the playback-lag part of this: http://tracker.ardour.org/view.php?id=5898 - the_CLA_2 was able to reproduce the playback delay right away.

#10

I have experienced the first problem as well with one of my current projects.

As for presets, I have found that if you save a preset it won’t show up until you close the program and open it again.

#11

this looks like it should be for the mantis bug tracker.

But bear in mind that there are still known bugs that are being worked on, particularly with midi.

#12

veda_sticks: The playlist-switching delay I have logged today as 0005898 in Mantis. But the others I would think are other bugs or maybe even configuration issues/local problems. And without having at least a category for them I am at a bit of a loss as to what exactly I should file.

For example, the plugin-presets not-loading problem. Nobody else has this problem that I know about. I haven’t cared before now, but now I care. I haven’t explored it too much yet; I’m going to delete my old plugin-presets file and seeif starting over fixes it. I hope it will, anyway. I only know about the .ladspa-located presets store tho’ - is there another one somewhere else for lv2?

#13

Okay, I found the presets store for .lv2 also, deleted both, and ping! save/restore of plugin presets is working, at least for now. Given that the only time I played with it before was in the 2.6 era, and the ladspa file in particular was larger than I would expect for that, I think that can be written up to time and changes and upgrades and disk-replacement adventures.

#14

Which is not to say the other problems aren’t still here. Plug in preset save/restore is working, yay; playlist delayed playing is in Mantis now, confirmed by others; asterisk cycling behaviour is confirmed by others but not yet in Mantis because I don’t have a 100% repro case; the others are still ongoing.