Windows beta pre-release (incl. VST and 64 bit binaries)

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Andreas
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Re: Windows beta pre-release (incl. VST and 64 bit binaries)

Post by Andreas » Sat May 16, 2009 12:53 pm

Bennett wrote:- Notes would intermittently stop responding to input from my midi keyboard. It also seemed like at times that a note on event was read, but at near 0 velocity.
I found something a little bit similar. If I hit the same key twice quickly, sometimes the second note is silent. With some help from Christian I now have a fix for that bug, that I will soon commit.
- Adjustment of the number of audio outputs caused Linuxsampler to crash. Adjustment of the audio outputs in standalone operation worked fine.
Yes, this is a known problem. You can't adjust the number of audio outputs for the VSTi. We should disable the possibility to do so in some way, instead of letting LS crash. We should probably also build the VSTi in some different flavours for different number of outputs, like LinuxSampler.dll (1 stereo channel), LinuxSampler16.dll (8 stereo channels), etc. What do you think would be good choices for the number of outputs?
- There appears to be a bug in the Instrument Index (patch) selector. I was browsing through a violin patch from Kirk Hunters Emerald Orchestra and when I select a particular patch, sometimes an incorrect patch would be loaded.
This is nothing I have seen, and unfortunately I don't have that gig either. Please tell us if you see some pattern in the error behaviour.
- Strange behavior to FL Studio only - multiple instances of the Fantasia frontend open upon loading the VSTi into a generator slot. I believe that this has to do with the FL Studio VSTi wrapper. Every time I select the VSTi wrapper to adjust a parameter (such as midi port mapping), another instance of Fantasia loads.
Maybe FL actually opens several instances of the LinuxSampler VST. You can tell by looking in the device panel in fantasia - if there are multiple instances of the "plugin" audio device, then there are multiple LS engines running, something you normally don't want (it uses much more memory than having several channels in one LS engine).

keyman_sam
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Re: Windows beta pre-release (incl. VST and 64 bit binaries)

Post by keyman_sam » Sat May 16, 2009 5:51 pm

Fantastic!

I've been a linuxSampleruser, but this is great news for us DAW users! I tried it and I'm very impressed. The only thing is that, if you try out any features like Export Script or load from script, it tends to crash Reaper.

Overall I'm very pleased with this! I'll be using this over Kontakt 2 as i see it.

grishata
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Re: Windows beta pre-release (incl. VST and 64 bit binaries)

Post by grishata » Sat May 16, 2009 6:10 pm

Andreas wrote:Yes, this is a known problem. You can't adjust the number of audio outputs for the VSTi. We should disable the possibility to do so in some way, instead of letting LS crash.
I had this implemented, but I committed it just now.

Jason Brian Merrill
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Re: Windows beta pre-release (incl. VST and 64 bit binaries)

Post by Jason Brian Merrill » Sat May 16, 2009 9:05 pm

Ok, hello :)

this is my first time even trying this sampler out :)

how to i get the 32 binary to install on a 64 bit system? It makes sense that some would want to use the 32 bit plugin in their 32 bit reaper on a 64 bit system :)

sbenno
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Re: Windows beta pre-release (incl. VST and 64 bit binaries)

Post by sbenno » Sat May 16, 2009 11:50 pm

Andreas wrote: Yes, this is a known problem. You can't adjust the number of audio outputs for the VSTi. We should disable the possibility to do so in some way, instead of letting LS crash. We should probably also build the VSTi in some different flavours for different number of outputs, like LinuxSampler.dll (1 stereo channel), LinuxSampler16.dll (8 stereo channels), etc. What do you think would be good choices for the number of outputs?
Yes, I think this makes sense. last time I tested Kontakt2 there was a kontakt.dll and a kontakt16out.dll

perhaps we should provide 2, 16 and 32 channel linuxsampler DLLs ? What is the consensus ? what do Kontakt and other samplers nowadays ?
using 32 channel DLL and not using every channel wastes some CPU therefore better providing a few in order to optimize the CPU usage based on the needs of the user.

For example if one wants to use LinuxSampler als GeneralMIDI sound module within a VST sequencer he needs to add some MIDI controlled FXes like Reverb, Chorus, Delay etc.
So he could load the 16 channel version (8 stereo out) linuxsampler16.dll and then in Fantasia add MIDI FX sends assigned to the GeneralMIDI Reverb, Chorus MIDI CCs and then route the audio outs
channels (3,4) Reverb and channels (5,6) Chorus to the VST sequencer's reverb and chorus FXes. and have full featured General MIDI playback.

If someone built a decent free General MIDI soundset in GIG format LinuxSampler could act as a GeneralMIDI player for all platforms and replace engines like MS GeneralMIDI Wavetable Synthesizer,
Quicktime (OS X, Windows) and timidity (Linux) which all 3 sounds like a tin can. :)
Today's machines with 2-4GB could easily use a 1GB General MIDI soundset loaded all the time and perhaps consuming less than 100MB so it would make sense to provide a better MIDI playback to the user.
I am still amazed that both windows and OS X do not provide at least Roland SoundCanvas quality nowadays, which is 1991 technology, a few MB RAM based soundset but still sounds very good compared to PC based General MIDI playback solutions.

ggoodesa
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Re: Windows beta pre-release (incl. VST and 64 bit binaries)

Post by ggoodesa » Sun May 17, 2009 8:05 am

Hi,
In regard to the number of audio channels to provide in the VST dlls, it makes sense to me to have options for 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32. In that way most users should have an optimum choice for their system needs. My question would be this; What if the host only has two ASIO outputs - would one be able to use the 16 channel dll? The M-Audio Delta 1010 has 10 ASIO output channels, so a 10 channel vst dll would be ideal for use with it - when this is implimented please add information to the How to Build tutorial so that we can easily customize for our own environments.
Thanks!
GrahamG

Andreas
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Re: Windows beta pre-release (incl. VST and 64 bit binaries)

Post by Andreas » Sun May 17, 2009 8:58 am

sbenno wrote:what do Kontakt and other samplers nowadays ?
I checked with the samplers I have installed:

Yellow Tools Independence Free: by default 8 stereo and 8 mono, but it is configurable (you have to unload and reload the plugin for the change to take effect).

UVI Workstation: 17(!) stereo.

Wusikstation CM: two DLLs: one with 1 stereo, the other with 3 stereo.

CMPlay: 4 stereo.

Andreas
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Re: Windows beta pre-release (incl. VST and 64 bit binaries)

Post by Andreas » Sun May 17, 2009 9:05 am

ggoodesa wrote:In regard to the number of audio channels to provide in the VST dlls, it makes sense to me to have options for 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32. In that way most users should have an optimum choice for their system needs. My question would be this; What if the host only has two ASIO outputs - would one be able to use the 16 channel dll?
Yes, sure. The outputs of a VSTi are independent of the ASIO outputs. The VSTi outputs usually show up in the mixer of the host and can there be mixed and routed to any outputs of the host. So, I don't think it's really meaningful to have so many different dlls.

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cuse
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Re: Windows beta pre-release (incl. VST and 64 bit binaries)

Post by cuse » Sun May 17, 2009 1:41 pm

Andreas wrote:Yes, this is a known problem. You can't adjust the number of audio outputs for the VSTi. We should disable the possibility to do so in some way, instead of letting LS crash. We should probably also build the VSTi in some different flavours for different number of outputs, like LinuxSampler.dll (1 stereo channel), LinuxSampler16.dll (8 stereo channels), etc. What do you think would be good choices for the number of outputs?
I'm not convinced of that multi-DLL approach. I would simply make it configurable. By default 2 channels and the user could override it either with JSampler / QSampler or a separate app which we could include in the start menu entry. After the user changed the setting, he has to restart the plugin and he would have the desired amount of outputs.
Jason Brian Merrill wrote:how to i get the 32 binary to install on a 64 bit system? It makes sense that some would want to use the 32 bit plugin in their 32 bit reaper on a 64 bit system :)
Yes, I think we will have such an option in the official release installer, for the beta pre-releases we kept things simple as there are enough other, more important things to do first.
Steele wrote:Is this with Jackmidi?
This beta pre-release isn't compiled with JACK support, as it would quite mean some effort to adjust the installer, etc. We could do it, but are there other Windows apps which already support JACK?

ggoodesa
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Re: Windows beta pre-release (incl. VST and 64 bit binaries)

Post by ggoodesa » Sun May 17, 2009 2:32 pm

Hi,
I shared the pre-release with a friend, and this is a copy of some of his conversation via email with me:
[
I figure that MOST people who run the VST version will have only one standard stereo sound card. However, there will be a good number of us "experimenter" types who will have 2 or 3 SB cards or the Delta 1010LT with 10 output channels. People with MORE than 16 channels (6 stereo pairs) will be few, if any.

I would be happy with the standard being the "16" version.

What is the drawback to having a standard version with more than 2 channels? Does the version compiled for more channels become unreasonably large in size? or consume too much memory? or consume too much CPU overhead?

I would think that if the user does not configure more than two channels, then the allowance for 16 or 32 channels being compiled into the executable module should be of negligible consequence!

Upon thinking more about this, why not have the "standard" VSTi go all the way with 32 channels.

Also, as an additional "cleanup", Fantasia should be capable of querying the "backend" for its capabilities and limitations (e.g., the max number of audio channels allowed), and then PREVENT the user of the GUI interface from "creating" more elements than there are capabilities for.

Also, is it possible to have the Fantasia GUI window function as a VST host managed window, rather than be created outside the VST host?

Lynn
]

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