Workin' For A Livin'...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
It’s been an exciting (interesting?) couple of weeks here at Audio Damage Command And Control. Adam and I decided, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to either of us any more at this juncture, that we would finally tackle the Big Bear, and release our next product as a VST3.
The VST3 SDK was updated to a new stable release a month or so ago, and in this release is the ability to also build VST2.4 and AudioUnit, off the VST3 base plug-in. These aren’t “wrapped” as such, but are the real deal, just using a different base than the VST3. They necessarily lack the extra features that VST3 has (moreso in the case of VST2.4, as AudioUnits and VST3 plugs are remarkably similar in feature-sets.) We also, since we were making such a big jump anyhow, decided to switch from VSTGUI 3.6, which we’ve been using since Tattoo, to VSTGUI 4.
On the Windows side of things, it was relatively (!!!) painless, but when we moved to OS X, things got pretty hairy for a while there. Yesterday morning, I was actually about to lobby for bagging the whole idea and going back to the Old Way of doing things, but as luck would have it, Adam found the Issue, which turned out to be our fault, not Steinberg’s. Now the VST3 on OS X is merrily working away.
Anyhow, long story short, if you’re wondering where I’ve been for the last few days, it was a combination of that, some legal troubles (I was arrested for doing graffiti, or “street art” as I like to call it but the police in Tempe don’t, of all things), and various other demands on my time, including an iOS contract I took without, perhaps, thoroughly thinking through the ramifications of same. In that respect, the iOS contract and the arrest are remarkably similar.
Adam is on his way to Wyoming, of all places, for the next few days, which will allow me to finish the iOS thingy, and we can return to our regularly scheduled vitriol. In the mean time, this is an open thread. Questions? Comments? Criticisms?
30 comments
I have an AD plugin question, stemming from trying to use too many AD plugins in a live set: Do you put much time into comparing CPU usage between your plugins and 'comparable' plugins by others?
FYI a Core i5 laptop maxes out in Ableton Live with 3 each of BigSeq2, Dubstation, Automaton, & Fluid. I've had to stoop to using native Live effects as replacements.
Weirdly on my Core2 Quad I was doing 5 channels of my monster AD FX rack, and it worked fine up until I added one too many audio clips, and then the CPU went to 90% and it started stuttering like a bad Oval track.
What are the VST3 benefits to customers? I think there's a new thing kind of like poly AT in Cubase 6 that I think you need a VST3 instrument to do?
Judging from your past comments about VST3, I'm assuming the Tempe po-po arrested you for that decision, not graffiti.*
*In no way should this comment be construed as a rejection of the thesis that Phoenix-area cops are racist, facist hicks.
@chaircrusher: Your Core i5 laptop has four virtual CPU cores (only two, really, but the OS sees four) while your Core 2 Quad has eight (again, only four, really, but the OS sees 8.) Hence, even though the i5 is technically the faster by clock speed, the Core 2 Quad can do more things simultaneously.
That is, I'll note, a _vast_ oversimplification. But in both instances, you're simply gonna run out of cores eventually. This, as you note, happens sooner in the i5 than the Core 2 Quad, for reasons that should be obvious now.
To put this in a somewhat different light, BS2 has around 75 sequencers, each with smoothers. So three of them is 225 sequencers running simultaneously. Add to that three instances of Automaton, which is also a rather heavy-handed plug-in, and you've got a _lot_ of math going on. I wouldn't recommend what you're trying for even a pretty robust computer, let alone what you're running. I have a Core 2 Quad Extreme in my PC, the fastest Core 2 made, and my PC is _heavily_ optimized and tuned and has the best RAM it can handle, and I'd be shocked if I could run 5 racks with what you're describing.
@synthetic: Mainly it gives them something else to complain about. The benefit is largely for us, as VST3 is a much sexier and more feature-packed SDK, internally.
@krylenko: The cop that nabbed me was actually pretty cool, as fucking pigs go.
-CR
You spray paintin' robots around town again?
Well, that's good to hear. In a world... one man... etc.
Who knew spraying "Fucking Logic" on the side of the Best Buy would not be well received? Go figure.
Fuckin' Logic, how does it work??
@chris -- the i5 has 2 cores and hyperthreading, the core2 quad has 4 cores without hyperthreading.
Which means that even if the i5 core is faster than the core2, there are circumstances -- such as running a bunch of VSTs in a multithreaded VST host -- where the slower core2 can handle more than the i5. Which is what I observed when trying to go crazy with AD plugs.
Real cores trump hyperthreads, in other words. On Intel chips, adding a core yields a healthy fraction of linear speedup; the hyper-threading speedup is usually in the 15-30%.
Plus, my Core2 Quad is a q9550 with 12MB of cache, and the i5 has 3MB. Which is why, even though the i5 is a generation or 2 newer than the q9550, in raw performance, the q9550 is even or a bit faster, depending on the workload.
What you said. So if you already knew the answer... ?
-CR
What were you painting / on ?
iOS contract issue .... Any insight or forewarnings ?
Good luck on both . IMHO the only thing worse than the laws themselves is the lawyers that go with them .
You paint w/o a lookout ?
I want to see pics.
And I hope you exercised your right to remain silent.
I got bagged in Queens about 17 years ago for the same thing.
Got clocked in the jaw by the cop said I was lucky he didnt "Bleed" me.
Adam X / Traversable Wormhole has a huge Graffiti resume.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9278991 @N04/
He did some work with waxtrax way back, aint you did some work with them too?
That link is broke as fuck... search flickr for Vendalism's photo stream.. dude is a big influence to art and musicwise...cool as hell in person...his more famous brother is fuckin bigheaded..
I wish Yamaha would make a poly AT controller to go with Cubase's Note Expression VST3 tech. Weighted 88-key controller, wooden keys, keep it under $1500 and I'm there. You can buy $10k guitars but no one makes a MIDI controller for over $300.
$300? synthetic, the Haaken Continuum would like to speak with you: http://www.hakenaudio.com/Continuum/html/pricing/Prices.html
Doepfer LMK Joint me thinks is over a G.
I think an arrest over 40 counts for like 8 arrests under 30, so we're all even Steven now.
As an iOS guy that's considering porting something over to VST, I'd love to hear more about your rationale for going to VST3. Up until now I assumed the easiest thing was VST 2.4 + Symbiosis and read nothing but invective about VST3.
VST3 is very difficult; it is (like all VST SDKs) hideously under-documented. On top of that, the examples provided don't make much sense.
I wouldn't recommend it for a first attempt, honestly. There is a vast pool of existing knowledge about making VSTs in the form of the two mailing list archives, KvR's DSP forums, and many open-source projects to look at. None of that exists for VST3. I couldn't, in candor, make a compelling case to start with that. The VST2.4 / VSTGUI 3.6 combination is a much better starting point.
Our rational is mainly in that we would like to future-proof our workflow. When Steinberg deprecates 2.4, we want to be able to have existing resources, rather than having to scramble like we did with 64-bit, or the Intel switch, or the VST 2.4 switch. (The latter was quite simple, fwiw.) We also want to have a single build target, and this seems to give us that.
But you gotta know plug-ins, and know how the different DAWs interact with them, to pull it off. VST3 is most assuredly an advanced format, and not a good starting place.
-CR
Making it easy to build 2.4 and AU from the VST3 SDK was a smart move, they probably should have done that from the get-go to encourage early adoption.
What hosts support VST3 these days? I haven't kept up with any news of that sort.
@inteliko Doepfer uses Fatar keybeds, and since moving manufacturing to China they haven't been very good
@renderful I don't write beardcore
The VST3 hosts I'm aware of are Cubendo and Studio One. There may be others, but those are the only two, to the best of my knowledge.
That will change, though. There has been muttering on the VSTSDK list from a couple host devs, so I know that there are at least two more coming.
It's really just waiting for Live. That'll be a watershed moment. Until Live supports VST3, it's all just pissing in the wind, really. But we do get simple sidechaining, nodes, a few other interesting features that we hadn't utilized in VST2.4.
-CR
open thread... have you seen this? http://www.touchdigitalcontrollers.co.uk/
physical controller for the impOscar2
pricey, but when I tested impOscar one I thought that a physical controller was really needed, and they made one! I wonder how mny of them they are going to sell tho, as I said, it's pricey! 750 pounds plus shipping
why not just buy a real oscar? why pay that kind of cash for a controller dedicated to one plug in?
sure, an oscar will cost you $2000+/- but it will hold its value a lot better than a one off controller.
I'm with boobs on that one. That controller is a ridiculous waste of money. You could get any number of shit-hawt mono-synths for that amount, and they'd all be investments, instead of money pits.
-CR
I'm with boobs.
Random thing: Who's on Google+? I'm having trouble figuring out who's who with all of the Real Names over there.
I'm here: http://gplus.to/wgparham
-William
I'm with boobs on the Oscar. Still regretting getting rid of mine even though it was built like a piece of shit, just like the electricals in a pre-Ford Jag. IMPOscar2 does a decent job though.
Thanks for the explanation. I got a 2.4 version of my plugin running pretty easily, but my impression from browsing through the VST3 docs is that it's going to be a *lot* more complicated.
Link that street art !
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