Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

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rghvdberg
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by rghvdberg »

GMaq wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 4:05 pm Hi,

I'm intrigued about doing this challenge and I have a new tune recorded but I'm running into some deficiencies, are we allowed to ask questions or seek AW advice here?
that's practically the whole idea of this challenge : learn, explore, be creative!
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by GMaq »

rghvdberg wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 6:46 pm
GMaq wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 4:05 pm Hi,

I'm intrigued about doing this challenge and I have a new tune recorded but I'm running into some deficiencies, are we allowed to ask questions or seek AW advice here?
that's practically the whole idea of this challenge : learn, explore, be creative!
Haha!

I thought maybe you guys were just throwing us into the deep end... no namby-pamby hand-holding.. SWIM or DIE!

I was having kick drum problems, think I've got it figured out... some of these plugins don't make any sound if they're set at 100% wet. Also they seem to not take numerical input in Ardour's generic plugin interface like other plugins do it's killing my OCD that I can't enter an even value like 6db... :lol:
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by LAM »

GMaq wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:39 pm
rghvdberg wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 6:46 pm
GMaq wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 4:05 pm Hi,

I'm intrigued about doing this challenge and I have a new tune recorded but I'm running into some deficiencies, are we allowed to ask questions or seek AW advice here?
that's practically the whole idea of this challenge : learn, explore, be creative!
Haha!

I thought maybe you guys were just throwing us into the deep end... no namby-pamby hand-holding.. SWIM or DIE!

I was having kick drum problems, think I've got it figured out... some of these plugins don't make any sound if they're set at 100% wet. Also they seem to not take numerical input in Ardour's generic plugin interface like other plugins do it's killing my OCD that I can't enter an even value like 6db... :lol:
Hi @GMaq,

AFAIK all AW plugins take numerical input, could be the range is 0..1? Which plugin do you have problem with?

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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by GMaq »

LAM wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 5:11 am
GMaq wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:39 pm
rghvdberg wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 6:46 pm

that's practically the whole idea of this challenge : learn, explore, be creative!
Haha!

I thought maybe you guys were just throwing us into the deep end... no namby-pamby hand-holding.. SWIM or DIE!

I was having kick drum problems, think I've got it figured out... some of these plugins don't make any sound if they're set at 100% wet. Also they seem to not take numerical input in Ardour's generic plugin interface like other plugins do it's killing my OCD that I can't enter an even value like 6db... :lol:
Hi @GMaq,

AFAIK all AW plugins take numerical input, could be the range is 0..1? Which plugin do you have problem with?
They take input.. it's just the input isn't interpreted as the number I put in. As an example if the range is 0-12 (not 0.0 - 0.12) and I input '6' often the slider just maxes out or goes to some other number that isn't 6. Before we go down the rabbit hole too far my AW collection is a few months old and I've only tried a handful of plugins so... I need to grab the latest batch and pay more attention to which particular plugins do this. I'm not on my Studio box to check right now
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by LAM »

@GMaq,
now your problem is clear! :D
Yes, it was confusing for me too, you have to insert values in the range 0..1, so let's say you want the slider half way you have to enter 0.5 (or 0,5 depending on your locale).

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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by GMaq »

LAM wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 2:39 pm @GMaq,
now your problem is clear! :D
Yes, it was confusing for me too, you have to insert values in the range 0..1, so let's say you want the slider half way you have to enter 0.5 (or 0,5 depending on your locale).
Oh!!!! Well that makes a difference!! 8) :lol:
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by GMaq »

For my own simplicity and sanity I've made an 'airwindows_select' folder with about 87 of the original 200+ plugins. I've removed a lot of the 1,2,3,versions and just put in the latest of the series and I've removed a lot of the more singular use ones like specific 'weird' filters etc.. My focus is kind of the most common EQ's, compressors, limiters, delays and reverbs because my work flow is pretty much 99.9% Audio only. If anyone else would like this collection for the sake of this competition and you're overwhelmed by the sheer number I would be glad to upload and share the zip. This is only for one-time convenience. For existing AVL-MXE Users the AW Plugins already come in the 'avl-mxe-extra-plugins-dist' Deb package.
Last edited by GMaq on Fri May 14, 2021 5:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by GMaq »

Hi,

I've run into another issue and I'm very surprised nobody else has..

I started my LMC Challenge song on a laptop with an early Intel i3 Processor on it and my session with all Airwindows plugins was running at about 30% DSP usage in Ardour. I moved the session to another machine with an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 24 core and the session was at 80% DSP usage with Xruns everywhere!! So I went on Ardour's IRC and they indicated a few CPU settings to look at etc etc. and no change. I opened Ardour's Window for Plugin DSP Load and many of the Airwindows were running very high in the metering. To rule everything out I opened another Ardour session with a similar amount of tracks that had no Airwindows Plugins but Plugins from other common developers and the DSP Usage in the session was 4% and no Xruns!

So it's not the machine, it's not the machine settings or Ardour settings it's specific to the Airwindows Plugins and the latest Zip from the Airwindows website must be missing some compiler optimization flags for newer AMD CPU's. Yes I know I can compile them myself but it requires the VST2 SDK and I don't want to be bothered with that and plus that only fixes the problem for me.

I posted a bug report here: https://github.com/airwindows/airwindows/issues/28
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by LAM »

GMaq wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 5:31 am So it's not the machine, it's not the machine settings or Ardour settings it's specific to the Airwindows Plugins and the latest Zip from the Airwindows website must be missing some compiler optimization flags for newer AMD CPU's. Yes I know I can compile them myself but it requires the VST2 SDK and I don't want to be bothered with that and plus that only fixes the problem for me.

I posted a bug report here: https://github.com/airwindows/airwindows/issues/28
Airwindows plugins CPU usage has always been low on my systems (Intel), sorry to hear that. :roll:

Hopefully it will get fixed soon.

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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by robbert-vdh »

GMaq wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 5:31 am Hi,

I've run into another issue and I'm very surprised nobody else has..

I started my LMC Challenge song on a laptop with an early Intel i3 Processor on it and my session with all Airwindows plugins was running at about 30% DSP usage in Ardour. I moved the session to another machine with an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 24 core and the session was at 80% DSP usage with Xruns everywhere!! So I went on Ardour's IRC and they indicated a few CPU settings to look at etc etc. and no change. I opened Ardour's Window for Plugin DSP Load and many of the Airwindows were running very high in the metering. To rule everything out I opened another Ardour session with a similar amount of tracks that had no Airwindows Plugins but Plugins from other common developers and the DSP Usage in the session was 4% and no Xruns!

So it's not the machine, it's not the machine settings or Ardour settings it's specific to the Airwindows Plugins and the latest Zip from the Airwindows website must be missing some compiler optimization flags for newer AMD CPU's. Yes I know I can compile them myself but it requires the VST2 SDK and I don't want to be bothered with that and plus that only fixes the problem for me.

I posted a bug report here: https://github.com/airwindows/airwindows/issues/28
Something to check if you haven't already: when you open Ardour's settings on the AMD machine and then go to the Audio tab, is 'use FlushToZero' or one of the other FTZ options under Denormals -> Processor handling enabled? I think that should be on by default, but software sometimes does weird things so who knows. Most other plugins already do this by themselves, but the Airwindows plugins don't and instead they try to avoid denormals manually, but that may not always work. Some plugins also use long doubles, and with those plugins the FTZ option won't have any effect, so that's also something to look out for.

You can also use the Plugin DSP Load window (under the Window menu) to figure out which plugin is causing the high DSP load, because it may just be one or two faulty plugins.
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by GMaq »

robbert-vdh wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 11:52 am
GMaq wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 5:31 am Hi,

I've run into another issue and I'm very surprised nobody else has..

I started my LMC Challenge song on a laptop with an early Intel i3 Processor on it and my session with all Airwindows plugins was running at about 30% DSP usage in Ardour. I moved the session to another machine with an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 24 core and the session was at 80% DSP usage with Xruns everywhere!! So I went on Ardour's IRC and they indicated a few CPU settings to look at etc etc. and no change. I opened Ardour's Window for Plugin DSP Load and many of the Airwindows were running very high in the metering. To rule everything out I opened another Ardour session with a similar amount of tracks that had no Airwindows Plugins but Plugins from other common developers and the DSP Usage in the session was 4% and no Xruns!

So it's not the machine, it's not the machine settings or Ardour settings it's specific to the Airwindows Plugins and the latest Zip from the Airwindows website must be missing some compiler optimization flags for newer AMD CPU's. Yes I know I can compile them myself but it requires the VST2 SDK and I don't want to be bothered with that and plus that only fixes the problem for me.

I posted a bug report here: https://github.com/airwindows/airwindows/issues/28
Something to check if you haven't already: when you open Ardour's settings on the AMD machine and then go to the Audio tab, is 'use FlushToZero' or one of the other FTZ options under Denormals -> Processor handling enabled? I think that should be on by default, but software sometimes does weird things so who knows. Most other plugins already do this by themselves, but the Airwindows plugins don't and instead they try to avoid denormals manually, but that may not always work. Some plugins also use long doubles, and with those plugins the FTZ option won't have any effect, so that's also something to look out for.

You can also use the Plugin DSP Load window (under the Window menu) to figure out which plugin is causing the high DSP load, because it may just be one or two faulty plugins.
Hi!

Thanks for the tip on the denormals, I will look at it but yes I used the Plugin DSP Load Window and indeed there was some variance but all of the plugins were running far too high on the metering. As I recall AD7Clip, Drumslam and Non Linear Space were some of the worst but they all are eating far more CPU than they would normally. Like I indicated a different session with no AW Plugins was just barely registering on the Plugin DSP load meters.

I can and will finish my tune on an Intel machine in the studio and things should be OK there but I'm very surprised some other AMD Users haven't seen this issue.

Airwindows session load:
AWDSPpng.png
AWDSPpng.png (99.85 KiB) Viewed 9486 times

Similar track count session no Airwindows:
DSPpng.png
DSPpng.png (102.25 KiB) Viewed 9486 times
Last edited by GMaq on Fri May 14, 2021 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by Largos »

I use an AMD 8350 and I do find the plugins a little heavy. The Reverb one in particular is quite CPU hungry.
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by GMaq »

OK..

Now I do want to compile them to see what compiler flags are needed or will work with my AMD processor so I can share that info with the developers, there are minimal instructions on the github page but I must be doing something wrong because CMake isn't finding everything it seems to want.. I have made an 'include/vstsdk' folder and I have the VST 2.4 SDK put in it with the file tree they specify, but where does the include folder go? In with the plugins source or in the LinuxVST folder..?

Is there anybody here compiling these for themselves regularly who can give me some hints?

Here is the info on the github page: https://github.com/airwindows/airwindow ... s/LinuxVST

*Note there are no 'build' or 'include' folders in the cloned github sources so I'm confused as to what these folder are.. I have made my own include/vstsdk but I don't know where it goes... :oops:
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by Sahaathyva »

Hi @GMaq , glad to see you there :P

Unfortunately i use the prebuilt binaries provided by Chris and on an INTEL processor, so i won't be any help.
The good thing is that you found something for the devs to work on :mrgreen:

Will i hear the iconic telecaster in your submission ?
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Re: Libre Music Challenge #10: Air Music !

Post by GMaq »

Sahaathyva wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 2:26 pm Hi @GMaq , glad to see you there :P

Unfortunately i use the prebuilt binaries provided by Chris and on an INTEL processor, so i won't be any help.
The good thing is that you found something for the devs to work on :mrgreen:

Will i hear the iconic telecaster in your submission ?
Hello to you too!

Well there will be a telecaster for sure, not sure about the iconic part! :oops:
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