Loading Windows VSTs within Carla

[parashep]

question: Carla is a very fully featured program that could be very useful to people, but the majority of its features I don't need in my personal workflow. I pretty much only need an option to run Windows VSTs inside my DAW (Renoise). is waiting for Carla the best option for this or is there another simpler software that would be more suitable?

[AlexTheBassist]

Hi, folks. I'm having a trouble using Carla as a plugin in Ardour 3. It does almost all the job but freezes Ardour's UI. When I open a Windows VST (freeware, I don't support piracy), I get GUI and all the stuff, but Ardour is freezing and unfreezing constantly, giving me no way to control it normally. When controlling a plugin while playing back the session I must catch the unfreeze before stopping playback or changing some track's volume. The problem remains even with stopped transport and, how I guess, is on Carla's side since other plugins never behaved that way on my machine. Freezes disappear when I delete Carla-Rack from the effect chain. The other problem is when I just close rack's UI and open it again I don't see plugins which I've added before. I'll provide more details when will get more time for full testing. Standalone Carla doesn't have this problem (at least I didn't notice if it has while trying). Anyway, the work is outstanding, falktx should be awarded for this someday.

[AlexTheBassist]

This is only the first beta, lot of stuff needs polish.

Yes, I understand. Since routing in Catia is just as simple and cool as it could ever be, could you make WinVSTs restore its stage when loading into Carla? I'm not a programmer, but this task seems to be simplier that fixing Ardour's UI issues, because there's an ability to load (and manage?) presets already. So, basically, maybe you can write a piece of code which saves the current plugin's state in unique (specially named, possibly hidden) preset and loads it into plugin when a specific configuration is invoked. Also, I remember that Guitarix had similar problem with UI rendering: it was gradually slowing down Ardour's interface making it impossible to use without expressing some emotions in coarse language. Now they fixed that. Maybe you should try to cooperate with Guitarix Team or just take a look at their LV2 source code?

Sorry if my advices ain't helpful or if they offend you as a professional.

[Vrangor]

Hi!
Lately I played some guitar through Carla and noticed that once in a minute she freezed for about a second, no matter how type of plugin was used.
Log after freeze was
Sun May 25 20:10:03 2014: ERROR: JackEngine::XRun: client = C* AmpVTS - Idealised guitar amplification was not finished, state = Running
Sun May 25 20:10:03 2014: ERROR: JackAudioDriver::ProcessGraphAsyncMaster: Process error
Sun May 25 20:10:06 2014: ERROR: JackEngine::XRun: client = C* AmpVTS - Idealised guitar amplification was not finished, state = Running
Sun May 25 20:10:06 2014: ERROR: JackEngine::XRun: client = Carla was not finished, state = Triggered

Second thing is when i used Poulin LeGion amp plugin loaded as VST it had frequent chokes (exactly as frequent as "dsp load" meter in Cadence was refreshing).
The same plugin loaded as DSSI worked very well. What is the difference between handling WinVST directly and thru bridge?
Also could You explain me what Bridged (32bit) and Bridged (Wine) in Carla`s plugin manager mean?

Greetings.

[Vrangor]

Thanks! As for unfinished stuff it already looks great and works very good!
If I could suggest anything, I`d like to have checkboxes next to plugin parameters
in the plugin config window to select which parameter I want in the rack panel.
Many plugins with external gui or without gui have more parameters than its
rack panel in Carla, which has only 8 knobs.
What do You think?

[lilakmonoke]

just saw this brilliant indeed! you might want to include plugins by variety of sound. those are high end and free, tape delay, compressor and eq are especially nice.

http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/

[Vrangor]

Hi!
Lately I played some guitar through Carla and noticed that once in a minute she freezed for about a second, no matter how type of plugin was used.
Log after freeze was
Sun May 25 20:10:03 2014: ERROR: JackEngine::XRun: client = C* AmpVTS - Idealised guitar amplification was not finished, state = Running
Sun May 25 20:10:03 2014: ERROR: JackAudioDriver::ProcessGraphAsyncMaster: Process error
Sun May 25 20:10:06 2014: ERROR: JackEngine::XRun: client = C* AmpVTS - Idealised guitar amplification was not finished, state = Running
Sun May 25 20:10:06 2014: ERROR: JackEngine::XRun: client = Carla was not finished, state = Triggered

Second thing is when i used Poulin LeGion amp plugin loaded as VST it had frequent chokes (exactly as frequent as "dsp load" meter in Cadence was refreshing).
The same plugin loaded as DSSI worked very well. What is the difference between handling WinVST directly and thru bridge?
Also could You explain me what Bridged (32bit) and Bridged (Wine) in Carla`s plugin manager mean?

Greetings.

XRuns and freezes turned out to be Cinnamon`s fault. On a simple setup like Audacious playing music thru JACK to firewire soundcard (44100kHz, 3 periods, 256 buffer) I had 1-3 second sound freezes by simply minimizing and maximizing windows. Even moving a cursor over window shortcut in the panel generated about 1sec freeze.
When I switched to MATE sound became stable as a rock. So it wasn`t Carla`s fault at all!
Although Cinnamon is in fact heavy as hell (almost 10% CPU time only in idle state), is it normal for JACK to be as GUI sensitive?

[AlexTheBassist]

is it normal for JACK to be as GUI sensitive?

Yes, if your system is misconfigured or if GUI is really a resource hog. This becomes times more possible when JACK isn't configured for realtime or if you use non-realtime kernel.

[bazsound]

Hi!
Lately I played some guitar through Carla and noticed that once in a minute she freezed for about a second, no matter how type of plugin was used.
Log after freeze was
Sun May 25 20:10:03 2014: ERROR: JackEngine::XRun: client = C* AmpVTS - Idealised guitar amplification was not finished, state = Running
Sun May 25 20:10:03 2014: ERROR: JackAudioDriver::ProcessGraphAsyncMaster: Process error
Sun May 25 20:10:06 2014: ERROR: JackEngine::XRun: client = C* AmpVTS - Idealised guitar amplification was not finished, state = Running
Sun May 25 20:10:06 2014: ERROR: JackEngine::XRun: client = Carla was not finished, state = Triggered

Second thing is when i used Poulin LeGion amp plugin loaded as VST it had frequent chokes (exactly as frequent as "dsp load" meter in Cadence was refreshing).
The same plugin loaded as DSSI worked very well. What is the difference between handling WinVST directly and thru bridge?
Also could You explain me what Bridged (32bit) and Bridged (Wine) in Carla`s plugin manager mean?

Greetings.

XRuns and freezes turned out to be Cinnamon`s fault. On a simple setup like Audacious playing music thru JACK to firewire soundcard (44100kHz, 3 periods, 256 buffer) I had 1-3 second sound freezes by simply minimizing and maximizing windows. Even moving a cursor over window shortcut in the panel generated about 1sec freeze.
When I switched to MATE sound became stable as a rock. So it wasn`t Carla`s fault at all!
Although Cinnamon is in fact heavy as hell (almost 10% CPU time only in idle state), is it normal for JACK to be as GUI sensitive?

this is why i dont use fancy DE enviroments especially with older hardware.

I have the same issue if i have pidgen loaded, everytime some kind of activity happens through pidgeon i get xruns.

i use LXDE because its super light on resources and just them it so it looks a little nice

[AlexTheBassist]

this is why i dont use fancy DE enviroments especially with older hardware.

You'll be surprised very much, but KDE always performs good with JACK unlike GNOME3 or whichever hardware rapist else.

[i2productions]

I use gnome 3 based cairo-dock session. With a low-latency kernel there are no issues or xruns. My setup runs for months at a time without restart. As far as cinnamon in the original post, it may or may not be gnome 3 based. The original 1.0 was 100% based on Gnome 3. Now at 2.2 there's almost no gnome code left, it's all been rewritten. There's no need to start a desktop flamewar. Everyone's got their desktop of choice and that's what makes linux great. One might be better than another on certain hardware, but in general they all perform (for the most part)equally as well with linux audio stuff.

[Vrangor]

There's no need to start a desktop flamewar. Everyone's got their desktop of choice and that's what makes linux great. One might be better than another on certain hardware, but in general they all perform (for the most part)equally as well with linux audio stuff.

Yeah, but as You see, when it comes to audio work, some of them fail. On my 4core/3GHz/4GB machine cinnamon slashes sound like a butcher, what`s interesting DSP load shows then about 5% Other thing is that i have generic 3.11 Mint LMDE kernel, not RT.
I was wondering why kernel isn`t RT by standard? Windows didn`t need any rt patches, just ASIO drivers for normal audio work.
Is there something that RT kernels do worse than generic ones?

[i2productions]

Like I said. Save very specific hardware situations, desktops as a whole are about equal. ANYTHING in your system has the potential to make audio bad. As for the RT kernel, it's not as essential for linux audio work as it once was. My findings are, the generic kernel is about all you need for 1024 buffer recording and mixing. If you need a lower buffer rate than that for real-time fx, a low-latency kernel is actually what is a huge benefit these days. I've never used LMDE, but I can tell you Mint 13 and 17 cinnamon work very well for me for audio use, both with and without a low-latency kernel. I hope you find a distro/desktop/kernel that allow you to get what you need working. For most people and hardware, this stuff "just works" and for others and certain hardware, it can be a nightmare. GL

[AlexTheBassist]

Other thing is that i have generic 3.11 Mint LMDE kernel, not RT.

So, it's only your fault, not Cinnamon's. You should choose between RT and lowlatency branches since you're into music production.

I was wondering why kernel isn`t RT by standard?

Because only a few people need it.

Is there something that RT kernels do worse than generic ones?

Yes. This includes almost all resource depending processes (i.e. data compression, database handling, games, massive audio/video rendering, transcoding etc), so you should prefer RT only if you need realtime operations. It's better to choose lowlatency kernel since it provides you with smooth audio and responsive desktop at the same time.

Windows didn`t need any rt patches, just ASIO drivers for normal audio work.

But plain desktop Windows still performs the worst in lowlatency or realtime tasks. Windows has CE version which is tailored to be a realtime OS and is based on different kernel than desktop versions based on. Guess why.

[i2productions]

So, it's only your fault, not Cinnamon's. You should choose between RT and lowlatency branches since you're into music production.

Generic kernel's usually work just fine for basic music work. They will produce more xruns if you drop your buffer lower than 1024, but the fact that they're not using a generic kernel should have little to do with the errors being experienced.