AxlBrutality

Man; what a blast from the past. Haha. I loved a couple of those plugins back in the day. I still have a few laying around on my computer, but I don't use them. As someone else mentioned; they were relegated to the dustbin for a reason. The free effects and modules that became standard in the XSeries/Platinum, and continue to be in CbB, are really much better.

Just as an update to everyone; I got ahold of AA and let them know what was going on...they were super easy to work with and seem to be aware of some instability issues with the VST2 (sounds like they've had issues before), and they seem to know exactly where to look. So there's that. @Noel Borthwick figured you'd appreciate that, in light of recent events. That's how you deal with customer service and tech support as a third party vendor. Lol.

Yea, I've heard a lot of really good stuff about Darkglass. Just don't have the cash to drop on it right now...it's on the [very long] list. 😂 Duality was kinda just an impulse buy, since it was dirt cheap and I was curious. Even if I'm still unimpressed with it after a while, I still have Revalver (pretty much the only thing I still use Revalver for) until I can afford Darkglass or Bassforge.

Thanks, Noel. I'll go ahead and let AA know their VST2 version appears to be occasionally crashing/having freakouts in CbB...and I'll stick with the VST3 for now (as long as it's doing fine). Honestly, I'm not too heartbroken. I got it on ridiculous sale for only $12, I have other bass sims, and I'm not very attached to it....kinda unimpressed. Which is a shame; I like their guitar stuff.

Lol it wasn't in the first screenshot, so no worries. I posted a second screenshot to show proof that I was indeed using the VST2 version. Interesting note...next logical step was to try the VST3 version...now I cannot, for the life of me, recreate the issue. I didn't think it was common for the VST3 version to be more stable than the VST2 version....

Plugin shows that it's the VST2 version.

So last night I grabbed Audio Assault's Duality bass amp sim, and played with it all last evening and this morning with no issue. Then, all of a sudden, I open my project back up later this morning, and as soon as it loads, there's a pop, my bass track is pegged (volume wise) as shown (without even hitting play or having input monitoring enabled)...and I have no sound out of anything. It's like there's a massive feedback loop somewhere....except there's not. The problem is quite obviously Duality...because if I disable/turn off Duality, it's fine. But it seems strange to me that it was literally working fine, and now it's not....with literally zero changes or updates to my computer, CbB, or Duality. Anybody else have an experience with something like this with other plugins, or maybe a simple solution before I contact Audio Assault? I do recall having this happen a few random times over the years with random other plugins, but normally closing Cakewalk and reopening it solved it. Not so in this instance. Edit: As a quick note: if I delete the plugin and insert a new instance of it, it's fine.....until I reopen the project next time. Opening/loading the project is what seems to trigger it. Edit 2: Problem doesn't seem to occur unless I change more than a few parameters on the plugin. Leaving it at its defaults doesn't seem to cause the problem. Gradually tweaking more and more parameters, I found that after about the 6th parameter change from defaults is when the problem starts to occur. Edit 3: I have reproduced this problem both in this project and in a blank, 1-track project.

Not as an open program, no. I'd imagine it was listed a background process, along with about 50 other things. Nobody knew to suspect it specifically until Ben noticed it in the call stack in the dump file (where it had also been previously overlooked) and threw a hail mary. @JonD True, but that really would have only narrowed it down to about 2 dozen or more processes. And we had no reason to suspect that a background process was the issue. /shrug Hindsight is always 20/20, I suppose.

I don't know how many metalheads we have in here, but I figured I'd post my stuff in here. All of these projects are solo projects. Vocals, guitars, bass, piano/keys, orchestral arrangements, drum programming (I do play drums, but find it easier to program these days), lyrics, recording/mixing, etc.). -Silence Before the Storm is a heavier metalcore/light melodeath/groove metal type project of mine. For fans of old Chimaira, Unearth, Heaven Shall Burn, Lamb of God, etc. Newest release: The Sufferer EP (Spotify, Youtube) -Agony By Default is a death metal project that bounces between melodic death metal and blackened melodeath. For fans of vehemence, Kataklysm, Dark Tranquility, Dissection, etc. Newest release: Refleksjoner (Spotify, Youtube) -Ashes of Denial is a hard rock/post-grunge project with some occasional acoustic stuff. For fans of Tantric, Days of the New, Alice In Chains, Black Label Society, Shaman's Harvest, etc. Newest release: Dark Days (Spotify, Youtube)

Oh snap; I didn't know that. Thanks a ton! Almost 17 years of using Sonar/Cakewalk and I still am discovering little shit. Haha. I still think it would be nice/easier to have an option to make clip fades post-everything (particularly for start/stop chugging metal stuff, where a ton of automation will still be tedious), but yea. That really helps, thanks again.

This would be particularly useful where amp sims are concerned. As it stands now, fades are pre-FX bin, which means if you have heavy distortion on your guitar via an amp sim, the distortion itself lessens...and more importantly, with high-gain stuff, the amp noise-to-signal ratio becomes intolerable through the fade (and this isn't something easily cured by gates, even "intelligent" gates like Kaften). I realize I can automate the volume, but emulating the curve of slow/fast fades is a very tedious and time-consuming. Any alternatives?

Yup; literally just finished that test up and messaged Ben. LP plugins work perfectly in a full project, under load, when opened on my secondary display, with OpenGL re-enabled. I'm so freaking excited right now; you have no idea. For those who are curious...it was tested in Reaper nearly a year ago and the problem didn't occur. What we didn't realize is that it was an issue only on secondary displays...apparently I had opened it up on my primary display, because it had worked perfectly then. Little things, man. Update ( @Noel Borthwick) The last piece of the puzzle....I now finally get to play around with MAutoPitch, as I have confirmed it is working as well. All known problem plugins (Slate VTM, Eiosis DeEsser, LP EQ, LP MB, Meldaproductions MAutoPitch) are a full go!

I want to thank @Ben Staton and @Noel Borthwick for their continued pursuit of this, as well as their patience and their tolerance of my frustration. I also want to mention that in this year-long saga, Slate and MeldaProductions both abandoned me almost immediately and showed no interest in even trying to identify the issue. But has been the Cakewalk team that was willing to pick this up again, and has finally apparently tracked this down. In all fairness to everyone involved, this was the single most niche problem I've ever seen. An MSI-only app, causing a conflict only with OpenGL plugins, only on secondary displays, even when not running/open itself (I don't even use Nahimic, lmao). It's pretty insane, haha. @Ben Staton deserves all the credit, cookies, and kudos in the world for catching the Nahimic process in the dump files. It's been overlooked by an awful lot of people over the last year. Obviously we're still tidying up some things and doing some testing, but it appears to have completely disappeared once uninstalling the Nahimic 3 app. Keep in mind, on my end it was an actual Windows 10 app, so it didn't show up in my Programs list in Control Panel. I had to find and uninstall it from the Start menu. Anybody with MSI systems should double check there and make sure...I'd imagine it could eventually cause issues even if your workflow seems fine now.

@Scott Mire Thanks for taking the time to come in and give some details on everything. I am curious and interested to see where you guys take things. Although I have moved on to other sims for most things, I do intend to keep Revalver for the time being and haven't written it off. It's still my main rig for bass and clean guitars, but that's mainly only due to a lack of options elsewhere as well. One thing that does concern me is that if you guys didn't get the resources you need from a fairly large, reputable, successful company like Peavey, how likely is it that you'll get (and continue to get) the resources you need as a smaller and unheard of company? This is an especially relevant question considering how much more competitive the amp sim market is these days...you guys are fighting to take back market share from some very popular heavyweights in this space now (Positive Grid, Fortin, JST, etc...and even smaller companies like Audio Assault seem to be gaining steam). Secondly, I've never jumped in the whole dongle debate because it never much mattered to me (I think people just like to complain to complain), but it's starting to become an issue from a pure management perspective. I have no problem with anti-piracy measures, even physical ones. But if you guys could make managing/changing dongles on our own a bit easier (as you just mentioned)....without having to email customer support and all that....that would be great. Right now I have 3 USB ports. I have a keyboard, a mouse, a regular USB dongle for Revalver, an iLok I later acquired for Slate plugins, a USB audio interface, an external hard drive, and I'm looking at the potential of having to get a proprietary Steinberg dongle as well...it's insane. Lmao. Now, I do have a USB hub that allows me to accommodate most of what I need, but even with USB select suspend settings off, my USB ports do sometimes get overloaded and temporarily shut down. So I'll be looking for ways to downsize, and having an easy way of just resetting Revalver licensing and tying it to my iLok, for example, would be nice. Furthermore, if you guys could maybe just team up with iLok/PACE and use the cloud licensing service, we could dump the need for a physical dongle altogether. Glad to hear you guys are keeping your ears open and acknowledging feedback! That's one of the reasons a lot of us here stick with Cakewalk...the team here is much more interactive and in-tune, which isn't always the case with larger DAW/plugin companies. If you or your team can maintain a presence here and continue this same line of communication, that'd be awesome. I'd pay close attention to what JST has done with Bassforge Hellraiser. Honestly, that was going to be my next amp sim purchase...it seems to be pretty popular and is one of the only really good specialty bass sims on the market right now (particularly for metal guys).

@Noel Borthwick @scook @Starship Krupa I sent this to @Ben Staton (who is working on this) as soon as I found this out, but I have a massive development for the OpenGL/GUI hanging issues and figured you guys might be curious (and Noel might want to be looped in). For background, I have a second display...an LG32LF500b television connected via HDMI. This is what I primarily open CbB on, as my laptop screen is nearly half the size and it's so much nicer having a bigger display. On a hunch, I opened CbB and both VTM and Eiosis Deesser on my primary laptop screen for the first time in forever, and they worked perfectly. I then opened CbB and inserted the plugins on my secondary (TV) screen once again, and the original problem reliably persisted once again. I then crosschecked and repeated the process on my laptop's screen, and the plugins again ran perfectly. So I was faced with the question....is the problem the TV, or is the problem the act of running CbB/plugins on a second display at all? So I then connected my wife's MSI Optix G27C2 to my laptop as an extended display. The problem persisted on that as well. Keeping the Optix connected, I once again crosschecked by running CbB and the plugins on my laptop/home screen. They ran beautifully. I ran one last test..I opened CbB on my home screen and opened up VTM, but then dragged VTM to the second display. The freeze/hang was reproduced instantly. It appears some OpenGL-powered plugins' GUIs have a problem running on a second display, period. Why, I have no idea...as I've mentioned before, I have no problem admitting I'm no developer...but that seems like a pretty big development [lmao, no pun intended]. The saga continues.......lol. Not gonna lie; I'm pretty proud of my detective work right now. Lol.

@Canopus Thanks for that, btw...I had made another thread asking about pianos specifically, and had kinda forgot to look into Addictive Keys for some reason (I actually run AD2 and have an XLN account and all that). Do you have any experience in how it compares sonically to things like Sonivox Eighty-Eight, EastWest, TruePianos, etc.?

I mean, I already have an iLok and have to use it for other things, but yea I have the elicenser service installed as well....so none of that's an issue.

I've always been really guilty of neglecting my bass tone, and my writing style doesn't really lend itself to the bass standing out. I've always just used it as an undercurrent/undertone (as is tradition in a lot of metal, haha)...but I'd like to start featuring bass more prominently in a lot of my music. Some more better options as far as amp sims in general go (not just Revalver; everyone's guilty of neglecting bass) would be nice and might help me with that. I hear JST's Bassforge is pretty badass; might give that a try soon. OH isn't proprietary, no...they do release in a variety of formats (including standard .wavs). Their libraries and packs are huge, and they are well worth it. I own Mesa, Diezel, EDVH, and Ampeg libraries from them and they are absolutely top notch quality-wise...with a TON of options and combinations to boot. I've never had any issues... All three bands in my signature are 100% me. All vocals, lyrics, songwriting, all guitars, bass, piano/keys, orchestral programming, drum programming (I do actually play drums, but prefer to program these days), recording, and mixing. Silence Before the Storm and Agony By Default are my main projects; Ashes of Denial is more of a side project that I randomly work on from time to time. I'm also involved in a few other projects, but those 3 are my babies so to speak. @Starship Krupa Holy shit; not gonna lie....you had me for a while there. Lmao.

They all seem to be less of a resource hog than Revalver as well, in my limited experience. So far I'm fairly impressed, especially for the price point (always being on sale for less than $10 each). I think I'll stop at Dominator, Emperor, and Hellbeast for now though, lol. Plenty to play with there for a while. I've actually got a pretty massive tone going on right now with Dominator (with Mesa Ownhammer IRs) on one rhythm, Emperor (with Deizel OH IRs) on the other side...and Hellbeast (with EDVH OH IRs) powering the leads. Pretty impressive, tbh. Emperor is a little noisier than I'd like for start/stop chugging; gonna have to play around with the gate and gain settings a bit. Other than that...this might actually be what goes on my next record. We'll see.

I spend a good amount of time over the course of a year and a half going through everything free, plus a couple of additional purchases (I don't recall everything right now; it's been a while). The 6505 (paired with the Tubescreamer knock off and various Ownhammer IRs) was really the only thing that fit what I was doing. Having said that, it fit very well, which is why I continued to use it for so long. To this day, it is actually my backup and I do use it...the 6505 is still a gold standard even in modern extreme metal. I've just begun experimenting with various other amp sims is all, and have found that there are soooo many other options out there that do what Revalver does, and they either sound the same or better. That's part of what I meant regarding to the being left in the dust comment. Part of it was a lack of marketing. there are soo many options out there now, and Peavey let Revalver be relegated to the bottom of the pile. And on top of that, they really failed to be inventive or introduce new stuff over the last few years that was good enough to pull people back from the big players these days based on pure word of mouth. Hardly anyone I know uses Revalver...everyone in the metal community has moved on to sims like Bias FX, Toneforge, or the Fortin stuff...or they prefer profiler hardware like Kemper, Helix, Axe FX, the physical Bias FX stuff, etc. And IRs? Ownhammer dominates that space, and for good reason. I barely touched Revalver's IRs once I started getting into OH stuff. As a side note, I actually just came across Audio Assault's stuff recently too, and bought several of their amps today for dirt cheap...and I'm decently impressed. I also think that Revalver could use more options for bass. And as I mentioned, it's a little less intuitive in general than other amp sims....which is why specialty amp sims like Toneforge are so popular. Don't get me wrong; I like Revalver and it does its job...but it's gonna take something big, something different, to pull me back. And I'm not sure they'll be able to win over a whole lot of people that use other stuff unless they start actually marketing themselves worth a damn. Peavey was still more concerned with peddling their physical gear than they ever were with marketing Revalver, and that really hurt them.

Just looked on their site; it does look pretty spiffy...I'll add it to the consideration list for sure! Appreciate it.

I've used Revalver for a few years as my main sim and have mostly liked it, but had begun moving on to other amp sims. Revalver hasn't really been supported much over the last few years, isn't nearly as intuitive as many other newer amp sims...and, outside of the 6505, really doesn't have as many options for the tones I'm looking for (extreme metal). It's also always been a bit noisier than some other sims when using high gain stuff...although I did really, really like the Käften "smart" gate and it helped with that. I will say the 6505 emulation was stellar; that was my go-to. I'll keep an eye on it and I'm interested in seeing where they go with it, but yea. That train has kinda already left the station, and Revalver has honestly been left in the dust (at least in the rock/metal communities) by other companies.

So just as an update, I caught the Hellbeast on sale for $9 today and have been playing around with it. It's pretty decent. Not sure I'd pay full price for it ($70), but for $9 it was definitely a steal. It's got a little bit of that cheap Line 6 metal tone that I don't really like, but it's average to good if you use some Ownhammer Mesa or Deizel IRs and do some cab blending (it's got a dual IR loader) and a bit of EQ work. Edit: Emperor and Dominator were on sale again too, for $5....so I couldn't help myself. I actually like them even more sound-wise, although the IR loader is kinda buggy.

Yea, I mean that $65 is already 50% off (it's on sale), but I'll definitely shoot them an email and ask.

I'm finally moving closer to uninstalling my side by side installation of Legacy, and TruePianos is really the only thing left from that that I really use enough to keep hanging on to it. It's currently on sale for $65 (and I do plan on emailing them to see if I can get an extra discount as a Sonar user), but I was wondering if there are better/comparable alternatives? Just kinda want to examine my options. Just looking for a basic VST piano suite; I don't need a whole smorgasbord of different pianos or available effects....your typical decent grand piano sound is fine, and I use other effects independently (so included effects and parameters aren't super important). Depending on my workflow and the situation, sometimes I just draw in values in piano roll; other times I do use an actual keyboard to record MIDI. So something that has decently low latency and works well in both situations would be great. Free is great, but I don't mind paying a bit for something that's good (you get what you pay for often times). However, I don't really want to (nor can I, really) blow triple digits in cash on something though. Suggestions?