mao.studio Posted March 13, 2023 Share Posted March 13, 2023 Hi! I got v22 Pro and I wanted to start playing with this one but when loaded it just hangs when creating the track. This doesn't happen on Reaper or Reason 12.5 Any clue? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted March 13, 2023 Share Posted March 13, 2023 (edited) I never got Wotja v22 Pro plugin to play nicely with Cakewalk. If I want to use the Wotja VST plugin, I use Reaper. In my case. Wotja loaded OK in Cakewalk and the track is created, but after it started playing the Cakewalk audio engine would always overload and drop out. Never figured out why, so just moved on... evidently the Wotja plugin is sending something that Cakewalk doesn't like. So really have no clue... Tried the new Wotja v23 Lite, and it's about the same. Edit: see my latest post for a resolution. Edited March 21, 2023 by abacab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted March 16, 2023 Share Posted March 16, 2023 On 3/13/2023 at 6:44 AM, abacab said: Wotja loaded OK in Cakewalk and the track is created, but after it started playing the Cakewalk audio engine would always overload and drop out. Maybe you could alert the Cakewalk devs about this? Looks like an interesting plug-in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted March 16, 2023 Share Posted March 16, 2023 (edited) On 3/16/2023 at 10:46 AM, Starship Krupa said: Maybe you could alert the Cakewalk devs about this? Looks like an interesting plug-in. I would have, but the same Wotja plug-in setup fails for me in a few other leading DAWs, so cannot push the fault exclusively towards Cakewalk. It is an interesting plug-in, but was originally, and still is also a standalone application. That part works very well! https://wotja.com/ Wotja standalone can host VST3 plugins internally or use its internal sound engine. Using a virtual MIDI cable such as "loopMIDI", Wotja can send MIDI output to another MIDI program or standalone instrument. Wotja 22 added the additional VST3 plug-in format last year. This allows you to insert Wotja VST3 inside a DAW and send MIDI output to multiple DAW hosted plug-ins, or multi-timbral instruments, such as Kontakt in the same DAW project. The plug-in version of Wotja doesn't support hosting plugins, but that is redundant inside of a DAW. So using Wotja VST3 is the part that seems to overload the DAW engine. The developer looked into this and issued several updates, but AFAIK never got it sorted out. This is a small boutique product with just 2 team members (one developer), so this VST3 thing was a big thing for him to take on. I would suggest anyone having issues with Wotja to contact the developer at: https://wotja.com/help/ Edit: see my latest post for a resolution. Edited March 21, 2023 by abacab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted March 16, 2023 Share Posted March 16, 2023 Just now, abacab said: the same Wotja plug-in setup fails for me in a few other leading DAWs, so cannot push the fault exclusively towards Cakewalk. I tend toward avoiding trying to pin the blame on the plug-in (or the host). There's a form for these complaints: 1. OP asserts that since it works in REAPER (if I were a DAW manufacturer I would pay a fortune to get hold of the code they use for their seemingly ironclad plug-in hosting), the problem must be with Cakewalk. 2. Person replying says that it's also known to have problems in other DAW's, therefore the problem must be with the plug-in. In my view, it's just a "conflict" or "compatibility" issue. Both parties should be informed, and then they can either adjust their software to play nice with each other or they can do the finger pointing or just blow it off and say that it's not important enough for them to be compatible with this host or plug-in. But they can't make that decision if they don't know there's a problem. It's the work of minutes to dash off messages saying "I and others can't use your product in Cakewalk" and "this plug-in crashes Cakewalk." Then it's up to them to sort it if they wish. The plug-in dev doesn't even need to request an NFR license for Cakewalk, because it's free. This can benefit Cakewalk users because chances are if the devs choose to look into it and adjust the code, it will make some aspect of plug-in error handling more robust. This might explain why REAPER is so bomb-resistant about plug-ins. They have a very engaged user base. Plug-in hosting is fraught with pitfalls, there's really no way to predict how every plug-in is going to operate. The host can be the most compliant with VST (which the Cakewalk devs claim is the case with Cakewalk, informally blessed by none other than Steinberg's engineers), and still have problems with a plug-in that also conforms to the spec. The spec doesn't cover everything. And if they don't conform to the spec, then bets are off. I suspect that with all it does, Wotja is doing some uncommon stuff, likely not covered in the VST spec. I know that you already know all this, abacab, I'm posting the geeksplain for the lurkers. 🤓 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted March 16, 2023 Share Posted March 16, 2023 (edited) On 3/16/2023 at 1:17 PM, Starship Krupa said: I suspect that with all it does, Wotja is doing some uncommon stuff, likely not covered in the VST spec. I know that you already know all this, abacab, I'm posting the geeksplain for the lurkers. 🤓 I suspect it's that uncommon VST3 stuff. AFAIK this is the developer's first VST3 plug-in creation, so there you have it. The DAW audio engine overloads even if you silence the internal audio source. So it likely has something to do with the MIDI output being sent to the host from the VST3. I have hooked up a MIDI monitor to the output of the plug-in, and it shows a multi-channel stream of MIDI notes being sent out according to the respective Wotja mix being played back. It requires a DAW transport loop region to be active for playback to happen. But after a first iteration of the loop, things go sideways. Edit: see my latest post for a resolution. Edited March 21, 2023 by abacab 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Wilkinson Posted March 21, 2023 Share Posted March 21, 2023 Just to chime in, the Wotja23 VST3 is working perfectly in Cakewalk for me. My PC isn't particularly high spec but it's working pretty smooth so far. I'm new to Wotja but bought the Pro license straight away because it looks such an interesting app. I haven't delved very deep yet but it seems there's a lot of scope and the devs are very responsive to feedback (I found a couple of minor aesthetic bugs). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted March 21, 2023 Share Posted March 21, 2023 1 hour ago, Simon Wilkinson said: Just to chime in, the Wotja23 VST3 is working perfectly in Cakewalk for me. My PC isn't particularly high spec but it's working pretty smooth so far. I'm new to Wotja but bought the Pro license straight away because it looks such an interesting app. I haven't delved very deep yet but it seems there's a lot of scope and the devs are very responsive to feedback (I found a couple of minor aesthetic bugs). Just curious what your system specs are and what is your audio setup? Are you driving VSTi plugins in Cakewalk with the Wotja MIDI output? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Wilkinson Posted March 21, 2023 Share Posted March 21, 2023 12 minutes ago, abacab said: Just curious what your system specs are and what is your audio setup? Are you driving VSTi plugins in Cakewalk with the Wotja MIDI output? I'm running a pretty old but stable i5-7500 PC with 16Gb RAM, Win 10, Focusrite 8i6. I've only been using Wotja for about a week but mainly running it as a VSTi in Cakewalk using its own audio output. I have tested echoing it to other VSTi's (e.g. Kontakt/Korg Wavestation) and it works fine but I prefer its own output for now. Haven't had any dropouts yet although I have set the 8i6 buffer size a bit higher than usual (256) as input latency isn't an issue with how I'm using it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted March 21, 2023 Share Posted March 21, 2023 (edited) 5 hours ago, Simon Wilkinson said: I'm running a pretty old but stable i5-7500 PC with 16Gb RAM, Win 10, Focusrite 8i6. I've only been using Wotja for about a week but mainly running it as a VSTi in Cakewalk using its own audio output. I have tested echoing it to other VSTi's (e.g. Kontakt/Korg Wavestation) and it works fine but I prefer its own output for now. Haven't had any dropouts yet although I have set the 8i6 buffer size a bit higher than usual (256) as input latency isn't an issue with how I'm using it. I'm running a stable i5-9600k PC with 32GB RAM, Win 10, Focusrite 2i2 at buffer size 256, although I've played around with that setting. Tried ASIO and WASAPI with same result even using the Wotja internal sounds. When I use output to VSTi, the MIDI seems to drop out first. I've been trying on and off for over a year to get Wotja to run stable in Cakewalk . Basically got tired of testing when I found that it runs without issue in Reaper. Not sure what it could be, as I have been pretty much over everything. Glad that it's working for you! Edit: see my latest post for a resolution. Edited March 21, 2023 by abacab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Wilkinson Posted March 21, 2023 Share Posted March 21, 2023 15 minutes ago, abacab said: I'm running a stable i5-9600k PC with 32GB RAM, Win 10, Focusrite 2i2 at buffer size 256, although I've played around with that setting. Tried ASIO and WASAPI with same result even using the Wotja internal sounds. When I use output to VSTi, the MIDI seems to drop out first. I've been trying on and off for over a year to get Wotja to run stable in Cakewalk . Basically got tired of testing when I found that it runs without issue in Reaper. Not sure what it could be, as I have been pretty much over everything. Glad that it's working for you! Hmm, not sure then. One thing that happened recently was I noticed my 1st gen 8i6 driver was outdated (maybe a year or more out of date). Even though it was working fine for me I saw something in the changelog that mentioned a fix for a Cakewalk issue so I thought I should update. After I did it actually seemed worse with a bit of occasional glitching and generally felt less reliable so I rolled back to my old version (4.87.4). Since then it's all buttery smooth again. Probably not at all related to your issue but it confirmed the old 'if it ain't broke' adage to me! Hope you have some luck getting it to work but if you've got it working in Reaper maybe that's enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted March 21, 2023 Share Posted March 21, 2023 (edited) 3 hours ago, Simon Wilkinson said: Hope you have some luck getting it to work but if you've got it working in Reaper maybe that's enough. Hey, thanks to your nudge, I finally got Wotja working in Cakewalk! Since you said it worked for you, I decided to do a deeper dive in Cakewalk. So for reference I installed a clean version of Cakewalk on my non-DAW laptop, which is a fairly vanilla Dell i5, with just Realtek audio and WASAPI. Wotja ran OK with Cakewalk on the laptop, so I opened up Cakewalk on both computers and went through all of the settings line by line in each. What I discovered on my DAW PC that made the difference was under "Options". I had selected "Stop at Project End", which has been that way since I set it like that a long time ago. Unfortunately, that setting requires an active "loop" in the Cakewalk transport, in order to "play" with empty tracks (no clips) in the project. So I have always been setting an empty loop region of 4 bars or so for Wotja to play while in sync to the Cakewalk transport. I have not encountered any related issues with other plugins. Bottom line, it is looping the DAW transport that apparently causes Wotja to behave badly and overload the DAW. I have reproduced this behavior in Reaper (which I had NOT been using a loop with previously) by enabling a loop there. Cakewalk solution: deselect "Stop at Project End", and run the Wotja project without an active loop in the Cakewalk transport. Wotja plays uninterrupted! Edited March 21, 2023 by abacab 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Wilkinson Posted March 21, 2023 Share Posted March 21, 2023 48 minutes ago, abacab said: Cakewalk solution: deselect "Stop at Project End", and run the Wotja project without an active loop in the Cakewalk transport. Wotja plays uninterrupted! That's good to hear you've fixed it! I've always had Cakewalk setup that way too (with 'Stop at project end' selected, so I have to loop an empty project) but for whatever reason it doesn't seem to cause an issue on mine. Anyway, well found! One other thing I noticed with Wotja in Cakewalk is it does seem to make the now time marker move quite slowly and jittery if the plugin window is open while playing. As soon as I close the plugin's window, the now time marker moves a lot more smoothly. It doesn't affect the actual sound or cause dropouts for me but it seems to be pushing the processor a lot harder when the window is open, even if the visualiser part of Wotja isn't visible. Might be something worth trying if you get dropouts again at any point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted March 21, 2023 Share Posted March 21, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, Simon Wilkinson said: That's good to hear you've fixed it! I've always had Cakewalk setup that way too (with 'Stop at project end' selected, so I have to loop an empty project) but for whatever reason it doesn't seem to cause an issue on mine. Anyway, well found! That's interesting. I was able to replicate the same "loop" issue on my laptop, which is almost a completely different hardware/software setup from my DAW. Except they are both running the same version of Cakewalk 2022.11, Windows 10 Pro 22H2, and the Wotja 22.9.0 VST3 plug-in. 1 hour ago, Simon Wilkinson said: One other thing I noticed with Wotja in Cakewalk is it does seem to make the now time marker move quite slowly and jittery if the plugin window is open while playing. As soon as I close the plugin's window, the now time marker moves a lot more smoothly. Not having any slow jittery display here, but maybe that is just my Nvidia GPU handling that part well for me. I have noticed that some plugins put a heavier load on my GPU than others. Edit: I just tested the newer Wotja 23.4.0 VST3 plug-in, and that appears to handle the transport loop OK. Yay! Edited March 21, 2023 by abacab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mao.studio Posted May 2, 2023 Author Share Posted May 2, 2023 Thanks a lot guys!!! Now I am dealing with the freaking Empty Project icon gone haha, no idea which are the magic words there but it's a whole different topic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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