Host Bypass button greyed out on NI Solid Mix Series Plugins

[norfolkmastering]

I've just downloaded three plug-ins from the Native Instruments Solid State Mix Series and none of them has a functional Host Bypass button.  It is greyed out.  I have asked on the NI forum and no-one else seems to have this issue (but I don't think anyone who replied is using Cakewalk).

So I wanted to ask if this is a known issue with NI plug-ins used within Cakewalk?

[Matthew Sorrels]

56 minutes ago, norfolkmastering said:

I've just downloaded three plug-ins from the Native Instruments Solid State Mix Series and none of them has a functional Host Bypass button.  It is greyed out.  I have asked on the NI forum and no-one else seems to have this issue (but I don't think anyone who replied is using Cakewalk).

So I wanted to ask if this is a known issue with NI plug-ins used within Cakewalk?

Seems that way for me too, you can toggle the enable on the plugin in the track but the plugin window's Host Bypass toggle button is disabled.  All the Native Instrument effect plugins seem that way in the most recent CbB.  It's not just NI plugins either, the Host Bypass button is disabled on lots of plugins (though not all of them).  I think it must be some sort of feature that plugins have to support and not all of them do.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/Host-bypass-Not-active-m3524917.aspx

[Matthew Sorrels]

Here's a bit more on it from @Noel Borthwick he might be able to explain it more

https://sdk.steinberg.net/viewtopic.php?t=665&start=10

Quote

Re: "Host Bypass" - VST2 vs. VST3 explanation?

Post by nborthwick » Fri Apr 05, 2019 5:14 pm

Nonlinear wrote:

Arne Scheffler wrote:Just mark your bypass parameter as kIsBypass and you've done the correct thing. If there are hosts that don't work with this correctly, report it here and we'll try to talk with the developers to correct this.

It seems kIsBypass is only for VST3? How would I "connect it up" in VST2?

Don't know about other hosts but for one kIsBypass is not called by Cakewalk by Bandlab when the Host Bypass is engaged. I actually don't know WHAT it does but Cakewalk itself must be taking care of the bypass internally. It does Bypass the plugin but it is not a seamless transition if the plugin has latency.kIsBypass is not a call. Its a flag that the plugin uses to indicate that a parameter is a bypass parameter. We definitely check for the presence of that flag and use that parameter as the host bypass parameter. Its implemented in fact exactly as the Steinberg SDK code samples did it. In Cakewalk host bypass is controlled by the button on the plugin window toolbar (top left). That button will be grayed out if the plugin doesn't expose a host bypass parameter.

For VST2 we don't support "soft bypass" out of the box because the AudioEffectX::setBypass() used to have problems with some VST2 plugins and wasn't universally implemented properly. There is a way to enable support for it in Cakewalk via a config flag however. VST2 bypass is limited because there is no API to query the bypass state only to set it. And yes kBypass doesn't apply to VST2 since bypass is not a parameter there.

- Noel Borthwick

 

[scook]

Host bypass was added to SONAR X3 as part of VST3 support.

VST2 plug-ins have the button disabled.