Waves Audio WLM Meter / Plus plug-ins cause Cakewalk to go CRAZY!

[Tom B]

Confirmed the Wave's WLM Loudness Meter auto-save problem on Cakewalk -and- confirmed  @Starship Krupa 's work-around!   

I added the "WLM Plus (stereo) Loudness Meter" to two separate projects on separate DAWS.  At first, I didn't see the issue. Then, I added the WLM plugin to a different project on my old DAW, and the auto-save occurred at a high-rate and virtually froze Cakewalk. The difference between the two:  On the Cakewalk DAW without the problem (new computer), I had not enabled Auto-Save (i.e.  minutes =0 and changes = 0) .  The problem immediately appeared when I set Auto-save changes = 30.

@El Diablo  please try Starship Krupa's suggestion.  BTW, I'm still on Cakewalk revision 2022.02.  All my Waves plugins are at Rev 14. 

I hadn't encountered this type auto-update issue with Waves or any other plug-in. 

Edited September 23, 2022 by Tom B
Clarity

[GTsongwriter]

3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

This issue is probably caused by having File/Advanced/Auto-save set to save after every X changes.

What happens is that some plug-ins constantly report to Cakewalk that something has changed, even multiple times per second, so if you have Cakewalk set to auto-save after every 5 changes and this plug-in is reporting a change 5X per second, Cakewalk will save every second. I just made those numbers up to illustrate it, it seems that this Waves plug-in is reporting changes even more often.

So as a workaround, you can turn off the auto-save every X changes on projects that use the plug-in, or, since it's a metering plug-in, bypass it when you're not reading the meter. Whatever, an analysis plug-in shouldn't be reporting ANY changes to Cakewalk, so if turning off save every X changes makes the problem go away, Waves need to be informed about it. I don't know if there's anything that can be done on Cakewalk's side; they're probably at the mercy of the plug-in reporting accurately that it has changed something.

Sweet! That fixed it!

I will however email Waves Audio about this plugin and F6 Floating-Band Dynamic EQ does this.

 

[Starship Krupa]

10 hours ago, El Diablo said:

I will however email Waves Audio about this plugin and F6 Floating-Band Dynamic EQ does this.

Glad I could help you sort it out. I knew about the issue because I had a project or two that exhibited it at one point. Well done to narrow it down to a plug-in; it took me a lonnnnng time to figure out that that was what was causing it. It didn't occur to me to hit the "FX" button.

Since changing plug-in parameters will flip Cakewalk's "dirty" bit (the indicator that says a save-worthy change has been made), my guess is that somehow, these plug-ins are changing their own parameters and reporting that to Cakewalk. It would make sense with a plug-in that like an analyzer or dynamic EQ, constantly adapt to whatever signal is going through them.

Reporting to the host that something has changed in the plug-in when it actually hasn't is what I would call a bug. The only events that should trigger that reporting are ones where the user is interacting with it by changing control states or values.

[Starship Krupa]

22 hours ago, El Diablo said:

Any other company's plugin suggestions for watching LUFs and might have a limiter on it?

I neglected to mention earlier: the Meldaproduction MFreeFX Bundle* has (among 36 other excellent tools and processors) a very comprehensive loudness analyzer called MLoudnessAnalyzer.

As far as limiters, my favorite safety limiter is KHS Limiter, from the (also freeware) Kilohearts Essentials Bundle. Barebones, lightweight, easy to configure.

(*If you ever want to upgrade the Melda bundle to the pro versions (which gives you access to some nice-but-not-crucial features like the ability to customize the look of the plug-ins and internal upsampling), they put it on sale for 50% off a couple of times a year. You can combine that with the 10 euro bonus you get from signing up for their newsletter and also with their 20% first purchase discount (use my referral code, MELDA1923165) and bring the cost for the pro upgrade down around USD11.)

[abacab]

There is a free version of Youlean Loudness Meter 2 available at PluginBoutique.

https://www.pluginboutique.com/products/4960-Youlean-Loudness-Meter

 

[GTsongwriter]

12 hours ago, abacab said:

There is a free version of Youlean Loudness Meter 2 available at PluginBoutique.

https://www.pluginboutique.com/products/4960-Youlean-Loudness-Meter

 

I have heard about "Youlean" but when I go to his original website, he uses Let's Encrypt for his HTTPS and that makes me worry a bit.  A lot of scammers and bad actors use Let's Encrypt because it's free SSL.

 

[Max Arwood]

I have been using WLM+ for years. I have auto save enabled and I do not have the problem you are talking about. I use it on every project. That is strange to me. I’m pretty sure it is the VST3 version. Which waves version do you have 12? 13?

[abacab]

7 hours ago, El Diablo said:

I have heard about "Youlean" but when I go to his original website, he uses Let's Encrypt for his HTTPS and that makes me worry a bit.  A lot of scammers and bad actors use Let's Encrypt because it's free SSL.

No need to go to the Youlean website for this free edition! No Youlean account or authorization is required.

This download is available at Plugin Boutique and hosted in your account there. Anyway, I always scan downloaded installers in VirusTotal before running them, and 69 AV engines say this file is clean.

Edited September 24, 2022 by abacab

[Tom B]

20 hours ago, Max Arwood said:

I have been using WLM+ for years. I have auto save enabled and I do not have the problem you are talking about. I use it on every project. That is strange to me. I’m pretty sure it is the VST3 version. Which waves version do you have 12? 13?

In the past, WLM+ worked fine for me on Cakewalk with 'auto-save' enabled.  At that time, Waves V12 or V13  was installed.  A couple of weeks ago, I installed Waves V14 on both my DAWs. I hadn't used WLM+ for a while.  It was El Diablo's post which prompted me to try WLM+ (VST3) and that's when I saw the issue too. 

Edited September 25, 2022 by Tom B
spelling

[GTsongwriter]

On 9/24/2022 at 2:36 AM, Max Arwood said:

I have been using WLM+ for years. I have auto save enabled and I do not have the problem you are talking about. I use it on every project. That is strange to me. I’m pretty sure it is the VST3 version. Which waves version do you have 12? 13?

 

Waves Version 14.  VST3.  Windows Version 10.0.19044 Build 19044 / Cakewalk by Bandlabs 2022.06 (Build 034, 64 bit)

Another plug that has this issue is F6 Floating-Band Dynamic EQ while you move your mouse around the graph area where the EQ and line adjustments are located.

On 9/22/2022 at 8:36 PM, Starship Krupa said:

This issue is probably caused by having File/Advanced/Auto-save set to save after every X changes.

^^ That was my problem.  I had auto-save every X changes.

I know there is TWO auto save options.   Save every X minutes AND Save every X changes.

I had it set save every 5 minutes and save every 5 changes.  When I set it to save every 5 minutes and save every 0 changes, the plugin stopped freezing the DAW.