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Fix for plug-in settings lost when loading projects coming soon

Noel Borthwick

By Noel Borthwick
in Cakewalk by BandLab

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scook

scook

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Not sure if it is worth the effort. The VCV Bridge is a temporary solution introduced a little over a year ago. It is not really supported by the VCV developer.

There is a VST version of of VCV Rack based v0.6 that works with CbB called VeeSeeVST Rack (the kvr thread has links to the development on GitHub). It has most of the free modules (although a few are missing such as NYSTHI and Vult). It also does not have any of the paid modules. Pretty sure development stopped with VCV Rack v1.0 was released. Still may be a better plug-in solution for now.

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Noel Borthwick
Noel Borthwick

Over several years we  have had a few sporadic reports from users regarding plug-in settings being lost when loading projects. We take any kind of data loss very seriously and many people have tried

John
John

This is why people love Sonar and Cakewalk. No one developing DAW software is this dedicated to the people that use their software.  Tracking down a bug as difficult as this for so many years seems mo

Sidney Earl Goodroe
Sidney Earl Goodroe

Just want to give everyone a heads up. As I stated before, I have always had trouble with ALL of my AIR plugins not retaining the presets or tweaks when reopening a project. Noel was kind enough to wo

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JoseC

JoseC

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40 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Hi @JoseC, we looked at VCV. This is a completely different issue and its caused because the plugin is a minimal wrapper that doesn't handle chunked data saving. It also doesnt support a default vst program so our code is not saving any state for it. We'll try and handle this corner case where the plugin has no programs and no chunks.
This is really an outlier case though. I haven't seen any plugs like this before :)

Thanks a lot, Noel for taking your time to take a look a this. You are the best!!!!

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JoseC

JoseC

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29 minutes ago, scook said:

Not sure if it is worth the effort. The VCV Bridge is a temporary solution introduced a little over a year ago. It is not really supported by the VCV developer.

There is a VST version of of VCV Rack based v0.6 that works with CbB called VeeSeeVST Rack (the kvr thread has links to the development on GitHub). It has most of the free modules (although a few are missing such as NYSTHI and Vult). It also does not have any of the paid modules. Pretty sure development stopped with VCV Rack v1.0 was released. Still may be a better plug-in solution for now.

Thanks, scook. I already explained the state of things to Noel by PM, but it seems that he got interested nonetheless, which tells a lot about his commitment to  CbB and its users. Not that we had not noticed, but still. :)

The bridge is unsupported in v 1.0, but is working here fine, with this minor annoyance in CbB, that does not exist in Ableton Live, at least. Differences between v 0.6 and v 1.0 of VCV Rack are important enough to try and make it work.

I am using Bridge instances just as audio inputs in CbB, with all midi sent from CbB to VCV Rack using virtual midi cables, and it works fine this way. The only thing is having to set bridge port numbers every time I open the CbB file, that is something I can live with until v 2.0 arrives and VCV Rack becomes a full VSTi as announced.

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craigr68

craigr68

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I was wondering if Noel could update us on whether vst3 program changes will ever work with CBB.  

In an old forum in 2016 http://forum.cakewalk.com/Question-for-Persons-Using-VSL-with-Platinum-m3473206.aspx#3473206

You said: "The VST3 spec doesn't support MIDI program changes. Program changes can technically be done via parameters but we dont support that mechanism."

I would sure like to see TH-U vst3 plugin respond to program changes.  Because of this, I'm still using vst2 plugin instead.  Thanks.

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Noel Borthwick

Noel Borthwick

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21 hours ago, craigr68 said:

I was wondering if Noel could update us on whether vst3 program changes will ever work with CBB.  

In an old forum in 2016 http://forum.cakewalk.com/Question-for-Persons-Using-VSL-with-Platinum-m3473206.aspx#3473206

You said: "The VST3 spec doesn't support MIDI program changes. Program changes can technically be done via parameters but we dont support that mechanism."

I would sure like to see TH-U vst3 plugin respond to program changes.  Because of this, I'm still using vst2 plugin instead.  Thanks.

@craig The main issue with program changes is that MIDI defines a program change as a value from 0 to 127 and banks similarly.
VST3 doesn't actually support MIDI as raw MIDI data but messages like CC's and Program changes internally handled as a special plugin parameter with a floating point range from 0-1. 

VST3 plugins can expose a count of supported "programs" and in fact if they do CbB will enumerate and show these programs in the preset picker on the toolbar at the top of the plugin window. If that is shown then by setting the flag in plugin manager to "Translate Bank/Program Changes",  MIDI program changes in the project will get mapped to the appropriate value of the special program change parameter. Keep in mind that there aren't many VST3 plugin that properly expose their programs this way. Waves instruments are an exception and do support it. So you would in theory be able to send program changes to the VST3 this way. However it doesn't make too much sense since the range of 128 programs would be mapped over however many programs the plugin offers. So you would have to guess what program change number corresponded to the actual program! Not very user friendly.

Alternatively a better approach would be for us to directly expose the program change parameter to the user as a plug-in automation parameter. I tested this and in theory this would allow you to dynamically assign a program change via track automation. As long as the plugin exposes the program change parameter this would show up as an assignable envelope for automation. As long as the plugin exposes the programs properly, the parameter values would show the correct program names in CbB.  This is not supported yet but I can consider adding this in for a future release.

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Gswitz

Gswitz

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On 9/2/2019 at 9:14 PM, craigr68 said:

I was wondering if Noel could update us on whether vst3 program changes will ever work with CBB.  

In an old forum in 2016 http://forum.cakewalk.com/Question-for-Persons-Using-VSL-with-Platinum-m3473206.aspx#3473206

You said: "The VST3 spec doesn't support MIDI program changes. Program changes can technically be done via parameters but we dont support that mechanism."

I would sure like to see TH-U vst3 plugin respond to program changes.  Because of this, I'm still using vst2 plugin instead.  Thanks.

I use thu with vst3 and i change banks and patches with my fcb1010. What are you trying to automate that you can't?

I suppose i do save my usual patches in a bank to make it easy to shift through them.

I have not tried mapping sets of commands to a single stomp or having specific stomps bringing up specific sounds.

I can bring up any patch i like and use fixed stomps so no matter what patch i get, my reverb stomp toggles reverb and delay toggles delay etc.

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craigr68

craigr68

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20 hours ago, Gswitz said:

I use thu with vst3 and i change banks and patches with my fcb1010. What are you trying to automate that you can't?

I suppose i do save my usual patches in a bank to make it easy to shift through them.

I have not tried mapping sets of commands to a single stomp or having specific stomps bringing up specific sounds.

I can bring up any patch i like and use fixed stomps so no matter what patch i get, my reverb stomp toggles reverb and delay toggles delay etc.

Thanks for your response.  I'm surprised you have TH-U vst3 working with Program Changes.  Please excuse me while I get wordy and layout a summary of the situation from my perspective.

This is a test I just ran (I'm running latest & greatest TH-U 1.1.0 Full Version):

Track 1: Audio track (ASIO USB input 1 which guitar is plugged into) with TH-U vst3 plugin in effects bin, enabled Midi Input in TH-U header
Track 2: Midi track with Output set to the TH-U plugin in Track 1

Track 3: Audio track (ASIO USB input 1 which guitar is plugged into) with TH-U vst2 plugin in effects bin, enabled Midi Input in TH-U header
Track 4: Midi track with Output set to the TH-U plugin in Track 3

Automation - to explain my conclusion below, I want to establish first 2 ways I do automation:
  1. Audio Track automation - in the audio track, automation drop down will have TH-U automation parameters you can choose - I typically test with Delay Output
  2. Midi automation - in the midi track, where you first open TH-U plugin, right click a control and have it learn as you move a control, then in Midi track automation drop down assign that control (like to Mod Wheel)

My conclusion:
Program changes: only work with the vst2 tracks 3 & 4.  I can't get them to work with vst3 tracks 1 & 2.  Both sets of tracks are identical except for TH-U vst versions.
Note that I'm not using any device like your fcb1010.  (I do have an ADA MC-1 that I don't use currently.)  In my tests, I'm going direct from CBB to the vst plugin by opening Event View and just creating the PC events.  When I'm playing along with my guitar, the events should switch the TH-U presets as I play thru the song.  By the way, I also just stay in one bank of TH-U presets and I'm fine with that - I don't need bank switching to work.

1. Automation: Audio Track automation with either vst2 or vst3 work until you save the project and then reopen.  Then they seem to disappear and therefore don't work.
2. Midi automation I've never had a problem with - always seems to work with vst2 or vst3, which is a pretty good alternative workaround.

--------------------
Also, would like to point out there's quite a history to these problems going back to 2016.  Here's some of Overloud support responses:

June 6, 2016:
Yes, this is an issue with the VST3 format and we are currently working on it. 
If you wish to use the latest version of the plug-in and correctly receive Program Changes, you should use the VST2 format.

Aug 29, 2016:
My question: Has there been any update to the VST3 version of TH3 where MIDI program changes will work with SONAR?

Overloud response:
The current state of TH3 VST3 as of version 3.2.2 is that it supports CCs and Note messages, but still not Program Changes. 
It may sound funny somehow, but the VST3 specification does not include "out-of-the-box" support for Program Change messages, replaced by a much more convoluted abstraction (which no one really uses in its full capability). 
The result is that the old "Program Change" functionality has to be "emulated" instead, in some way or another. At the moment we're deciding which way it is best to design this emulation.

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craigr68

craigr68

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The reason I jumped in on this thread is I was wondering if there was a relationship between losing my TH-U automation data on reload of project and the subject of Noel's post because they sound sort of related.  Then I started wondering if the program change issue could also be related. 

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Noel Borthwick

Noel Borthwick

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This thread has strayed far from the topic of plugin settings loss :) Losing automation envelope state is a completely different thing since it is host related rather than plugin related. Same with the program change issue which is related to the VST3 spec implementation. If you have a reproducible issue with that PM me a link to the project and we can look into it.

As I mentioned earlier sending program changes will only work if the plugin exposes program's to the host. i.e. you MUST see presets listed in CbB's preset picker in the effects window. If not no dice. TH3 doesn't support VST3 presets. I don't have THU to test but I imagine its the same.

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Noel Borthwick

Noel Borthwick

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22 hours ago, Sidney Earl Goodroe said:

How would you access the other banks, for instance, there are many different banks of presets in both Xpand 2 and Velvet, not to mention Vacuum Pro? I tried resetting the GM numbers in Sonar Platinum and the AIR plugs still come up with the default settings.

If you were referring to my post about program change numbers you may have misunderstood what I was saying. I was referring to the VST3's special program change PARAMETER. This has no notion of banks. Rather its a parameter who's values represent all preset's  exposed by the plugin. AFIK there is no way to separate them into banks using that mechanism. Its a linear range of all presets that the plugin exposes. You will see the preset's in the preset picker in CbB's effects window toolbar, assuming the plugin exposes it. All Waves plugin's expose presets if you want to see it in action.

Generally the only reason to access presets from the DAW directly would be to program a preset change somewhere during playback. So bank's don't necessarily buy you any functionality assuming that all the presets in the plugin can be set. 

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Gswitz

Gswitz

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@craigr68You don't have to use pcs to automate thu anyway. Just use notes. Works fine. I can make a video demonstrating if you really need it. I have some around thu and the fcb1010 i know. Whether they spell out the answers to your exact questions idk. Search YouTube for gswitz101 and you will turn them up.

@Noel Borthwick sorry for the final off topic post. Ty for being awesome and fixing the bug. Craig and i can take this offline or start a new thread.

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