Time sync info provided to plugins on busses is not latency compensated

[foldaway]

Sadly I have to take back my praises for Instrument tracks!

I've just tried converting a slightly larger project (only 23 audio/midi tracks) by adding fresh instrument tracks & moving the midi & fx over.

After converting just 7 instruments, everything went very wrong!  My favorite example being that clicking an intrument track icon to open the vst plugin instrument, starting opening the wrong instruments! ?

So I guess I'm back to hoping the original bug/issue can be fixed in a future release!

[David Baay]

On 6/27/2024 at 4:02 PM, foldaway said:

After converting just 7 instruments, everything went very wrong!  My favorite example being that clicking an intrument track icon to open the vst plugin instrument, starting opening the wrong instruments! ?

That's not likely an inherent issue with Instrument tracks but some error in the conversion process causing the track to be associated with the wrong synth in the first place. Because inserting synths in FX bins is such an old implementation, I wouldn't be too surprised if there are issues with audio/MIDI port enumeration changes when deleting the ones in the FX bins. The right sequence of conversion steps should avoid that.

I would recomment the following approach to avoid having ports crossed up or having to recreate the MIDI and synth audio tracks, preserving the existing FX and track settings:

- Save a copy of the project, save presets for any synths that aren't using a default, and then delete all the synths from FX bins and re-save it.

- Using the original project as a reference, insert the first missing synth by Insert > Soft Synth, and don't have Sonar create any tracks for it.

- Assign the input of the audio track to that previously hosted the synth in its FX bin to the newly inserted instance, click the icon to open the synth UI and assign the relevant preset.

- Assign the ouput of the relevant MIDI track to the synth in the rack.

- Select the MIDI and Audio tracks, right-click and choose Make Instrument.

- Test playback.

- Repeat the insert, I/O assignment, Make Instrument and test playback for each synth.

Edited June 28 by David Baay

[foldaway]

On 6/28/2024 at 7:32 PM, David Baay said:

That's not likely an inherent issue with Instrument tracks but some error in the conversion process causing the track to be associated with the wrong synth in the first place. Because inserting synths in FX bins is such an old implementation, I wouldn't be too surprised if there are issues with audio/MIDI port enumeration changes when deleting the ones in the FX bins. The right sequence of conversion steps should avoid that.

I would recomment the following approach to avoid having ports crossed up or having to recreate the MIDI and synth audio tracks, preserving the existing FX and track settings:

- Save a copy of the project, save presets for any synths that aren't using a default, and then delete all the synths from FX bins and re-save it.

- Using the original project as a reference, insert the first missing synth by Insert > Soft Synth, and don't have Sonar create any tracks for it.

- Assign the input of the audio track to that previously hosted the synth in its FX bin to the newly inserted instance, click the icon to open the synth UI and assign the relevant preset.

- Assign the ouput of the relevant MIDI track to the synth in the rack.

- Select the MIDI and Audio tracks, right-click and choose Make Instrument.

- Test playback.

- Repeat the insert, I/O assignment, Make Instrument and test playback for each synth.

I tried using Make Instrument to convert fx+midi tracks, in a copy of the project.  While this worked in creating Instrument tracks, the song position latency error remained.

I also tried saving the synth presets, creating the Instrument tracks fresh (alongside the existing) & loading the synth preset, then moving the midi & fx (following the original synth across).  This lead to the strange issues I mentioned in my last post.

I thought I'd mention the failure cases, just so people can avoid them!  but I've yet to try your more complete approach so maybe that'll work!

Thanks