im quite intrugued

if FX Freeze wraps plugins do they actually open up in the wrapper, and if so how does it handle multple output vsti's like dr008 kontakt etc.

topaz wrote:

im quite intrugued if FX Freeze wraps plugins do they actually open up in the wrapper, and if so how does it handle multple output vsti's like dr008 kontakt etc.

FXFreeze probably uses the same wrapping technology as FXTeleport and that handles multi-output VSTs fine Dunno how, they just work.

Sounds like a wrapper to me. Ya have to play the portion of the song that you wanna freeze. Might be only of interest to logic PC users since the bounce is realtime.

Ah! I was looking forward to this.
Tried the demo today.... and I'm impressed.

I've been lurcking at SX2 because of the freeze function but VST5.1 actually suits me perfectely for the rest. Now with FX Freeze added (for only $49) I have everything I need. Sequencerwise that is.

This and EnergyXT have been the most inventive addition to my sequencer recentely... making it do so much more then before. And both are fuckin' cheap!

YEAH! I've been waiting for this for a long time...
Just picked up the trial version about half an hour ago.
I haven't yet tried it properly but I have to say I'm impressed in it so far.
And yeah the price is not bad at all

Just now I'm trying to figure out how to freeze effect plugins... haven't succeeded yet.

I'd really love this to work to get a nice freeze function among all the other wicked stuff I can do when working with Muzys

Does anyone know if this version of freeze stores stuff in ram?

Cannot get it to work in FL

Well, I read the blurb on the site, and it still looks like a bounce button to me. So it saves me maybe 2 mouse clicks... so what - ain't nothing I can't do already (especially with the majority of FX plugins not consuming RAM unless they're actually playing). So I press "export", then mute the midi track - instant FX Freeze!

I got so h*rny that i bought it short after trying the demo

It is amazing. I use RGC:Audio's RM IV and its configured to one stereo output and seven mono. I had drums assigned to all those outputs and the frooze it.
1% CPU!
And i can still put inserts and sends on the different outputs, and change the volume.
If you put an insert on monooutput 3, you can freeze that too!!
You select a vsti and check the freezebutton. There are two, the little one only freezes the CPU and the big one freezes both CPU and Memory (Huge samplelibaryusers, your day is here). Then you start playing the sequenser where the freezing should start and then you stop it when you think you're done. FX-Freeze records whats been played and stores it as a wav in a changable folder. The smart thing about FX-Freeze is that it can chose what to record, right after the vsti output, or after an insert after and vsti output, making the things i wrote above possible.


The only problems ive found so far is that the first second of the freeze might pop and crack a little. One another thing is that when the marker passes the things you froozen the notes from the vsti are played, unfroozen. Even if there is no midi (maybe this only happens when the notes are sustained). I guess that both of those problems will be solved in a later upgrade.

One thing, that really isnt a problem .. well, maybe it is, but its not at their fault. When you open up an old song, you have to change all the effects and vsti's you want to freeze to the wrapped version. As it is now, at least, you have all your vsti's and effects PLUS the new wrapped one (all in the same folder) with an "z" after its name.

I changed all plugins and an old project witch used about 98%. Suddenly, it used 20% (i didnt freeze the sendeffects and not all of the inserts - lazy me )
Just freezing the vsti's is comparable to the 2.0 of steinberg products. And that is €49. As i heard, SX 2.0 takes a lot of time to freeze a vsti. FX-Freeze takes the time it takes to play thru the track, or the piece you want to freeze. You can still copy or edit (havent checked edit, but im sure) the midi witch vsti has been frozen.

The short version.

No real need to upgrade my computer. Absolutely no need to go for SX 2.0 or SL 2.0 (freezingly speaking).
Its pure love!

I cant help wondering how long it will take until they get bought by steinberg or sonar
Feels like this news should be printed on all mayor newspapers, worldwide!

Sincerely

I think it works well given the limitations imposed. You don't have to play the entire song through, you can just play the section you want to freeze.

Has anyone looked at that Gigasampler Rewire wrapper that's been anounced?

Crackbaby wrote:

I use RGC:Audio's RM IV...

im just trying to think of what advantage this offers over internal render is ie: SX

it seems to export in .raw format, and you have to render in real time like the old logic way.

initial thoughts where good, but now im wondering.

any opinions. ?

I doubt there's much advantage. I think this is more for hosts like Orion.

Quote:

No real need to upgrade my computer. Absolutely no need to go for SX 2.0 or SL 2.0

Amen! Saves me a lot of money. FX Freeze rules!

Ixox wrote:

Crackbaby wrote: I use RGC:Audio's RM IV...

this "crackbaby" keeps on referring to rm4 as a rgc device.. and the name is not too..er..um...conservative...are u using naughty copies crackbaby???

Quote:

Absolutely no need to go for SX 2.0 or SL 2.0

well, that's if you don't care at all about full pdc

I just tried the demo in FLStudio and it worked for me instantly, with no tweaking.. Tried it on one instance of Sampletank (playing block piano chords) and one instance of theAbstractGuitar and it took my CPU utilization on my 2.53Ghz P4 from 20-40% down to 1%. Nice. And Easy. Be sure you select the "(z)" version of your plugin when selecting it from the Channel menu.

And I assume it's supposed to do that white-interlaced thingie on the VSTi interface to indicate that it's frozen? Or is that just an FLWrapper graphics oddity?

I had high hopes in FX Freeze, but there seems still to be a long way for it to work properly. I´m very disappointed of it.

1. It doesn´t adopt the subfolder structure of the VST plugins folder.

2. In Logic 5.x (PC) there is no sound when playing a track after having frozen it.

3. It doesn´t freeze anything in the following setup: Midi sequencer (Jammer Pro 5) -> MidiYoke -> Chainer standalone with whatever VSTis loaded.

subfolders of 4 deep are working fine here.

working fine with chainer vsti and vst.

AndreasEhrhardt wrote:

I had high hopes in FX Freeze, but there seems still to be a long way for it to work properly. I´m very disappointed of it. 1. It doesn´t adopt the subfolder structure of the VST plugins folder. 2. In Logic 5.x (PC) there is no sound when playing a track after having frozen it. 3. It doesn´t freeze anything in the following setup: Midi sequencer (Jammer Pro 5) -> MidiYoke -> Chainer standalone with whatever VSTis loaded.

Quote:

I had high hopes in FX Freeze, but there seems still to be a long way for it to work properly. I´m very disappointed of it.

Me too... it's a great concept, but a bit tricky to work with at the moment.

You can't freeze a part of a track and then repeat it "freezed" in the sequencer, you have to unfreeze, change MIDI parts, move locators, and then freeze again instead.

Moreover, the plugin produces clicks at the start of the frozen fragments, so you need to select an extra empty space before the part you want to freeze to avoid those noises.

For now, using the macro "render VSTi to audio" in SX suits better my needs.

Sahul

I did a freeze-wrap of Chainer and then loaded Kontakt into it. I'm finding that every time I open up the freeze-wrapped UI when it is in the normal, non-frozen state, the Kontakt instruments have to be reloaded -- over and over and over, every time I open the UI. Big samples can take a long time to load, so this makes FX-Freeze pretty much unusable for any plugin that loads large samples.

Is there any way to avoid or work around this issue?

so the wrapper is not transparent ?

this is so important.

James Althoff wrote:

I did a freeze-wrap of Chainer and then loaded Kontakt into it. I'm finding that every time I open up the freeze-wrapped UI when it is in the normal, non-frozen state, the Kontakt instruments have to be reloaded -- over and over and over, every time I open the UI. Big samples can take a long time to load, so this makes FX-Freeze pretty much unusable for any plugin that loads large samples. Is there any way to avoid or work around this issue?

having just run some quick tests, can anyone else confirm...

It seems once you freeze part of a VSTi track, then no matter what it will always play back? It seems to ignore the mute of the generating track, or the solo of other tracks?

This is with Nuendo 2.1 BTW.

James Althoff wrote:

I did a freeze-wrap of Chainer and then loaded Kontakt into it. I'm finding that every time I open up the freeze-wrapped UI when it is in the normal, non-frozen state, the Kontakt instruments have to be reloaded -- over and over and over, every time I open the UI. Is there any way to avoid or work around this issue?

There is a freeze and utrafreeze flakes (small and big).
When you are using big one, samples are unloaded and you need to reload them again. With small flake sampler stay in memory and you'll need to reload anything.
Am I got you correctly?

Quote:

There is a freeze and utrafreeze flakes (small and big). When you are using big one, samples are unloaded and you need to reload them again. With small flake sampler stay in memory and you'll need to reload anything. Am I got you correctly?

There is Freeze and Ultrafreeze, I understand that. I did an Ultrafreeze and everything seemed great -- Kontakt was Ultrafrozen. Now I decided to un-Ultrafreeze it. Kontakt reloaded its samples just as I expected. But then, the unexpected happened. *Every* time I open the freeze-wrapped Chainer UI, the instance of Kontakt loaded in Chainer *reloads* its samples. Again, Kontakt reloads its samples *every* time the UI opens, not just once after the un-Ultrafreeze is performed. So *every* time I want to make a little tweak to Kontakt -- change its volume, pan, effects, whatever -- as soon as I open the UI to make the tweak, I have to wait for the samples to *reload*.

This is not normal behavior for Kontakt, btw.

It worked instantly fine here with FL Studio but does not seem to work with Orion Platinum. Am I right ?

Regards

PA

Hmm. I'm trying it in FL Studio. I loaded a patch with a long tail on a synth and froze a short loop of 2 bars. Freeze doesn't seem to be able to loop properly. Each time the loop starts over, there's a large gap in the audio which should be pretty much continuous. Otherwise, it took the cpu from 20% down to 1%. I'll keep my eye on it though, it looks promising.

AndreasEhrhardt wrote:

It doesn´t adopt the subfolder structure of the VST plugins folder.

Same here with Sonar and the VST adapter.Only a handfull of plugs and VSTi's show up and only VSTi's seem to work with freeze,not tracks and plugs.D'Cota uses about 18-23% on my older 1700 Athlon(where I tested it) and uses about 12-17% with it frozen.I'll wait and see what updates bring.

Alan wrote:

Does anyone know if this version of freeze stores stuff in ram?

FX Freeze stores data on disk. See Option Dialog in FXF wrapper.

[quote="Sahul"]

Quote:

You can't freeze a part of a track and then repeat it "freezed" in the sequencer, you have to unfreeze, change MIDI parts, move locators, and then freeze again instead.

Does SX do this better? Do you really have to move the locators? If you start "recording" a little before the things you want to freeze i suppose you wont be bothered with the clicks.
[quote="Sahul"]

Quote:

For now, using the macro "render VSTi to audio" in SX suits better my needs. Sahul

Im happy for you, if have a working solution.
I dont, so FX-Freeze works great for me.
Can you tell me how this macro works? Im very interested!

ttoz wrote:

this "crackbaby" keeps on referring to rm4 as a rgc device.. and the name is not too..er..um...conservative...are u using naughty copies crackbaby???

Believe anything you want, but remember, people can remember things wrong. I've bought things both from linplug and RGC and i accidently switched names.

Don't you know the 'Crackbaby' story ttoz?...

Black Hat falls in love with Cracked Whore - they exchange vows in front of the ever pure White Hat, and then she forgot to take a D.O.S. security pill...

And then Crackbaby was born....

Using the MACRO (to render VSTi to a new audio track, automatically placing locators and so on) in sx works a LOT better for me than FX FREEZE or the freeze function in sx2....

J Dub wrote:

Don't you know the 'Crackbaby' story ttoz?... Black Hat falls in love with Cracked Whore - they exchange vows in front of the ever pure White Hat, and then she forgot to take a D.O.S. security pill... And then Crackbaby was born....

Crackbaby wrote:

ttoz wrote: this "crackbaby" keeps on referring to rm4 as a rgc device.. and the name is not too..er..um...conservative...are u using naughty copies crackbaby??? Believe anything you want, but remember, people can remember things wrong. I've bought things both from linplug and RGC and i accidently switched names.

that's why i asked instead of actually accusing (ok, i hinted lol)..if i offended i apologize

Now I've had a bit longer to play with the demo there are 2 things I don't like about it and one I do. The 2 things I don't like are:

a) its too slow - why can't it freeze at better than real time like Tracktion and Samplitude do?

b) it relies on you to start and stop the transport and play back the track - why not just select a range or have an option to freeze the whole track without having to fiddle about - its harder to get it perfectly to size this way.

What I do like though is that so far it has worked well with Reaktor - which surprised me - reducing CPU hog tracks to playable ones even in Logic. It must be very stable to be able play ball with those two. So its a good start but needs some improvement before I'd buy it I think. Pity - I was hoping for more.

Still got my eye on Tracktion though if they get rid of the green and add send effects.

Quote:

a) its too slow - why can't it freeze at better than real time like Tracktion and Samplitude do? b) it relies on you to start and stop the transport and play back the track - why not just select a range or have an option to freeze the whole track without having to fiddle about - its harder to get it perfectly to size this way.

Presumably, the drawbacks above are due to the fundamental design of VSTi's and the interaction between a VSTi and the host. A VSTi gets data from the host only when the host sends it. So a VSTi won't get the data that it needs to do the freezing operation until the host starts playing.

If your host has a high-speed bounce feature, you might try that instead of Play to get a faster freeze.

James AlthoffIf wrote:

if your host has a high-speed bounce feature, you might try that instead of Play to get a faster freeze.

Not sure what you mean here. Do you mean do a bounce instead of using the freeze plugin - thats what I used to do (still do I mean) but I wanted something a bit more flexible and re-editable which is why I find freeze in Logic and Tracktion interesting.

Or are you saying I could somehow route the fast bounce through the fxfreeze plugin instead of via using the transport - if so how please?

Quote:

Not sure what you mean here. Do you mean do a bounce instead of using the freeze plugin - thats what I used to do (still do I mean) but I wanted something a bit more flexible and re-editable which is why I find freeze in Logic and Tracktion interesting. Or are you saying I could somehow route the fast bounce through the fxfreeze plugin instead of via using the transport - if so how please?

I don't know what host you use. But Sonar, for example, has a "bounce to track" feature. You select what tracks and what segment of time you want to bounce. The bounce runs *much* faster than real-time.

So, here's what I did to test the concept. I put a freeze-wrapped VSTi on a track and entered some midi notes in the Piano Roll. I clicked on the "Freeze" button in the wrapper. Then, instead of hitting Play, I selected the midi track and the track with the FX-Freeze plugin (Sonar uses two tracks for plugin instruments: a midi track and a DXi/audio track) and did a "bounce to track" followed by an Undo. The "bounce to track" is essentially a "play" operation as far as FX-Freeze is concerned. So that did an FX-Freeze at high speed. The Undo got rid of the track that "bounce to track" produces.

Bottom line is that this method works in Sonar and I would expect that it works in any host that has a high-speed "bounce" function. Just think of "bounce" as a high-speed "play" function -- add in one extra Undo step to remove the unneeded bounce track and you should be good to go with a high-speed FX-Freeze.

From a prior post of mine:

Quote:

I did a freeze-wrap of Chainer and then loaded Kontakt into it. I'm finding that every time I open up the freeze-wrapped UI when it is in the normal, non-frozen state, the Kontakt instruments have to be reloaded -- over and over and over, every time I open the UI. Big samples can take a long time to load, so this makes FX-Freeze pretty much unusable for any plugin that loads large samples. Is there any way to avoid or work around this issue?

After more experimentation, I have found that the problem described above doesn't happen when I use the Cakewalk VST Adapter on FX-Freeze-wrapped Chainer. It only happens when using the DirectiXer wrapper with FX-Freeze. So, I guess there might be some interaction betwwen FX-Freeze and DirectiXer that causes the problem.

Hey guys I see you are debating interesting stuff, you should report directly to the FX Freeze forum this might help improving the product on day.

Regards


PA

James Althoff wrote:

So, here's what I did to test the concept. I put a freeze-wrapped VSTi on a track and entered some midi notes in the Piano Roll. I clicked on the "Freeze" button in the wrapper. Then, instead of hitting Play, I selected the midi track and the track with the FX-Freeze plugin (Sonar uses two tracks for plugin instruments: a midi track and a DXi/audio track) and did a "bounce to track" followed by an Undo. The "bounce to track" is essentially a "play" operation as far as FX-Freeze is concerned. So that did an FX-Freeze at high speed. The Undo got rid of the track that "bounce to track" produces. Bottom line is that this method works in Sonar and I would expect that it works in any host that has a high-speed "bounce" function. Just think of "bounce" as a high-speed "play" function -- add in one extra Undo step to remove the unneeded bounce track and you should be good to go with a high-speed FX-Freeze.

I use Logic 5.51 so I tried this out in Logic. I've also wrapped a copy of Chainer - its better than wrapping everything as freeze tends to create a copy of each dll it wraps - and this way I can freeze effect/instruments combos too Unfortunately Logic only bounces realtime (as far as I can tell anyway) but this does help make the process more precise as I can set up a marker beforehand. This is getting interesting.

Anyone know what other hosts do a faster than realtime bounce? Might be interesting to try wrapping Console so you can freeze DXi's too if it works....

It does - just tried it on the demo. That's a useful combination. And as James has demonstrated you can wrap wrapped VSTi's with the Cakewalk adapter which would also bring this to Sonar.

Yes, I really like the idea of freeze-wrapping just Chainer, or Console, or EnergyXT (or all of the above) and then loading plugins into one of them for freezing. I find that method a lot better than having freeze-wrapped copies of dozens (or hundreds ) of plugins all over the place. And as aMUSEd mentioned, you then can insert effects and have them frozen, too -- a nice added bonus.

works pretty well for me.....

only GUI-less plugins in Tracktion and Quantum-fx didn't work so far the rest is pretty damn great....

now I can choose if I'd like to freeze the Tracktion way or the FX Freeze way

nice

Muly

I really like the FX-Freeze plug-in so have bought it.

I'm an SX2 user and I used to use a macro to bounce down individual tracks - but using this plug-in now is a very different experience. for many reasons, one being that you don't end up with loads of tracks in your project.

The only problem I have is that when I load up a song in SX that has frozen tracks on it, for the first 30secs or so that I play back I get crackles and stutters, after about half a minute they dissapear?

That´s not the only problem with FX-Freeze. There have to be improved many things. I hope there will be an update soon.

Apparently there will be an update quite soon.