Farewell Bitwig..... Bad customer service will kill the best of products

[jbw]

Bounce in place!

Hybrid tracks are one of Bitwig's best features. I've stopped expecting different company's software to work in harmony all the time, because for the most part there's always one hangup or another. Converting to audio funnels everything into Bitwig's friendly confines.

[jjc2]

Bounce in place!

Hybrid tracks are one of Bitwig's best features. I've stopped expecting different company's software to work in harmony all the time, because for the most part there's always one hangup or another. Converting to audio funnels everything into Bitwig's friendly confines.

That's actually good advice. And keep both tracks, that way I don't lose everything.
Thank you, didn't think of that one.

[antic604]

Bounce in place!

Hybrid tracks are one of Bitwig's best features. I've stopped expecting different company's software to work in harmony all the time, because for the most part there's always one hangup or another. Converting to audio funnels everything into Bitwig's friendly confines.

That's actually good advice. And keep both tracks, that way I don't lose everything.
Thank you, didn't think of that one.

It's a sound advice, although maybe don't move the original track - just disable and hide it to use as a backup in case you want to tweak something?

Glad to hear you might be staying after all - we need more Bitwig users!

[gesslr]

So if it was the PLUGIN causing it, it would do so consistently, but it doesn't. Hence, the cause must be OUTSIDE of the plugin....

As i answered you via email personally already, we're sorry that the discontinued Alchemy does not work reliably in Bitwig Studio as well as in some other hosts - but as Camel Audio is out of business, there's nothing we can do, even despite trying to offer the best customer support we can, we can't even test it.

The cause being something outside of the plugin, as you state it, is technically a false conclusion. I guess you know that, too, as the random crashes happen inside of the plugin, according to the crashlog you sent us yourself:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: BitwigPluginHost64.exe
Application Version: 2.1.0.53807
Application Timestamp: 5919b218
Fault Module Name: Alchemy.dll
Fault Module Version: 1.55.0.3373
Fault Module Timestamp: 511208bb
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00000000004abfda
OS Version: 6.3.9600.2.0.0.256.4
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: acb1
Additional Information 2: acb1f1259e0ea88e9547b45600f5f1ed
Additional Information 3: 4ded
Additional Information 4: 4ded4824fb43c4b4505f2b4fda58ff6e


It is a bit sad and disappointing to see that you try to badmouth us on a public forum with made up quotes like "we don't care you pay us money, we don't care our product crashes your music." to ease your understandable frustration about a technical problem. But the majority of the community knows us otherwise and we're also still happy to welcome you in the future with any further issues you might encounter, just as we did with all previous requests during the last 2 years.

Best regards,
Dom

P.S.: Also sent as PM so you don't miss an answer.

This seems fairly definitive.

I think what the OP is saying is that the internal crash is caused by some values being sent to Alchemy. What Dom is saying is "no, Alchemy isn't dealing with the values sent (which are correct)".

As a test, you can temporarily replace the Alchemy plug in with another, current VI (doesn't matter which), and do the same things. Does it crash? If it does not, it really is Alchemy. If it does, then the crash report can help confirm your perspective.

My $0.02

[connmach]

That doesn't take away the pathetic bad mouthing and no apologies what so ever. The crash-log is very clear.
This forum is about to be ruined by whining diva's thinking they can shout whatever they want. A forum meant to exchange, tips, tricks, creativity and wisdom in a normal and polite manner.

Those are my $0,02 and you can keep the change.

[antic604]

This seems fairly definitive.

I think what the OP is saying is that the internal crash is caused by some values being sent to Alchemy. What Dom is saying is "no, Alchemy isn't dealing with the values sent (which are correct)".

As a test, you can temporarily replace the Alchemy plug in with another, current VI (doesn't matter which), and do the same things. Does it crash? If it does not, it really is Alchemy. If it does, then the crash report can help confirm your perspective.

My $0.02

On previous page the OP literally said:

"I agree, it could actually be the plugin. Especially since it is an old one "Alchemy", and all other plugins (15 instruments and loads of effects) all load fine. So, yes it could be that this plugin wasn't programmed quite up to the VST 2.4 spec..... And most of the others VST 2.4 were...."

[Phil B]

That doesn't take away the pathetic bad mouthing and no apologies what so ever. The crash-log is very clear.
This forum is about to be ruined by whining diva's thinking they can shout whatever they want. A forum meant to exchange, tips, tricks, creativity and wisdom in a normal and polite manner.

Those are my $0,02 and you can keep the change.

+1
Pathetic is right

[pdxindy]

If any of you feel save working with a tool that leaves you with the fact that "You don't reliably know that the next time you click save, it will actually load again". Please stay. I have loved bitwig, and would love it still, but I CANNOT PRODUCE AN ALBUM AND NOT KNOW THAT MY NEXT SAVE WILL RELIABLY LOAD AGAIN!!!!

If you don't get that fact Dom. Then you are not a musician.

An unreliable save would be a show stopper for me too. You have a couple choices... stop using Bitwig or stop using Alchemy. Of course, if you continue to depend on Alchemy in another DAW, sooner or later such problems will arise and it will eventually be unusable. Any DAW update at any time could be the end of compatibility with Alchemy.

Obviously, since Alchemy is not longer supported, or even available, there is nothing Bitwig can do and no developer Bitwig Devs can collaborate on a fix with. Working with defunct and unsupported software is a 'use at your own risk' situation. You are responsible for that, not Bitwig.

[zerocrossing]

Bitwig murdered my family and burned down my house. I contacted support but they just said it was my fault, even though they clearly told me to do it via my dog. Now I have to go back to Ableton Live.

[Quack Quack]

I can see OP's frustration, Alchemy worked seamlessly in v1, but now to get it to work in v2 I have to constantly spam the reload plug in button. 10 tries should do it OP. So to me, this would seem like a problem with the Bitwig plugin loader and not Alchemy.

[antic604]

I can see OP's frustration, Alchemy worked seamlessly in v1, but now to get it to work in v2 I have to constantly spam the reload plug in button. 10 tries should do it OP. So to me, this would seem like a problem with the Bitwig plugin loader and not Alchemy.

That's not an obvious conclusion - in v2 maybe Bitwig made some changes to make it more compliant with general VST spec that was necessary to have some other plugins working properly or added some missing features, which at the same time broke the compatibility with Alchemy that's not supported by its devs anymore?

It's (almost ) never black & white in software world.

[dom@bitwig]

Some facts about this, to clear up those "maybes":

When Camel Audio was still in business in 2014, we used to worked together on issues with it:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... y#p5694243
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... y#p5700232

The crashes were not introduced in version 2, it sometimes crashed already in version 1 of Bitwig Studio, as well as in some other hosts, but as Camel Audio has been bought by Apple and they dropped all the Camel Audio products in 2015 (http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/cam ... ble-613289) , there's nothing that can be done about it:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... y#p6092483

So if Alchemy is crucial to your work, the only reliable way to use it, is as a part of Logic Pro - which is obviously pretty different to Bitwig Studio but a great tool in its own regard!

Cheers,
Dom

[craigtumps]

When moving to BW2 I had two old plugins that stopped working. They were old and not supported so I just had to move on and use something else.

I can still use the plugins on BW1 if I want to. VSTs are always like this. Major reason why I moved to BW was at least you can reset a crashed plugin and rescue a project when this happens.

[sisarii]

People are attacking the OP, however some of his words hide some truth. Yes it is unreasonable to expect a discontinued plugin to work with newer DAW's forever. But there are so many people that have stopped using bitwig because the devs don't care to acknowledge the instability issues and performance hits/GUI lags when sessions get bigger.

Support tends to blame each individual's machine specs which is totally ludicrous for some people that have really strong computers and completely different specs and operating systems. There are countless threads here reporting the same issue. I really don't see how you would work on a serious 60-70 track project with the performance the daw has at the moment. I have tried the Bitwig 2 demo and it is even worse on the performance front. I can't comment on stability as I can't work on anything that uses more than 10-15 tracks on my machines anyway which is totally insane in itself.. Just completed a 90 track orchestral project on Logic using a 6900k CPU..

[anttimaatteri]

so use something else than alchemy?

and i bet its the cracked version... ;D.