Blue Cat's Freeware Pack II is out!

[Blue Cat Audio]

We are proud to announce the release of Blue Cat's Free Pack II, a complete redesign of our free plug-ins bundle.


This new package includes several new plugins (dual channel EQ, stereo phaser), brand new user interfaces, as well as dozens of new features and enhancements: a new presets manager, new MIDI and automation mapping capabilities, many new presets, Windows AAX support, and much more...

We encourage you to check them out, the whole package is entirely free!

[ZINO]

Awesome! Thanks a lot!

(BTW: Much better GUI's!!!!!)

[Blue Cat Audio]

Thanks, we hope you will like the new features too!

[VRW]

Hi there,
first of all thanks a real big lot for providing those Plugs for free! It's nice and generous as it is really nice, good sounding/very helpful stuff-and it's a whole bunch of it! I thought I should let you know that version 2/VST is working well with Win 7 32bit Home+Pro in Reaper (which are my mobile systems) but on my desktop system Mac OS Lion 10.7.3 unfortunately it causes Pro Tools 10.0.1 to crash repeatedly. I installed/deinstalled/reinstalled it several times, tried both RTAS and AAX, but always got the same negative results as it's no problem to set it up and have it run for a short time without problems but after approx. 10sek. it causes a loud audio noise, PT10 freezes, the audiodriver (Digi003) gets lost most of the time and finally-"rien ne va plus". No way to get it work unfortunately. It's no drama here actually as I use it additionally to my Waves and other stuff but maybe others may be hooked on your cool freebies! Because of that I decided to report it to you. By the way, version 1 did work perfectly on this system here. The system is an iMac 3.06GHz, 4GBRam, Mac OS Lion 10.7.3, Pro Tools 10.0.1, Digi003R, all the latest driver n stuff, Waves v9, Duende Native, IK Multimedia and Nomad Factory BT Bundles. So everything is working actually except version 2 RTAS/AAX of your cool free plugs (version 1 did). Maybe you can check this out if it's just specific on my system (which of course might be) or if it's something with PT10?
Merci beaucoup and very best regards,
VRW

[Blue Cat Audio]

Hi VRW,

Thank you for your feedback.

There is something with Pro Tools 10: with some plug-ins (not only ours), and on some systems, it may cause CPU overload and freeze/crash. The exact reasons have not been clearly identified yet (it seems to be related to a bug with multicore processing), but the consensus seems to be that you need to decrease the number of cores in the Pro Tools options (dividing by two seems the best choice: set to 2 cores for a qud core cpu for example). There are a couple of threads about this topic in other forums.

Do you mind trying this trick on your system and telling us?

Also, do you have the problem with all our plug-ins? (even when using just the modulation effects)? The only times we could reproduce such a behavior on one of our Macs, it was with the Blue Cat's FreqAnalyst or Blue Cat's Triple EQ plug-ins (which are more graphics-intensive than the others).

[VRW]

Hi,
thanks a lot for your nice n quick reply! I tried your suggested workaround and-voila -it's worked so far! The FreqAnalyst did run properly and there was no crash. Just when I closed the session the audiodriver got lost again (which does not happen usually) but while the session was running there were no problems. The question is if you're used to run a lot of VIs and Plugs, will it work with 2 instead of 4 Cores (as 4 is the default setting in PT)? But anyway, you're right, it seems to work this way .
As to if the modulations would run, unfortunately on my system I had the same problems with the Stereo Chorus and so with the Gain Suite.
I hope you will find a way to get it work as smoothly as version 1 did, which has worked on this system flawlessly! The plugs are really cool indeed.
Thanks again for sharing it for free!
Cheers.

[Blue Cat Audio]

Hi,

it seems that maybe removing just one core (keeping three out of four in your case) should work, as suggested in this technical note on the AVID website:
http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_U ... e/en299475

It is suprising that the first version does not have the same problem (we could actually reproduce the same issue for the FreqAnalyst plug-in with both versions on the machine that had these problems).

With one core reserved to other tasks than RTAS processing, your system should be much more stable anyway, so I don't think there is any performance issue with this setup.

[VRW]

Merci beaucoup, thanks a lot!
I will try this. And surprisingly I could use version 1 of the FreqAnalyst and the others. Btw as I can use your version 2 plugs on my Windows systems let me say that it's actually beautiful stuff-sweet sounding with cool features and it's nice that you offer it for free!
Wishing you the very best, thanks again,

Volker

[Blue Cat Audio]

I will try this.

Can you tell us if it still works for you too with just one core removed?

[VRW]

I'm so sorry, I would have done it, but I've deinstalled it temporarily. Just to keep the system clean until there will be an update working with PT10 under it's standard settings as those are the best working for most applications here. But anyway I really appreciate your work as it's definitely cool stuff ! Lots of fun with it on my Win/Reaper-systems. Will keep in touch.
The very best regards to you, greetings a paris,

Volker

[O.N.E.]

@ Blue Cat Audio

Hello,

I have a similar setup and was having similar issues (mainly glitches within actual audio playback) with the FreqAnalyst, specifically. I stepped down from four cores to three, and didn't hear any audio glitches. Two cores worked for me in that respect, also. Two cores has worked for me best, so far, because with two cores I don't get the error message that is discussed in the AVID technical note you posted.

I'm glad I found this thread. It helped me get the FreqAnalyst in harmony with Pro Tools 10, for now. Thanks for that, and for the hard work you guys put into making cool plug-ins!

[Blue Cat Audio]

Thanks for the feedback.

We have actually found a way to avoid this issue (so that the V2 plug-ins work like the V1). Would any of you be interested in testing a beta version for us?

[O.N.E.]

@ Blue Cat Audio

No problem. And sure... If the offer still stands, I'm open to trying it out.

[Blue Cat Audio]

Hi,

a new version (not official yet) is available for download. It should fix the issue and let you use Pro Tools 10 with its standad settings. Even better, performance has been improved and you should be able to use more instances of the plug-ins in your sessions.

AAX Freeware Pack Download for Mac (2.01)
RTAS Freeware Pack Download for Mac (2.01)

Can you please tell us if it fixes the issue on your system?

The problem was very dependent on the hardware configuration, so we'd like to make sure it's fixed on all systems for which the problem was reported before we officially release the fix.

Thanks!

[paterpeter]

I haven't tested the new freeware pack, but I'll definitively have a closer look at those. Thanks a lot already, I really appreciate this.