Annoying GUI problems in Studio One...

[Trancit]

This happens only with Melda plugs in Studio One... no matter if VST2 or 3 is used...:

Example: Simple Audio track playing a loop ... as soon as I load up no matter what Melda plugin and hoover the mouse over different sections of the GUI the mouse cursor starts flickering and the play cursor in live stops moving at random positions but all of that gladfully without effecting the audio playback... no stuttering or glitches... but watching at this makes me nervous and make me start trembling too....
Doesn't happen in Reaper, EnergyXT2, Ableton Live, FL Studio and MuLab here...
And In Studio One this happens only with Melda stuff... nothing else behaves like that...

System:

Win 7 x64
Studio One 2.5.1 x86
Melda free bundle 7.07 x86 (paid)
ASIO4All at 512 samples (Studio One doesn't like EMU soundcards )

[MeldaProduction]

I'll check it out, but as you said it happens only in Studio One, so it is pretty probably it will need to be solved there. We'll see.

[Trancit]

I'll check it out, but as you said it happens only in Studio One, so it is pretty probably it will need to be solved there. We'll see.

What I described yes, it only happens in Studio One in this extreme, but I noticed now:

-using Melda plugs in MuLab leads sometimes to audio stutter and short crackle, when the mouse cursor is moved over the plugin GUI

-in Reaper I tried the MMUltiband Delay, where audio is interrupted, when I change parameter (don't know, if this is intended to be) and sometimes GUI issues too with some plugins...

It seems to me, that mouse focus is too "aggressive" (don't know, how to describe it better) with your plugs...

Don't have any issues with other plugins, so it's hardly a problem on my side... I wonder if other have similar issues too???

[MeldaProduction]

I just tried newest Studio One 2.51 (both 32-bit and 64-bit) on Win 7 64 and I'm afraid I found no problems whatsoever. Can you record some screen video, so I can see directly what we are dealing with?
I did this: I created a new project, just one track with some audio loop and added a few Melda plugins, then started "random clicking test" . No problems. I then added MAutoDynamicEq, activated sonogram, analyzer, and modulating an eq band, just to make it work as hard as possible. And nothing, everything seems fine.

I don't know about MuLab, I heard about it once in lifetime , but I use Reaper and Cubase mainly for testing, even with debugversions (which take like 10x more CPU) and I'm pretty sure there are no problems here.

What machine do you have? I mean when it comes to HW. I see 2 possibilities:
a) You have some sort of on-board graphics card with shared memory - normally it doesn't matter, but I'd say 1 of 1000 computers does some odd behaviour, which reminds me what you say. Unfortunately I never had chance to touch any of these machines, seems rather rare (I think I have 2 or 3 reports during the company existence ).
b) You have some sort of "software" installed - these are usually some kind of "visual enhancers", just a piece of crap that should make it look nice . Dunno, I'm running away from these things if I can just smell them .

[Trancit]

Ok, tried to make an example vid...

Problem is, the audio dropout is not recorded in the video...

What could this mean??? I clearly heard the crackles during recording the video, but the avi file is crystal clear???

Second what I noticed: The crackles only appear, if I resize the GUI (MEqualizer in this case) to a certain size...

Third thing I noticed: problem is solved, if I run the DAW only on one core...

Can you imagine, what could be the problem??? I tried with demo of Fabfilter Q and DMG EQuilibrium, which both offers Spectrum analyzers too, but no problem there

Do you have an idea, what the problem could be???

I have an I5 @3,4GHz with 8 GB RAM... tested projects using about 5% CPU
EMU 404 PCI card
It is true, I am using my onboard video card, which is a Intel HD Graphics, but as I said, there is no problem with any plugin other than yours....

[MeldaProduction]

How did you record the video? If it was using the host, then it could probably be CPU indeed - the CPU couldn't make it in time resulting in pop, but since the host was also exporting the audio, then the audio is alright. You said the crackles appear only when you resize the equalizer - any more details?

Why it doesn't do on a single core, that's a mystery to me. Normally you have how many threads? (not separate cores) Btw. is it a laptop or desktop computer?

The other cases I remember were also with Intel HD, but the question is why. Is there a chance for you to check VST3? The reason is that GUI updating works differently with that interface. If not, please send me an email to info@meldaproduction.com and I'll try to send you some experimental version, let's see what would happen.

Anyway the original problem was about "flickering cursors", whatever it means. Could you record that? I suppose audio is not relevant there.

[Trancit]

Ok, I made a vid from Studio One...

Sadly, it doesn't reflect, what's really going on but it shows the stuttering play cursor and from about 18seconds on you see the mouse cursor sometimes disappearing for a few milliseconds... now imagine the mouse cursor appearance would be modulated by an LFO with a rate of 20ms on/off on/off ...etc.

If it would make noise, it would sound like drdrdrdrdrdrdrdr...that's the speed the mouse curor is flickering here... the screen capture with 30 fps is to slow to capture this precisely...

I tried to make a vid about the sound crackle too, but again sadly not even an inserted recorder on the master bus does record this... it must happen directly at the audio interface and so seems to be a conflict between the graphics and audio interrupts... but again, this happens only with Melda plugs...

To use VST 2 or VST 3 in Studio One doesn't make any difference at all... the effect is absolutely the same...

[Trancit]

Did further tests and tried this behaviour on another machine, which uses nvidia
graphics...

Result: The mouse cursor flickering was gone and the stopping play cursor in Studio One too... but:

That was by only hoovering the mouse cursor over the GUI... if I grabbed a node and move it around the stopping play cursor reappeared ... I opened the windows task manager and looked at the CPU graph while doing this and wow... you should definetely change your graphics somehow ... on this (ok quite dated) Q6600 @2,4GHz just moving around a node sucked 2 cores to about 70%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Spikes over spikes... no wonder anymore, why the play cursor stutters...

I tried the same with it's own Pro EQ, which has an analyzer too and did the same thing... Taskmanagers CPU graph didn't showed any noticeable hit...

Will do further tests, but I am afraid, the result will not look much different and so the problem lies on your side ... the GUI of at least the Equalizer sucks definetely too much CPU...

[Trancit]

Did further tests and tried this behaviour on another machine, which uses nvidia
graphics...

Result: The mouse cursor flickering was gone and the stopping play cursor in Studio One too... but:

That was by only hoovering the mouse cursor over the GUI... if I grabbed a node and move it around the stopping play cursor reappeared ... I opened the windows task manager and looked at the CPU graph while doing this and wow... you should definetely change your graphics somehow ... on this (ok quite dated) Q6600 @2,4GHz just moving around a node sucked 2 cores to about 70%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Spikes over spikes... no wonder anymore, why the play cursor stutters...

I tried the same with it's own Pro EQ, which has an analyzer too and did the same thing... Taskmanagers CPU graph didn't showed any noticeable hit...

Will do further tests, but I am afraid, the result will not look much different and so the problem lies on your side ... the GUI of at least the Equalizer sucks definetely too much CPU...

Strange... tested on my main machine again, but CPU consumption isn't higher than i.e. with DMG EQuilibrium, but causes more problems... so it isn't the CPU sucking...

I don't have any ideas anymore, but you are right... regarding the mouse flickering and most graphical problems in Studio One it has to do with the Intel HD Graphics... but not only...

[MeldaProduction]

Ok Trancit, I'm a little confused now. Can you tell me exactly on which machines (and with what settings) you tried it and what were the results?

Btw. when you grab a node and move it, it may not be related to graphics at all. The plugin needs to recompute various settings (that also relates to multiprocessing) and the plugin also sends automation (so it depends on the interface and host). Btw. are you using newest version? Did you notice this behaviour earlier, or how was it?

[Trancit]

OK... I try to sort it out


Main machine: I5 3570 @3,4GHz on a Gigabyte GA-Z77 DS3H board with 8 gigs of RAM...using onboard graphics Intel HD with latest drivers... EMU 404 PCI soundcard, but using onboard High definition Audio with ASIO4All v.10...

FL Studio: no problems at all, no matter, what I do rock solid

Reaper: running into crackles by i.e. grabbing a node in MEQ and moving it around... play cursor stops at random positions... crackles are not recordable, seem to happen after Reapers Master...
with demo of MMulitband Delay: sound drops out for about 500 to 1000 ms after adjusting certain parameters like feedback or gain (next to the feedback control)

MuLab: same problems like in Reaper

Studio One: audio is fine, no crackles or gaps at all, but graphic issues (shown in the vid and same behaviour with VST 2 and VST 3 plugins):

- play cursor in Studio One stops randomly by only hoovering the mouse cursor over a Melda plugin...

- mouse cursor starts to flicker at very high rate by hoovering over a knob or the GUI in general... after grabbing aknob and moving it, the mouse cursor changes at flickering rate between my normal cursor and black up/down arrow, which appears normally, when hoovering the cursor over a knob in Melda plugs...

Second machine: Q6600 quad core @2,4 GHz on a gigabyte board with 2 gigs of Ram... Asus Graphic card with nvidia chip... onboard sound with ASIO4ALL

overall: Less graphical issues but very high CPU consumption by moving a EQ node around

Reaper/MuLab: same audio problems...

Studio One: No graphic issues when hoovering over the GUI but stuttering play cursor if a node is grabbed and moved around... no mouse cursor flickering though...

Again: This happens only with Melda Plugins... tests on both machines with Studio Ones Pro EQ, FF Q Demo and DMG EQuilibrium have shown no problems at all, even if DMG EQ shows similar CPU consumption... but no issues at all

All audio crackles are not recordable in the host and seem to appear after their masters...

Hope this helps

[Trancit]

Addition:

On both machines (which were running audio with a latency of 512) increasing latency to 1024 samples helped a bit but not very much...

Issues were less, if plugins were not resized... the bigger the GUI the more the trouble...

Issues are not i.e. Analyzer related... even if I turn Analyzer off in MEQ, I get the same

Main machine is running Win 7 x64
Second machine Win 7 x32

I have installed version 7.07 which is afaik the latest one...

And yes, I had before little issues with Melda dynamic plugs causing clicks and crackles when parameter were changed under Reaper but never tested before in Studio One and never did test with MEQ under Reaper...

[MeldaProduction]

Ok, so, I understand that on both machines the problems are similar, or at least seem host dependent. So, please mail me to info@meldaproduction.com, let's try a few tests.
Btw. in the first post you said it was all plugins, but now it seems you are only talking about plugins with analyzers, namely equalizers.

[MeldaProduction]

Problem 1

Ok, so good news is I partly simulated the problem 1 - when you move a controller and the GUI is big enough, the rest of the screen temporarily stops moving. It's easiest to simulate with an equalizer, so you can resize it and then the whole GUI needs to be redrawn.

Actually I don't think it's such a big deal as at that moment you are watching the eq anyway, but I'll dig into it further. So far I don't really have so good news however - I checked some other plugins and noted one thing - they either did the same thing, or their response was way slower despite the GUI was smaller.

My conclusion is, that when you move the parameter (in our case eq node), the plugin asks OS for redrawing (without forcing it to update immediately) and for some reason the OS tries to fulfill the request asap leaving no time for the host to redraw. If the plugin doesn't asks that often, the host has enough CPU to redraw, but the plugin's response becomes slower. However why the OS prioritized plugin, that I don't really understand yet. I'd assume both get slowed down, but that obviously doesn't happen.

Anyway this should never cause audio dropouts, clicks etc. If so, maybe your CPU is really overloaded, try increasing "Processing priority", most hosts have these option.

Problem 2

When you move some parameter in Reaper => about 1 second drop out. Yeah, I already asked Cockos about disabling this "feature" by default, but they denied it. All you need to do is open the list of plugins, select all of then (ctrl+A), right click, and enable "Save minimal undo states".

Basically what this does is that everytime you move a parameter, the host knows about it, and when you release the mouse button, the host saves the full plugins state! Unfortunately for more complicated plugins like ours, there are just too much settings to store, so it takes time... Reaper does that for "undo", but quite honestly I find this solution to be unfortunate, at least...

Problem 3

Mouse flickering - well, that I couldn't simulate I'm afraid. Seems like on your computer the host (or more likely OS) is trying to fight for the cursors in some way. Btw. can you record this on a camera for example?

[Trancit]

Problem 1

Ok, so good news is I partly simulated the problem 1 - when you move a controller and the GUI is big enough, the rest of the screen temporarily stops moving. It's easiest to simulate with an equalizer, so you can resize it and then the whole GUI needs to be redrawn.

Actually I don't think it's such a big deal as at that moment you are watching the eq anyway, but I'll dig into it further. So far I don't really have so good news however - I checked some other plugins and noted one thing - they either did the same thing, or their response was way slower despite the GUI was smaller.

My conclusion is, that when you move the parameter (in our case eq node), the plugin asks OS for redrawing (without forcing it to update immediately) and for some reason the OS tries to fulfill the request asap leaving no time for the host to redraw. If the plugin doesn't asks that often, the host has enough CPU to redraw, but the plugin's response becomes slower. However why the OS prioritized plugin, that I don't really understand yet. I'd assume both get slowed down, but that obviously doesn't happen.

But as I showed in my video, with Studio One and the Intel HD Graphics it happens anyway and everytime as soon as you move the mouse cursor on the GUI...

To me it seems like the plugin GUI takes all of the priorities as well as i.e. space bar doesn't work anymore to start/stop the Sequencer as soon as any Melda plug has focuse, which doesn't happen too with other plugins for me...

Anyway this should never cause audio dropouts, clicks etc. If so, maybe your CPU is really overloaded, try increasing "Processing priority", most hosts have these option.

In Studio One it only affects the graphics... dropouts I get in Reaper and MuLab, but this might suffer from the undo states... will try

Problem 2

When you move some parameter in Reaper => about 1 second drop out. Yeah, I already asked Cockos about disabling this "feature" by default, but they denied it. All you need to do is open the list of plugins, select all of then (ctrl+A), right click, and enable "Save minimal undo states".

Basically what this does is that everytime you move a parameter, the host knows about it, and when you release the mouse button, the host saves the full plugins state! Unfortunately for more complicated plugins like ours, there are just too much settings to store, so it takes time... Reaper does that for "undo", but quite honestly I find this solution to be unfortunate, at least...

Will try... and perhaps this fixes the crackles too

Problem 3

Mouse flickering - well, that I couldn't simulate I'm afraid. Seems like on your computer the host (or more likely OS) is trying to fight for the cursors in some way. Btw. can you record this on a camera for example?

Download my vid from Youtube (1080p version) and watch carefully in the time region from 0:14 on... best to see it, if you slow down the playrate to about 0.33 or less... you will see my normal (light silver and smaller) mouse cursor
turning into a bigger white one... now imagine this happens about 20-30 times per second... the same at about 0:20 after I moved the knob... mouse cursor dissapears sometimes... (at the same rate 20-30 times per seconds)...

I am sorry, but the framerate of the video caturing seems to be too slow to record it properly

I did some test... tried different mice, tried to change the mouse sytem settings, but all end up with the same result...
If it were my machine only, why does it happen only in Studio One... what's different there???

Oh, one perhaps important thing I noticed: mouse cursor flickering happens:
1. only as long as the sequencer is playing... on stop everything is fine...
2. as soon as I click on something, i.e. a node, the flickering is gone too..