How does Tracktion even stay alive ?

[chk071]

Bungle inna DAW jungle.

[dellboy]

Bungle inna DAW jungle.

Bungle inna DAW jungle spreading anti-fungal.

[pdxindy]

Although this thread is kind of... well, feral for lack of a better word, I think Tracktion has some serious issues that are at their core, a problem of developer focus.
Developer focus has always been (from v5) on new features, rather than a solid, stable platform. They've never achieved that. I'm blown away by simple bugs that would've been found with a bare minimum of usability testing, even with the later versions. It's surprising.
I used to be a massive fan, but I feel sorry for whoever's working on it. It's just not getting better.

I sadly have to agree with you.

I always upgrade when it comes on sale, in fact I have just upgraded to version 9, and I have tried using it for a few days. But then the inevitable crashes started. Plugins that work on other DAWs with no problems bring down Waveform,or refuse to show their GUI. Its such a shame because it has such potential. The number one priority of all DAW developers should always be stability. I just wish they would stop adding new features and get the thing to stay up for more that half an hour on my machine without locking up.

I stopped upgrading when Tracktion became Waveform. I haven't used it in years, but the upgrade price was cheap and I gave it a chance each time. I would upgrade, then try the latest, it would invariably crash in a short time, so then set it aside and tried again with the next upgrade. With Waveform the upgrade price went up so I stopped upgrading. I cannot comment on the stability of Waveform.

[zzz00m]

Plugins that work on other DAWs with no problems bring down Waveform,or refuse to show their GUI. Its such a shame because it has such potential. The number one priority of all DAW developers should always be stability. .

Did you open a support ticket with Tracktion for those specific plugins?

[dellboy]

Did you open a support ticket with Tracktion for those specific plugins?

Nope, I have only been using it a couple of days. Air Music Strike is the main one bringing the DAW down. The GUI does not show up,but is behind Waveform when it crashes. I decided to re-download and re-install it to make sure (all 19 GB of it),and it still crashes. I disabled it,but the DAW still freezes if left unattended for 30 minutes.

I decided to try the latest beta to see if that was the any better, only to find that I already was using it. It might help if they offered a stable version to download rather than the latest buggy beta when you purchase it.

[zzz00m]

Did you open a support ticket with Tracktion for those specific plugins?

Nope, I have only been using it a couple of days. Air Music Strike is the main one bringing the DAW down. The GUI does not show up,but is behind Waveform when it crashes. I decided to re-download and re-install it to make sure (all 19 GB of it),and it still crashes. I disabled it,but the DAW still freezes if left unattended for 30 minutes.

I decided to try the latest beta to see if that was the any better, only to find that I already was using it. It might help if they offered a stable version to download rather than the latest buggy beta when you purchase it.

I can confirm the same issue here with AIR Music Strike and Waveform 9, latest release.

Strike is not something I use often, so I just tested it in Tracktion 7 and Waveform 8, and it does work in them. So it seems like the bug is some sort of new regression in W9 regarding that plugin.

Edit: just ran through the rest of my AIR instruments, and found that Transfuser does the exact same thing as Strike. The others are OK.

[bungle]

I need add no more.

I will believe thst when i dont read it

[dellboy]

I can confirm the same issue here with AIR Music Strike and Waveform 9, latest release.

Strike is not something I use often, so I just tested it in Tracktion 7 and Waveform 8, and it does work in them. So it seems like the bug is some sort of new regression in W9 regarding that plugin.

Edit: just ran through the rest of my AIR instruments, and found that Transfuser does the exact same thing as Strike. The others are OK.

I tested Transfuser and can confirm that the GUI does not show on my machine, although it does not crash Waveform 9 in the same way as Strike does.

When I close The DAW it leaves a Microsoft Visual C message "R6025 - pure virtual function call".

[zzz00m]

I tested Transfuser and can confirm that the GUI does not show on my machine, although it does not crash Waveform 9 in the same way as Strike does.

When I close The DAW it leaves a Microsoft Visual C message "R6025 - pure virtual function call".

I got a APPCRASH crash yesterday with Waveform 9 & Transfuser_x64.dll, shows up in my Windows Error Reporting.

<snip>
Sig[3].Name=Fault Module Name
Sig[3].Value=Transfuser_x64.dll
<snip>
UI[2]=C:\Program Files\Waveform 9\Waveform 9 (64-bit).exe
UI[3]=Waveform has stopped working

But today, no DAW crash here with Transfuser either, just the hidden UI. But I do get the plugin crash alert on next run of Waveform, so something is not right.

[dRowAudio]

For info, plugin stability is a focus for us, it's just exceptionally difficult to manage as there are thousands of plugins out there all used in a myriad of ways, across different OSes with different plugin formats. It's also an incredibly slow thing for us to debug due to the laborious registration, download, install, authorisation process which is different with every plugin. Me and Roland (Tracktion DAW dev team is 1.5 people) could spend literally all day every day debugging plugin compatibility and it wouldn't get much better and we'd have no new features, or reasons to buy Waveform.

In order to improve this reporting and have an attempt at automating compatibility testing, we've been developing an open source plugin validation tool called pluginval. https://github.com/Tracktion/pluginval

It's in it early stages at the moment so mainly used by plugin developers but our aim is that everyone will be able to run it to help us track down problems with plugins quickly and easily.

The other main focus of this is to increase the quality of the coding of plugins. There's lots of things developers don't expect DAWs to do or even have a chance of testing so this tool aims to try and abuse plugins as much as possible.

As I said, it's early days but it's already helped us and a lot of other developers find bugs and edge cases in our plugins.

[mikoatkvr]

I have managed to build pluginval, mostly manually as the git submodule commands aren't working properly, I did notice a mismatch in the ./linux_build script where the makefile is looking for a 'juce' folder, but in fact building from source we get a 'JUCE' folder... i think there may also be an issue with git permissions for obtaining the submodules also.
The only buggy LXVST that I have noticed so far for me is Renoises Redux where if I hide the GUI then program changes to its phrases are not played and obviously with the window automatically closing at render then this is not rendered to an audio file correctly. Funnily enough the 'Pluginval' application has tripped up on Redux out of all the plugins i have tested so far. I will make a full report to the request page at https://tracktion.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new .

Also thinking that I should report my findings to the Redux developers as this might be more of a problem at their end ?

*EDIT* Just tested the same scenario with Redux in Bitwig and can confirm that the problem lays with Redux and not Waveform-9, how I never noticed this before or perhaps it was their latest update that broke it *EDIT*

[metamorphosis]

It's just not getting better.

Not true. Waveform 9 has improved a lot over the previous version.

I am not claiming that they are perfect, but in all fairness, there is evidence that they are trying.

Yes, but they're trying at the wrong things. Dropping 32-bit support is, in my view, not a great way to remove bugs. You're dropping out most of the plugins which've been developed by the community over the past 18 years, and yes, some of those will be buggy, but other hosts deal with that ok (or fail on the buggy plugins and that's fine). Personally I've not found a use for anything other than the core functionality of tracktion, and that's after having run a music studio for 10 years.

[zzz00m]

It's just not getting better.

Not true. Waveform 9 has improved a lot over the previous version.

I am not claiming that they are perfect, but in all fairness, there is evidence that they are trying.

Yes, but they're trying at the wrong things. Dropping 32-bit support is, in my view, not a great way to remove bugs. You're dropping out most of the plugins which've been developed by the community over the past 18 years, and yes, some of those will be buggy, but other hosts deal with that ok (or fail on the buggy plugins and that's fine). Personally I've not found a use for anything other than the core functionality of tracktion, and that's after having run a music studio for 10 years.

One word: jBridge

I think the trend to drop 32-bit support will happen across the board with many leading DAW developers.

It's not just Tracktion ...

[Robert Randolph]

It's just not getting better.

Not true. Waveform 9 has improved a lot over the previous version.

I am not claiming that they are perfect, but in all fairness, there is evidence that they are trying.

Yes, but they're trying at the wrong things. Dropping 32-bit support is, in my view, not a great way to remove bugs. You're dropping out most of the plugins which've been developed by the community over the past 18 years, and yes, some of those will be buggy, but other hosts deal with that ok (or fail on the buggy plugins and that's fine). Personally I've not found a use for anything other than the core functionality of tracktion, and that's after having run a music studio for 10 years.

Here's the thing though: They have stats on this.

They have system reports, crash reports, support requests, etc...

It's very unlikely that they would make such a substantial change without having information to back it up.

[dRowAudio]

I have managed to build pluginval, mostly manually as the git submodule commands aren't working properly, I did notice a mismatch in the ./linux_build script where the makefile is looking for a 'juce' folder, but in fact building from source we get a 'JUCE' folder... i think there may also be an issue with git permissions for obtaining the submodules also.
The only buggy LXVST that I have noticed so far for me is Renoises Redux where if I hide the GUI then program changes to its phrases are not played and obviously with the window automatically closing at render then this is not rendered to an audio file correctly. Funnily enough the 'Pluginval' application has tripped up on Redux out of all the plugins i have tested so far. I will make a full report to the request page at https://tracktion.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new .

Also thinking that I should report my findings to the Redux developers as this might be more of a problem at their end ?

*EDIT* Just tested the same scenario with Redux in Bitwig and can confirm that the problem lays with Redux and not Waveform-9, how I never noticed this before or perhaps it was their latest update that broke it *EDIT*

Hmm, this sounds a bit odd, JUCE should be submoduled into the "module/juce" dir. Can you try again as there's been quite few changes to JUCE and the way it handles the plugin SDKs over the past couple of months. I tend to work on the "develop" branch until things are stable so if you've cloned from master you'll be looking at things from a few months ago.

I've just merged to master anyway and tested the "install/linux_build" script which seems to work fine now?
Can you let me know if you still have problems?


Good to hear it's already starting to highlight problems and leading to clearer reports. Yes, please do let the Redux developers, I'm sure they'll welcome any insights we can give. I know we do when developing stuff.

Cheers,
Dave