bug report: MIDI controller automation (VSTi)

[noizbot]

It seems that when I draw MIDI controller data to automate a VSTi, the automation only applies when the VSTi window is visible.

For example, if I've drawn a curve for MIDI cc20 in LUNA (which is set to manipulate a cutoff knob in a VSTi) this automation works only if that particular VSTi window is open. When it's open, I can see the knob move and can hear the change to the filter. When that VSTi window is closed, the filter no longer is controlled by the automation data, until I reopen the VSTi window.

Anyone else experience this problem?

Thanks!

(using PR4 Free with WinXP)

[pljones]

I just tried this with CM101 and it seems to work fine. I'm using CC75 to control VCO1 level, I drew a pattern into the editor, popped up the CM101 display and hit play. The VCO1 knob animates and the level of notes played tracks my automation data. Closing the CM101 UI had no other effect: the automation continued to work.

What plugin? Did you try parameter automation instead?

[noizbot]

Okay, it might be the plugin that I'm using (Sonik Synth 2). It doesn't expose Parameters, so I was just doing the usual assigning of CC values to the knobs that I wanted to automate in the VSTi, which resulted in the problem I described above.

I did try another VSTi (Vanguard, from reFX) which DID expose Paramaters to LUNA, and that seemed to work perfectly. So I suppose the problem could be limited to just Sonik Synth 2, which sucks for me at least. I could still be doing something wrong, though. When a VSTi doesn't expose Parameters it just lists "Volume" "Pan" and "User 1-4" for each MIDI channel. Do you happen to know what CCs those default "User 1-4" parameters use?

One other thing for the developers -- in this test I did encounter another potential problem, which I guess I'll report here. Vanguard (and some other VSTs) dynamically resize their window. For instance, Vanguard defaults to a narrow UI, but you can press a button to extend the window to allow modification of the synthesis settings. When the window is extended, LUNA's plugin window doesn't, resulting in only the top part of the VSTi interface being displayed. There isn't a way to drag+extend the plugin window, so you have to do some mucking about with closing and reopening it after resizing to view the extended settings.

Okay, that's all I have for the time being.. I'm going to do some more tests now.

Thanks for the help!

[noizbot]

Slight correction after additional tests: I was mistaken concerning the User 1-4 Parameters. Those are actually being exposed from the Sonik Synth VSTi, rather than default LUNA parameters as I had thought, so scratch that. The problem with the MIDI Controllers that I mentioned originally remains though. Parameters always seem to work. I did try this synth with another host to make sure I wasn't wasting anyones time with a buggy VSTi, and the problem wasn't present.

One final thing -- in testing MIDI Controllers, I also found a weird problem. I was going through various MIDI Controller numbers (61,62,63,etc) in LUNA and drawing a simple triangle wave pattern for each just to test with. I started to notice that after drawing a bunch of them in succession, LUNA began to slow way down after each time I drew a line. By the 5th or 6th drawing of a CC automation line, LUNA was spiking+hanging at 99% CPU usage for several seconds -- this eventually caused a crash of LUNA.

Okay, that's really it! Thanks