KVR Audio

Dark Alchemist · Post by **Dark Alchemist** » Sat Feb 14, 2009 8:57 am

I hate to dig up a corpse but I just got back into the music scene and was wondering if this is still being developed/worked on?

Christian Budde · Post by **Christian Budde** » Sat Feb 14, 2009 11:55 am

Dark Alchemist wrote:I hate to dig up a corpse but I just got back into the music scene and was wondering if this is still being developed/worked on?

I recently uploaded a new version 1.1 (yesterday night). However, it will probably be the last version I released.
The reason is that it requires a large amount of synchronization stuff to ensure everything is in order (there's no guarantee that there is no 'modify sample' call after the plugin has already been closed). Everything seems to be called in different threads. Also it is near to impossible to use it in a debugger, since the debugger catches thousands of other unhandled exceptions. It's a pure nightmare. During the development I created 3 different versions, each of them has advantages and disadvantages (one version crashes from time to time another one hang and the lately released one does either one of both but less frequent).
In the end it might look like I'm a poor programmer, so maybe I should just remove it completely.

Kind regards,

Christian

Dark Alchemist · Post by **Dark Alchemist** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 11:32 am

Not really, or at least in my opinion.

What you just mentioned is some of the stuff I go through when trying to work with SSE stuff and multi-threading. Each person has their limits and I am sad to see this project die but somethings can't be done because the base was faulty to begin with.

Probably the base doesn't keep track of all of the things you need to know about (shortcoming of the VST standard maybe?) and it is beyond humanly possible to account for such stuff.

Don't look down on what you did only look ahead.

Thank you again for all of the work you did though.

Christian Budde · Post by **Christian Budde** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:20 pm

Hi,

Dark Alchemist wrote:What you just mentioned is some of the stuff I go through when trying to work with SSE stuff and multi-threading. Each person has their limits and I am sad to see this project die but somethings can't be done because the base was faulty to begin with.

The problem is that even an empty DSP plugin tend to crash WinAmp. I have no idea why, since the plugins shipped with WinAmp do not appear to crash. It doesn't crash in the first place, but if you enable/disable the DSP plugins rapidly it crashes sooner or later.

I found some minor issues by myself, so there will be another bugfix within the next days, but nothing major.

Christian

Christian Budde · Post by **Christian Budde** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 3:20 pm

Hi,

just uploaded another version with all the fixes I had in mind. It still crashes in certain cases, but as I said it's most probably not my cause.

I already spend to long in development of this tool and there has been only a few donations.

So the final version can be downloaded here:

http://www.savioursofsoul.de/Christian/ ... e_v1_1.exe

Peace,

Christian

RunBeerRun · Post by **RunBeerRun** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 10:10 pm

This is really cool, Christian. I just downloaded Winamp today to try it. This is way better than not using vst's, because all my mp3s totally suck production-wise.

I'll kick you ten bucks soon as I figure out how to do so.

Edit: Killer, it can load Synthedit plugins.

Dark Alchemist · Post by **Dark Alchemist** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:39 am

Sweet.

So, the issue really does lie within Winamp then? What about another music player or is this just something inherent with them all?

Christian Budde · Post by **Christian Budde** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 11:32 am

Dark Alchemist wrote:So, the issue really does lie within Winamp then? What about another music player or is this just something inherent with them all?

That's difficult to answer. In order to get it working in WinAmp I had to use several syncronization strategies (without it will surely crash or you get unreliable results). This might lead to problems in other hosts. It's like with VST plugins, what works in one host doesn't necessary need to work in another host.
I have only tried WinAmp so far, so I can't really tell of other hosts. But what puzzles me is the fact that WinAmp already can crash when loading only an empty DSP module without further processing.

Kind regards,

Christian

juha_p · Post by **juha_p** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 7:38 pm

Dark Alchemist wrote:Sweet.

So, the issue really does lie within Winamp then? What about another music player or is this just something inherent with them all?

This DSP plug-in should work w/ most players capable for WinAmp plug-ins (Iv'e tried it w/ MediaMonkey and older versions of Foobar 2000 (through Winamp Bridge) w/o issues).

Juha

Paulie Phonick · Post by **Paulie Phonick** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 7:53 pm

Christian Budde wrote:I already spend to long in development of this tool and there has been not a single donation.

I made a small one some time ago having this bridge in mind

Admittedly, too small to count in the big picture probably.

Anyhow, which version of Winamp are you using Christian? I've been using v1.0 of your bridge with my beloved archaic Winamp 2.95 (which most likely does way less multithreading) and don't remember ever having a crash.

Christian Budde · Post by **Christian Budde** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 9:25 pm

Paulie Phonick wrote:I already spend to long in development of this tool and there has been not a single donation.

I made a small one some time ago having this bridge in mind

Admittedly, too small to count in the big picture probably.[/quote]
Right, now I remember. I lost my old mails so probably that's why I couldn't find anything. Anyway, if I'd calculate the development cost against the income it'll be only some cent per hour.

Paulie Phonick wrote:Anyhow, which version of Winamp are you using Christian? I've been using v1.0 of your bridge with my beloved archaic Winamp 2.95 (which most likely does way less multithreading) and don't remember ever having a crash.

Yes, with the old WinAmp I also hardly have any problems. I don't know what's going on there, but I won't do much more work in that direction.

Christian

Paulie Phonick · Post by **Paulie Phonick** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:11 pm

Sure, I can understand that you may have no further motivation for pouring in additional hours of work if you feel that you're banging your head against a wall with this.

If the project is not generating income anyway, perhaps you could open-source it? Chances are someone out there will know the answers to Winamp DSP plugin handling shortcomings and be able/willing to improve the stability of the bridge with newer Winamp versions.

Christian Budde · Post by **Christian Budde** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 7:06 am

Paulie Phonick wrote:If the project is not generating income anyway, perhaps you could open-source it? Chances are someone out there will know the answers to Winamp DSP plugin handling shortcomings and be able/willing to improve the stability of the bridge with newer Winamp versions.

The core is already open source. An example can be found in my open source package. Only for the widgets I used some custom code.

Christian

Paulie Phonick · Post by **Paulie Phonick** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 10:49 am

Ah, sorry, must've missed that. So the fate of the bridge is in the hands of the community now - let up hope for the best

Christian Budde · Post by **Christian Budde** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:19 pm

Paulie Phonick wrote:Ah, sorry, must've missed that. So the fate of the bridge is in the hands of the community now - let up hope for the best

Hi,

I don't want to sound pessimistic, but this doesn't change much at all. It's been open source since at least one and a half year I think, but I doubt anyone even noticed. Although I still mainain this open source project I lost my fate in it. Without me (or any other software architect) it'll die sooner or later. On the other hand it might be a reference to anyone else who'd like to start a new Winamp<->VST bridge.

But beside the sporadic crashes the bridge works fine (at least here), so there might not be the urgest needs anymore.

Christian

VST Host WinAmp DSP Plugin