Problems with VST Presets in Standalone

[petearch]

Happy New Year!

I've owned RC for some time but have never got round to using it much for various reasons. I decided to give it another go and I've tried to set up some VST presets. However, I've ended up with presets of which the names are meaningless, e.g. Program 0, Program 0 2, etc. Is it not possible to name them yourself, e.g. Woodwinds, Brass, etc?

Also, every time I try to load one of the different presets, RC crashes (see attached GIF).

I've also found that in the Idea Tool it is not possible to select a Channel for your VST preset, so the instrument always plays channel 1. Is that correct? If so it means you can't use multi-timbral instruments in the idea tool which is a shame.

Thanks for your help.

[tonedef71]

Happy New Year!

I've owned RC for some time but have never got round to using it much for various reasons. I decided to give it another go and I've tried to set up some VST presets. However, I've ended up with presets of which the names are meaningless, e.g. Program 0, Program 0 2, etc. Is it not possible to name them yourself, e.g. Woodwinds, Brass, etc?

Also, every time I try to load one of the different presets, RC crashes (see attached GIF).

Hello Pete:

I, too, own RC and Sampletank 3. I added Sampletank 3 as a VST to RC and initially I only see a single program: Program 0.

After saving some VSTi states, I then see more "Program n" entries. It does not crash when I select "Program 0", but I can confirm that RC does lock up (stops responding) if I try to select one of the VSTi states.

I am guessing that Sampletank 3 does not report much information when RC queries it (although I do not know what kind of information it could report). If you are comfortable with editing text files, as a workaround, you can edit the value of the "name=" parameter in the C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Roaming\RapidComposer\DB\SampleTank 3.dll.rcINST file to something else, and the new value will then show up the next time you start RC:

Code: Select all

#Instruments generated from VSTi plugin "C:\audio\VSTPlugIns\64-bit\IK Multimedia\Sampletank 3\SampleTank 3.dll" 

programs:
#format: vstiplugin="name.dll";
vstiplugin="C:\audio\VSTPlugIns\64-bit\IK Multimedia\Sampletank 3\SampleTank 3.dll"; create_new_instance=1; 

preset_selection=0; sort=0; group=0;
#format: name=<name>; kind=<MIDI|VSTI|SF2>; _program=<prg>; category=<cat>; function=<fn>; 
name="Program 0"; _file="C:\audio\VSTPlugIns\64-bit\IK Multimedia\Sampletank 3\SampleTank 3.dll"; kind=VSTI; 

_program=0; category=""; function=0;

e.g.
preset_selection=0; sort=0; group=0;
#format: name=<name>; kind=<MIDI|VSTI|SF2>; _program=<prg>; category=<cat>; function=<fn>;
name="Piano + Bass"; _file="C:\audio\VSTPlugIns\64-bit\IK Multimedia\Sampletank 3\SampleTank 3.dll"; kind=VSTI;



Perhaps Attila could add a new capability in RC to rename the 'Program" entries from within the UI?

[musicdevelopments]

Hi petearch!

first of all, thank you for your post, and Happy New Year!

You made a good point, yes, multi-timbral VST plug-ins cannot be used in the Idea Tool, only one channel is used for such plug-ins. This is a known issue and will be fixed in the idea tool rewrite in a later version (planned for v3.0).

Some VST plug-ins do not expose their presets, only one preset. This is not the fault of RapidComposer which tries to request the presets. The VST 2.x programming interface is very limited and not very usable in this respect. E.g. it is not possible to select a preset for a MIDI channel in the VST programming interface.

The worst news (sorry) is that SampleTank uses a very intrusive software protection mechanism. It installs all sorts of DLL files under the Windows directory, some named like a windows system file. Some files cannot be deleted even as an administrator, because they are recreated immediately. I remember it messed up my development system once and my tools stopped working because DLLs were overwritten.
I had some crashes with SampleTank inside the SampleTank code. When I contacted IK Multimedia, they told me to turn off Data Execution Prevention (DEP) which means they run program code in data segments (ouch).

Now I see that tonedef replied. I am not sure how stable RC+SampleTank VST is currently. If it crashes only during preset selection, you should leave the default preset and let the program save and load the plug-in state. And do all preset selection in the SampleTank VST editor window.

Please note it is not RapidComposer that crashes, but it is executing foreign code (SampleTank) and the crash occurs there. I have not got any usable suggestions from IK Multimedia to avoid the crashes.

Thanks,
Attila

[petearch]

Thank you both for your help. I used SampleTank because I'd only just downloaded it so thought I would try some of the sounds with RC. Seems like it's best to avoid it and stick with something I already know!

I'll try Kontakt later and report back if I get any similar issues.