Waveform 8.2.6 Beta Available

[dRowAudio]

Hi everyone, Waveform 8.2.6 is now available from your downloads area: https://marketplace.tracktion.com/shop/ ... chive/?v=8

[quote]- Fixed an issue where selecting MIDI notes using the lasso multiple times would cause them to be shifted with keyboard shortcuts multiple times
- Fixed a problem where keyboard focus would shift to the Files panel if MIDI notes were lassoed more than once
- Improved the spacing of the BPM field on the minimal transport bar to allow for larger fonts
- Fixed MIDI clock not in sync when playing looped
- Fixed MIDI select tool when clip has offset and is looped
- Fixed a clip z-order problem that could incorrectly send earlier clips to the back when adjusting start/end times[quote]

[PierreG]

Did I imagine or dream that there was a discussion happening here regarding 8.2.6? Has it been removed?

For what it's worth...

* iZotope - Ozone Imager VST plugin issues with 8.2.6

Tried to open an edit that contains the Ozone Imager VST plugin and it crashed every time. After the 1st crash, coming back into the edit displayed the message that the OI plug had crashed. I left it enabled and it crashed again. Every subsequent load and crash of the edit produced no plugin message option to enable / disable any plugs.

I opened a different edit which did not have OI installed, then inserted it onto a track. It didn't crash the edit, yet the plug was dysfunctional. It seemed to have no audio affect and the plug's vectorscope was not displaying audio graphics during playback.

I saved this edit with the OI plug still inserted, closed the edit, then reloaded it without a crash, yet OI was still not functional.

I re-installed W 8.2.5.

Loaded the edit that I'd inserted OI into while in v 8.2.6 and the plug was still broken in the same fashion. Uninstalled the OI instance, saved the edit, exited W, relaunched W and reloaded the edit and OI was still broken.

It appears that installing OI while in 8.2.6 has somehow broken this edit as far as OI is concerned.

[tatanka]

One more of this spooky, strange (to stay in terms of season....) things seem to happen with waveform all the time.....this time I seem to be (so far.....) on the lucky site: I have put Ozone imager on the master channel with 8.2.2 beta, then updated to 8.2.6 just the other day and (gladly) nothing happened to my project. I am with win 7 64 bit, waveform 64 bit.

[PierreG]

Spooky times indeed...

I'm experiencing a combination of intrigue, mystery and apprehension, all of these with a bit of distrust sprinkled on top. I always seem to have strange behavior when updating to the latest Beta, where plugins do strange things (cause crashes, etc.) and then seemingly miraculously, tend to slowly heal as I continue to mess with the troubled edits.

OI slowly came back from the dead in v 8.2.5, eventually showing vectorscope data and also affecting the audio as it should. This was not entirely a mystery, in that what seemed to wake it up was to go to the audio engine settings and crank the built in DirectSound Audio Buffers to max (6912), which revived OI. If I lower the buffer, the scope display stutters in proportion to this setting. This edit does have a lot of plugs and soft synth instances (especially for my very underwhelming speced Laptop), so this is likely relevant to the issue.

Here's the kicker, I reinstalled v 8.2.6 and the edit that was crashing W worked perfectly! scope display = good and audio effect as well. The other troubled edit behaves the same in 8.2.6 as well.

Glad that W seems to be self healing in some of these cases, yet this is not conducive to trusting it's overall stability...

Happy Halloween everyone!

[chico.co.uk]

DirectSound is the worst possible audio driver on windows though, isn't it?
Does it behave any better if you try it with Asio4all drivers pointing at whatever the hardware is?

[tatanka]

I use asio4all, creative asio driver (I have an old creative soundcard) or an asio driver which had come with stagedrive software. They all have sometimes problems (sound just off after long use, maybe some overload somewhere), but changing in between these three drivers solves the problem, so they all work in general.

[chico.co.uk]

Sure, but DirectSound was deprecated back in 2008, and only really worked well when used with compatible soundcards, that are no longer manufactured, on operating systems up to windows XP.

From Vista onwards, the directsound interface is emulated, on top of WASAPI drivers, so there's no hardware acceleration at all, because directsound isn't interfacing with hardware. It is literally the worst choice you can choose, from the available drivers, on modern windows o/s. Windows Audio will perform better, as will ASIO4All on top of even generic laptop soundcard hardware. There's an argument to be made for removing it as an option completely, in 2017.

[PierreG]

Thanks for the reflections on DirectSound and Windows drivers. Here's what I observed in today's testing on the same plug / synth heavy edit.

Dell D630 Laptop - Windows 10 32-bit, 4 GB ram, 512GB SSD

8.2.6:
DirectSound (2048) = Best audio performance
Windows Audio (Exclusive) (2048) = Mild audio dropouts
ASIO4ALL = Little worse than Windows Audio (Exclusive)
ASIO - RME FireFace 800 (1024)-(Latest 2017 drivers) = More dropouts / distortion - due to the FF ASIO PCMCIA interface hogging CPU for audio I/O (System Interrupts).
Windows Audio (2048) = Distortion and audio dropouts galore.

Rolling back to 8.2.5: Had the quirk of disabling all Windows device outputs in the settings panel, which I didn't notice at first, so I thought the reverting had killed the Windows audio devices. It had, yet only by disabling them in the settings panel. Turning them back on resolved the issue. Strange thing is, the test tone worked with the outputs disabled, thus I didn't think to look at the status of the outputs.

Another quirk is that the outputs will randomly completely disappear in the Channels: display. I noticed this with the Windows Audio (Exclusive Mode). Picking another driver then returning to it will bring the outputs back.

Audio performance for all audio engines / drivers is the same as with 8.2.6

* Rolling back to W 8.2.3 = Same performance as 8.2.5 and 8.2.6 across all engines / drivers.

At one point yesterday during testing, W 8.2.5 or 6 (don't clearly recall) seemed to be what put the W10 User Interface into a state of non-responsiveness. Couldn't shutdown or restart via those commands. In fact, the laptop power button would not trigger a shutdown as it should have. Had to force power down with a long hold of the power button. Was W the culprit? Or some other W10 behavior? W10 is Flake at times on this Laptop!

[tonedef71]

- Fixed MIDI select tool when clip has offset and is looped

Thank you!

[tonedef71]

Dell D630 Laptop - Windows 10 32-bit, 4 GB ram, 512GB SSD

Interesting.

I would be curious to know how the Image-Line FL Studio ASIO driver (which utilizes WASAPI under the hood) would work out for you with your PC's modest specs.

The Image-Line ASIO driver works well for me with my PC's specs (which admittedly are not quite as modest as your PC's specs): an old ASUS G73JW laptop with Windows 10 64-bit, 32-GB RAM, 7200 RPM hard-drive.

[chico.co.uk]

Thanks for the reflections on DirectSound and Windows drivers. Here's what I observed in today's testing on the same plug / synth heavy edit.

Dell D630 Laptop - Windows 10 32-bit, 4 GB ram, 512GB SSD

8.2.6:
DirectSound (2048) = Best audio performance
Windows Audio (Exclusive) (2048) = Mild audio dropouts
ASIO4ALL = Little worse than Windows Audio (Exclusive)
ASIO - RME FireFace 800 (1024)-(Latest 2017 drivers) = More dropouts / distortion - due to the FF ASIO PCMCIA interface hogging CPU for audio I/O (System Interrupts).
Windows Audio (2048) = Distortion and audio dropouts galore.

Rolling back to 8.2.5: Had the quirk of disabling all Windows device outputs in the settings panel, which I didn't notice at first, so I thought the reverting had killed the Windows audio devices. It had, yet only by disabling them in the settings panel. Turning them back on resolved the issue. Strange thing is, the test tone worked with the outputs disabled, thus I didn't think to look at the status of the outputs.

Another quirk is that the outputs will randomly completely disappear in the Channels: display. I noticed this with the Windows Audio (Exclusive Mode). Picking another driver then returning to it will bring the outputs back.

Audio performance for all audio engines / drivers is the same as with 8.2.6

* Rolling back to W 8.2.3 = Same performance as 8.2.5 and 8.2.6 across all engines / drivers.

At one point yesterday during testing, W 8.2.5 or 6 (don't clearly recall) seemed to be what put the W10 User Interface into a state of non-responsiveness. Couldn't shutdown or restart via those commands. In fact, the laptop power button would not trigger a shutdown as it should have. Had to force power down with a long hold of the power button. Was W the culprit? Or some other W10 behavior? W10 is Flake at times on this Laptop!

Great info there. The results are odd though, 2048 isn't especially low, I wouldn't really expect drop outs with ASIO drivers, esp if you're not hearing that with DirectSound drivers. Not sure how to explain that, or what to suggest tbh ...

This may be irrelevant, but have you disabled wifi on the laptop? And bluetooth, if you don't use it for mice, or whatever. Ideally with a hardware switch on the laptop. These poll, and can play havoc with audio drivers when they're doing so. See if that makes any difference, if you've not already done it