Bitwig >3.2.4, JUCE ~5.4.7 plugins and Linux - Anyone experiencing problems?

[lunardigs]

Update for 3.3 beta4 & 5.
Good news and bad news.

Bad news: These betas will freeze my workstation. I'll pull up the VSTs in question above and my CPU consumption will go to max. At which point, BWS stops responding and I'll have to kill process(es). Not good.
beta5, however, just froze my desktop and even when dropping to a shell, I had to walk away, come back and even then login took forever ... This resulting from only loading plugins.

Good news: Some plugins have begun working again! Namely, the OvertoneDSP stuff, like AF210M.
Audio Assault aIR will show it's GUI now, but as soon as I load an IR it crashes.
Harrison Spectral Compressor will still crash on launch, but I can reload it, press the 'show GUI' button, but it shows only a black window. Clicking and dragging within, where the controls would be, doesn't apparently change any parameters.
This is seemingly an improvement for the Harrison stuff, because previously you'd see nothing and the plugin would immediately crash.

I'm continuing to experiment, but these are some of the most unstable betas for me yet.

[lunardigs]

Update for 3.3 stable.

Same issues, although somewhat different behavior. Now Auburn Sounds plugins are unstable, either crashing upon launching/show-GUI, or crashing moments after showing the GUI.
Harrsion plugins, same as before.
Audio Assault, same as before.
OvertoneDSP, seemingly okay now.

[Guillaume Piolat]

Now Auburn Sounds plugins are unstable, either crashing upon launching/show-GUI, or crashing moments after showing the GUI.

Today we have released an update that fixes a very common crash on Linux. Maybe it works better on Bitwig now?
https://www.auburnsounds.com/blog/Ready ... licon.html

[lunardigs]

Now Auburn Sounds plugins are unstable, either crashing upon launching/show-GUI, or crashing moments after showing the GUI.

Today we have released an update that fixes a very common crash on Linux. Maybe it works better on Bitwig now?
https://www.auburnsounds.com/blog/Ready ... licon.html

Nice!
These are working so far.
I'll continue testing to see what happens.
Thank you Guillaume!

[sth]

Similar but slightly separate issue, and I opened a ticket at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib ... issues/123 related to this (even though it might not be their fault, it's helpful to get their advice relative to Bitwig's or Plugin Developers!)

Even without updating to Bitwig 3.3 (I am still on 3.2., an upcoming libX11 update to 1.7.0 will break all the same JUCE plugins for a similar reason. Or at least, I noticed it on Vital, Phrasebox, and PianoTeq 7, which are my main JUCE-Linux plugins. This _only_ affects Bitwig, i.e. all other hosts I tried continue to work. Bitwig's weird inclusions of some X11-related libraries are causing conflicting versions to crash immediately.

[lunardigs]

@sth, this is really good information.
I'm not adept at low level debugging, as suggest by Keith Packer: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib ... ote_705530
However, I'm going to research it and attempt what he's suggested. Are you familiar with the technique described?

Btw, are you using nvidia drivers?

[lunardigs]

@Guillaume Piolat, would you mind elucidating about the "very common crash on Linux" you mentioned? Furthermore, would you mind describing how you fixed your plugins?

[gavinray]

I am also having this issue, as described here:

"Harrison Spectral Compressor will still crash on launch, but I can reload it, press the 'show GUI' button, but it shows only a black window. Clicking and dragging within, where the controls would be, doesn't apparently change any parameters."

Bitwig is the only DAW that appears to have a problem with this. Reaper, Ardour, Waveform, and even Ableton + FL Studio (run on WINE) can load Vital. But on Bitwig, I get a black box for the GUI, and it freezes that plugin window and has to be force-quit.

I can still interact with Bitwig's UI (as long as it's not behind the plugin window), but the plugin will never become responsive.
Running Bitwig through a shell, the logs don't point out anything in particular, the only statement after dragging Vital to an instrument track is:

Code: Select all

[2020-12-05 01:13:02 notifications info] Loading plugins...:

Here is what the black box looks like if it's helpful (alt-tabbed to desktop and back, it freezes on whatever the previous viewable image in that rectangle was):



Hopefully this information can be of some use =)

[lunardigs]

@gavinray, yes, thank you for sharing.
Can you describe your environment some?--Linux distribution, graphics card/driver, Bitwig version, etc.

I get the 'freezed rectangle' thing as well. Although, it only happens during the most defunct crashes. If that makes sense. Meaning, nothing works about the plugin at all and it hangs BWS, plus my desktop might become unresponsive, as well, until I terminate the process.

[sth]

@sth, this is really good information.
I'm not adept at low level debugging, as suggest by Keith Packer: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib ... ote_705530
However, I'm going to research it and attempt what he's suggested. Are you familiar with the technique described?

Btw, are you using nvidia drivers?

I might try what he said, but it would involve temporarily breaking my setup to do it and right now I'm happy and productive with it being stable lol. I am using nvidia yes. I've debugged a bunch but never such proprietary things so it'll be interesting. Besides, I'm sure the problem rests with Bitwig's handling of library usage (see more discussion here https://gist.github.com/abique/4c1b9b40 ... 2a7c760db4 ) so I figured it wasn't worth much time.

[lunardigs]

... Besides, I'm sure the problem rests with Bitwig's handling of library usage (see more discussion here https://gist.github.com/abique/4c1b9b40 ... 2a7c760db4 ) so I figured it wasn't worth much time.

Hmm, I'm glad to see this. Thanks for the link!
I can understand why abique wouldn't want to comment here; the actual subject is too advanced and requires deeper insight.

Nonetheless, I'll keep the thread open and see what happens.

[gavinray]

@gavinray, yes, thank you for sharing.
Can you describe your environment some?--Linux distribution, graphics card/driver, Bitwig version, etc.

I get the 'freezed rectangle' thing as well. Although, it only happens during the most defunct crashes. If that makes sense. Meaning, nothing works about the plugin at all and it hangs BWS, plus my desktop might become unresponsive, as well, until I terminate the process.

Sure.

I tested on 3.12, updated to 3.3 as well and I get the same behavior, except now at least it's more graceful. Starting Vital will give "Plugin crashed", and it won't give the frozen rectangle unless I repeatedly try to open the UI from the Devices window in the bottom. I can press "Restart plugin" multiple times and it will just repeat the "Plugin has crashed" -> "Restart" cycle, but fortunately doesn't ruin the UI like the rectangle does.

Here's my OS info:

Code: Select all

❯ neofetch
             /////////////                user@machine
         /////////////////////            ------------
      ///////*767////////////////         OS: Pop!_OS 20.10 x86_64
    //////7676767676*//////////////       Host: TUF Gaming FA506IV_FA506IV 1.0
   /////76767//7676767//////////////      Kernel: 5.8.5-050805-generic
  /////767676///*76767///////////////     Uptime: 6 days, 3 hours, 11 mins
 ///////767676///76767.///7676*///////    Packages: 2479 (dpkg), 13 (flatpak), 10 (snap)
/////////767676//76767///767676////////   Shell: bash 5.0.17
//////////76767676767////76767/////////   Resolution: 1920x1080
///////////76767676//////7676//////////   DE: Regolith
////////////,7676,///////767///////////   WM: i3
/////////////*7676///////76////////////   Terminal: alacritty
///////////////7676////////////////////   CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 4800H with Radeon Graphics (16) @ 2.900GHz
 ///////////////7676///767////////////    GPU: AMD ATI 05:00.0 Renoir
  //////////////////////'////////////     GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile
   //////.7676767676767676767,//////      Memory: 8151MiB / 31589MiB
    /////767676767676767676767/////
      ///////////////////////////
         /////////////////////
             /////////////

And graphics card info:

Code: Select all

❯ nvidia-smi
Sun Dec  6 18:59:12 2020
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 455.38       Driver Version: 455.38       CUDA Version: 11.1     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce RTX 2060    Off  | 00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| N/A   45C    P8     3W /  N/A |    258MiB /  5934MiB |     35%      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A    820160      G   alacritty                           8MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A    833420      G   alacritty                           8MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A   1413086      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                188MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A   3000529      G   ...AAAAAAAA== --shared-files       48MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[gavinray]

I wanted to post an update:

Was able to get Vital working, by downloading and installing the Windows version instead with WINE, and then using yabridge to convert it to a Linux .so VST.

https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge

The irony

If anyone else is having this issue, try installing and converting the Windows plugin instead.

[sth]

A more-recent beta of Bitwig also fixes the issue, or at the least _most of the time_ it fixes it.

[lunardigs]

Wow! All of the troubled plugins I mentioned are acting okay now.
I'll have to test more, but so far nothing has crashed.