VPS Avenger 2.4 [RELEASED - FAQ in OP]

[tapper mike]

Not a problem for windows..

[Jac459]

I have issues with the v3.1 with a MacBook Pro m2 pro.
It is not blocking issues as I can still run many instances but I have many many more spikes than compared to v2.0.5.

Is there anyway to come back to the previous version ?

[Caine123]

hope you report these also to the dev/support mail. i dont have a MAC but i read a lot that Manuel says please write them directly.

so far, support was always fast for me. but i had not serious issues yet.

[Hanz Meyzer]

Hello msvs,

would be nice, if Rene/you guys could come up with a permanent solution for the cpu spike problems. I think it is an archtectural problem, which could be resolved. Please note that those spikes also appear under Windows, but it's difficult to monitor those (doesn't work in Cubase for example). Assuming this is a archtectural problem, it would be logical that the problem behave the same on any OS. Spikes also might have a heavier or less influence depending on the DAWs you use. Cubase has an extremely efficient GUI rendering, and also can use all of the cores, even efficiency cores, for audio rendering (since the GUI takes so little CPU). Other DAWs cannot, e.g. Bitwig, because the background GUI processing takes too much CPU.

I have no insight to the code of course, but I believe this is related to the number of automation/vst parameters that are exposed to the daw. I think a very simple workaround would be to add a "mapping parameter mode", which once activated, only will expose the parameters which were first selected/mapped in a new list view. Similar to how Falcon or MSoundFactory work. This process also could be semi automatic, so that mapping list would be auto filled by the plugin based on mouse actions on the GUI controls or something. But adding this, the amount of vst parameters could be drastically reduced.

Also benefitical would be to switch to VST3, and not using just a VST2->VST3 wrapper. AFAIK VST3 is capable of providing a dynamic vst parameter list. Maybe also VST3 will perform much better with such a five thousands of parameters.

Just some idea for a solution maybe...

[magicmusic]

In this video is at 2:35 a good sounding guitar doubleTrack galloging riff in the MU Happy Berserk (arp). How is this done ?. Is this a clean sound and distortion is done with avenger effects, or is it a clean multiloop, or processed multiloop ?

[Jac459]

hope you report these also to the dev/support mail. i dont have a MAC but i read a lot that Manuel says please write them directly.

so far, support was always fast for me. but i had not serious issues yet.

Well, I (and I am not the only one) have already contacted the support many times about the spikes, including the fact that the 2.0.5 solved the issue...
It seems to be a tricky issue they can't put a finger on.... I'd better have the v2.0.5 installer as backup ...

EDIT: By the way I just remembered in my last exchange they recommanded to try VST instead of VST3... It doesn't work...

[msvs]

In this video is at 2:35 a good sounding guitar doubleTrack galloging riff in the MU Happy Berserk (arp). How is this done ?. Is this a clean sound and distortion is done with avenger effects, or is it a clean multiloop, or processed multiloop ?

this is a guitar multiloop... means you can play any chord (min/maj) at any tempo
there are many of these guitar kits contained

regarding the spikes on some mac computers: Rene cant reproduce them afaik unfortunately

[remix68]

I just bought Avenger for black friday. Wow. Unusable currently. The cpu spikes in a single empty Ableton Live project are insane. I'm on an M1 Max chip. Performance is amazing across the board. But Avenger is spike to near 100% constantly, even just siting there doing nothing. It's audibly glitching as well when trying to play it.

Are there are tweaks that can help this? People can't possibly be using this as is. I would have to ask for my money back if this isn't solvable.

Ahh, you read all the posts complaining about this very thing in this very thread, but figured you'd roll the dice anyway huh? Living on the edge, I like it haha! If it helps, what I tend to do with avenger is immediately bounce anything I write with it to audio. Its a complete pain in the arse, but at least you can actually get some use out of it that way.

Hopefully one day they'll take the mac issues serious enough to hire a mac savvy developer to take a deep dive into the issues. The problem is, the guys over there don't use macs (or at least they never used to), so we're kind of the second cousins twice removed that don't get invited over to parties.

OK I'll chime in since I haven't visited this thread since early July when I tried to update from 2.0.5 to 2.2.0 on an M1 Max 64gb, and it was a disaster. 2.0.5 was very stable with no spikes or crackles, so I went back to that. Fast forward to today where I bought a few expansions on the 50% off BF sale - one of which requires 2.2.0 to run (Melodic Techno 4). I rolled the dice and installed the latest 2.3.1 version of Avenger and it is stable thankfully.

Lucky! I too am M1 Max 64gb ram. 2.3.1 fresh install. Tested both VST3 and AU. Tried Ableton Live 12 and Logic. Both disasters. Not cpu performance issues. The average cpu is low. Just a lot of spikes causing bursts and crackles as cpu meter spikes to 100% often. Not impressive.

I'm on Monterey 12.2 if that makes a difference. 4TB HDD and it's a 14" MBP. 2.3.1 is stable as was 2.0.5, everything in between not so much...you may wish to install 2.0.5 and see what happens.

[m-ac]

I'm on Monterey 12.2 if that makes a difference. 4TB HDD and it's a 14" MBP. 2.3.1 is stable as was 2.0.5, everything in between not so much...you may wish to install 2.0.5 and see what happens.

Which DAW are you using?

[remix68]

I'm on Monterey 12.2 if that makes a difference. 4TB HDD and it's a 14" MBP. 2.3.1 is stable as was 2.0.5, everything in between not so much...you may wish to install 2.0.5 and see what happens.

Which DAW are you using?

Ableton Live 12.1.1

I do notice right now that I get some spikes when I run YouTube in the BG with Vengeance loaded.

[m-ac]

I'm on Monterey 12.2 if that makes a difference. 4TB HDD and it's a 14" MBP. 2.3.1 is stable as was 2.0.5, everything in between not so much...you may wish to install 2.0.5 and see what happens.

Which DAW are you using?

Ableton Live 12.1.1

I do notice right now that I get some spikes when I run YouTube in the BG with Vengeance loaded.

Understandable, but this has absolutely nothing to do with chrome or any other background apps on my mac.

I just run a quick test, no chrome, mail etc running, new logic project, nothing in it apart from avenger. Preset: factory 2 -> atmos -> Drone engine. (note: this happens even with the INIT preset, just the spikes might only go to 50-75%). Held a single middle C note down;

Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 11.11.47.png

Hovers around 20% and spikes to 75-100% in the CPU meter every few seconds. Note the CPU meter built into avenger NEVER matches what's going on with the CPU usage in logic.
I stop playing and let avenger sit idle, and;

Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 11.13.10.png

Sits around 2-5% and spikes to 100% every few seconds. This is with NO notes playing.
I then opened another synth, Current 2, and held a single middle C note. CPU sits around 2% solid, no movement at all, no spikes;

Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 11.14.12.png

Something is going on with Avenger and its a show stopping issue. Its about time the developers took this serious because its not just one persons machine this happens on. I've personally had it happen on 5 now over the years. Just because it apparently doesnt happen on their test laptop, doesn't mean its not happening.

I've run tests myself and written to support a ton over the years. My findings were that maybe it has something to do with the UI, as it seems far worse when it's open. Maybe it has something to do with running into an external monitor? 4K perhaps? Who knows. I've mentioned this to support with data from my tests and it appears to have fallen on deaf ears. I get disheartened with trying to solve it when the devs themselves seems dismissive and uninterested tbh.

Manuel / Rene, you need to give us more, give us some tests to run, request some logs...do something.

[Echoes in the Attic]

I'm on Monterey 12.2 if that makes a difference. 4TB HDD and it's a 14" MBP. 2.3.1 is stable as was 2.0.5, everything in between not so much...you may wish to install 2.0.5 and see what happens.

Which DAW are you using?

Ableton Live 12.1.1

I do notice right now that I get some spikes when I run YouTube in the BG with Vengeance loaded.

Understandable, but this has absolutely nothing to do with chrome or any other background apps on my mac.

I just run a quick test, no chrome, mail etc running, new logic project, nothing in it apart from avenger. Preset: factory 2 -> atmos -> Drone engine. (note: this happens even with the INIT preset, just the spikes might only go to 50-75%). Held a single middle C note down;


Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 11.11.47.png


Hovers around 20% and spikes to 75-100% in the CPU meter every few seconds. Note the CPU meter built into avenger NEVER matches what's going on with the CPU usage in logic.
I stop playing and let avenger sit idle, and;


Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 11.13.10.png


Sits around 2-5% and spikes to 100% every few seconds. This is with NO notes playing.
I then opened another synth, Current 2, and held a single middle C note. CPU sits around 2% solid, no movement at all, no spikes;


Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 11.14.12.png


Something is going on with Avenger and its a show stopping issue. Its about time the developers took this serious because its not just one persons machine this happens on. I've personally had it happen on 5 now over the years. Just because it apparently doesnt happen on their test laptop, doesn't mean its not happening.

Manuel / Rene, you need to give us more, give us some tests to run, request some logs...do something.

Exact same here. In Ableton and Logic.

And I don't think it's good enough to say one person can't reproduce. Get other people testing and get some different machines (maybe something where it's common to get these issues like an M1). It's clearly reproducible.

[remix68]

I'm on Monterey 12.2 if that makes a difference. 4TB HDD and it's a 14" MBP. 2.3.1 is stable as was 2.0.5, everything in between not so much...you may wish to install 2.0.5 and see what happens.

Which DAW are you using?

Ableton Live 12.1.1

I do notice right now that I get some spikes when I run YouTube in the BG with Vengeance loaded.

Understandable, but this has absolutely nothing to do with chrome or any other background apps on my mac.

I just run a quick test, no chrome, mail etc running, new logic project, nothing in it apart from avenger. Preset: factory 2 -> atmos -> Drone engine. (note: this happens even with the INIT preset, just the spikes might only go to 50-75%). Held a single middle C note down;


Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 11.11.47.png


Hovers around 20% and spikes to 75-100% in the CPU meter every few seconds. Note the CPU meter built into avenger NEVER matches what's going on with the CPU usage in logic.
I stop playing and let avenger sit idle, and;


Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 11.13.10.png


Sits around 2-5% and spikes to 100% every few seconds. This is with NO notes playing.
I then opened another synth, Current 2, and held a single middle C note. CPU sits around 2% solid, no movement at all, no spikes;


Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 11.14.12.png


Something is going on with Avenger and its a show stopping issue. Its about time the developers took this serious because its not just one persons machine this happens on. I've personally had it happen on 5 now over the years. Just because it apparently doesnt happen on their test laptop, doesn't mean its not happening.

I've run tests myself and written to support a ton over the years. My findings were that maybe it has something to do with the UI, as it seems far worse when it's open. Maybe it has something to do with running into an external monitor? 4K perhaps? Who knows. I've mentioned this to support with data from my tests and it appears to have fallen on deaf ears. I get disheartened with trying to solve it when the devs themselves seems dismissive and uninterested tbh.

Manuel / Rene, you need to give us more, give us some tests to run, request some logs...do something.

OK so I was wrong!

I opened up a recent project this morning with 2 instances of Avenger and I had nothing but constant spikes, crackles, etc. I rolled it back to 2.0.5 and it is back to "normal".

Here's the weird thing...I bought one of the expansions on a BF sale which supposedly required 2.2.0 to even work. At least that's the warning I got when I tried to load a preset, and this is what prompted me to upgrade to 2.3.1. Basically the presets would not load under 2.0.5.

Fast forward to today and me rolling it back - all the expansion presets I've tried which required 2.2.0 before now load under 2.0.5. So weird. Maybe there could be a preset or two that won't load under 2.0.5 but I haven't found one yet.

I would strongly recommend rolling back to 2.0.5 and trying it out.

[bermudagold]

does avenger have an event trigger engine?...can it trigger osc or sample layers based on note off message like for creating release noises/sounds?...or set up key switches for switching between osc or sample layers?

[ChanceB]

And I don't think it's good enough to say one person can't reproduce. Get other people testing and get some different machines (maybe something where it's common to get these issues like an M1). It's clearly reproducible.

I wonder if they are testing on,a top of the line Mac Pro or something ,saying they can’t reproduce it. Get a base M1 Air and test again. It’s almost as if they don’t really care