Vember Audio Surge is now open-source

[baconpaul]

Folks - a week or maybe 10 days until we ship 1.1 and we think the current nightly is code complete. Content, manual, etc getting wrapped up this week. But that means if you feel like testing before we release 1.1, no time like the present to grab a nightly

[audiojunkie]

Can the nightlies be installed concurrently with older versions of Surge-XT? I’d be willing to test on Linux.

[bboxdw]

While I don't have a lot of additional tinker time this week to get more details, I wanted to report something I've observed so far.

On Bitwig 4.3.2 on Windows 10, I'm unable to get the user interface (or in Bitwig terminology, the plugin window) to open for the CLAP or VST3 version of the 7/25 Surge XT nightly after I've inserted it onto a track, in a new blank project. After waiting a bit for the plugin window to open, an error msg pops up, "Plugin host is not responding with a button for terminating the plugin sandbox."

When I delete the Surge XT CLAP version from a track, I initially get an error msg "Error saving the state of some plugins: There was an error saving the state of some plug-ins that are necessary to save in order to proceed: -Surge XT: A plug-in did not save its state within a reasonable time. do you wish to proceed with the operation anyway? Yes/No."
After I've deleted the instance, I'm then unable to open some other plugins' interfaces after inserting them until I exit and reopen Bitwig. That includes non-CLAP Surge, U-he Hive (both CLAP and non-CLAP) and Zebra 2; and does not include Tone2 Icarus or a few Bitwig native devices I tried it with.

The issues in the 2nd paragraph above don't occur with the VST3 version. 

I downloaded the Hive CLAP preview to see if it would behave similarly. I am able to open the user interface/plugin window for the Hive CLAP preview in Bitwig without any issues.

I'm able to use the prior release version of Surge (XT 1.0.1) in Bitwig without any observed issues.

I observed the above issues after first uninstalling XT 1.0.1 and the XT nightly, manually deleting the Surge folder within the CLAP directory, and then reinstalling only the nightly.

I hope this information is useful in some way.

[baconpaul]

Can the nightlies be installed concurrently with older versions of Surge-XT? I’d be willing to test on Linux.

If you use the deb / rpm they will overwrite. If you use the zip you can install it wherever you want.

[baconpaul]

While I don't have a lot of additional tinker time this week to get more details, I wanted to report something I've observed so far.

On Bitwig 4.3.2 on Windows 10, I'm unable to get the user interface (or in Bitwig terminology, the plugin window) to open for the CLAP or VST3 version of the 7/25 Surge XT nightly after I've inserted it onto a track, in a new blank project. After waiting a bit for the plugin window to open, an error msg pops up, "Plugin host is not responding with a button for terminating the plugin sandbox."

When I delete the Surge XT CLAP version from a track, I initially get an error msg "Error saving the state of some plugins: There was an error saving the state of some plug-ins that are necessary to save in order to proceed: -Surge XT: A plug-in did not save its state within a reasonable time. do you wish to proceed with the operation anyway? Yes/No."
After I've deleted the instance, I'm then unable to open some other plugins' interfaces after inserting them until I exit and reopen Bitwig. That includes non-CLAP Surge, U-he Hive (both CLAP and non-CLAP) and Zebra 2; and does not include Tone2 Icarus or a few Bitwig native devices I tried it with.

The issues in the 2nd paragraph above don't occur with the VST3 version. 

I downloaded the Hive CLAP preview to see if it would behave similarly. I am able to open the user interface/plugin window for the Hive CLAP preview in Bitwig without any issues.

I'm able to use the prior release version of Surge (XT 1.0.1) in Bitwig without any observed issues.

I observed the above issues after first uninstalling XT 1.0.1 and the XT nightly, manually deleting the Surge folder within the CLAP directory, and then reinstalling only the nightly.

I hope this information is useful in some way.

Hmm thanks that is peculiar. I'll ask some of our windows bitwig users to take a peek. I have zero problem in mac bws 432. Thank you.

[arnthorsnaer]

Based on the 64bit Mac VST build I have made a NKS version for use with Native Instruments hardware and together with a friend over on the NI user forum (Christos Adamos) we have converted and tagged the entire factory bank and all the third party ones available from the Github site. Christos also generated audio previews for each patch. So now Surge is pretty much fully 'NKS Ready'

@amused

I appreciate the hard work that went into this. I just build a VST2 from the latest version of Surge, have setup your Surge NKS integration and am testing it out in Komplete Kontrol.

I noticed you were using "Surge" as product name and "Vember Audio". I've changed "Vember Audio" to "Surge Synth Team" since thats the vendor in my recently built VST.

The images and previews are working and the instrument is being displayed properly in Komplete Kontrol. When I save my own preset it shows up with your presets and I can load it with no issues. However when I try to load any of your presets I get "Loading issue: Surge could not be loaded".

Do you have any idea what could be the issue here? Since I believe I've aligned the vendor and product names in the right places (json files in dist_database, komplete.db3 etc).

At this point I simply suspect that this is due to either version incompatability or that my build artifact does not match yours in some manner which is important for KK to load it correctly. It would be nice to see more information from the "loading issues" panel to assist with debugging (is it a mismatch in vst location or some configuration what is incompatable with my version of the VST*).

thanks in advance
Arnþór Snær

* I noticed you mentioned a 64bit Mac VST. I'm building my VST2 on a M1 Mac using the readme from Github (github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge).

[aMUSEd]

Based on the 64bit Mac VST build I have made a NKS version for use with Native Instruments hardware and together with a friend over on the NI user forum (Christos Adamos) we have converted and tagged the entire factory bank and all the third party ones available from the Github site. Christos also generated audio previews for each patch. So now Surge is pretty much fully 'NKS Ready'

@amused

I appreciate the hard work that went into this. I just build a VST2 from the latest version of Surge, have setup your Surge NKS integration and am testing it out in Komplete Kontrol.

I noticed you were using "Surge" as product name and "Vember Audio". I've changed "Vember Audio" to "Surge Synth Team" since thats the vendor in my recently built VST.

The images and previews are working and the instrument is being displayed properly in Komplete Kontrol. When I save my own preset it shows up with your presets and I can load it with no issues. However when I try to load any of your presets I get "Loading issue: Surge could not be loaded".

Do you have any idea what could be the issue here? Since I believe I've aligned the vendor and product names in the right places (json files in dist_database, komplete.db3 etc).

At this point I simply suspect that this is due to either version incompatability or that my build artifact does not match yours in some manner which is important for KK to load it correctly. It would be nice to see more information from the "loading issues" panel to assist with debugging (is it a mismatch in vst location or some configuration what is incompatable with my version of the VST*).

thanks in advance
Arnþór Snær

* I noticed you mentioned a 64bit Mac VST. I'm building my VST2 on a M1 Mac using the readme from Github (github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge).

Sorry you are having problems, it may just be because I used the last VST2 version but now Surge is moved to VST3 and I am using the XT version anyway so I have not kept this uptodate (until Komplete Kontrol fully supports VST3 at least)

[arnthorsnaer]

Based on the 64bit Mac VST build I have made a NKS version for use with Native Instruments hardware and together with a friend over on the NI user forum (Christos Adamos) we have converted and tagged the entire factory bank and all the third party ones available from the Github site. Christos also generated audio previews for each patch. So now Surge is pretty much fully 'NKS Ready'

@amused

I appreciate the hard work that went into this. I just build a VST2 from the latest version of Surge, have setup your Surge NKS integration and am testing it out in Komplete Kontrol.

I noticed you were using "Surge" as product name and "Vember Audio". I've changed "Vember Audio" to "Surge Synth Team" since thats the vendor in my recently built VST.

The images and previews are working and the instrument is being displayed properly in Komplete Kontrol. When I save my own preset it shows up with your presets and I can load it with no issues. However when I try to load any of your presets I get "Loading issue: Surge could not be loaded".

Do you have any idea what could be the issue here? Since I believe I've aligned the vendor and product names in the right places (json files in dist_database, komplete.db3 etc).

At this point I simply suspect that this is due to either version incompatability or that my build artifact does not match yours in some manner which is important for KK to load it correctly. It would be nice to see more information from the "loading issues" panel to assist with debugging (is it a mismatch in vst location or some configuration what is incompatable with my version of the VST*).

thanks in advance
Arnþór Snær

* I noticed you mentioned a 64bit Mac VST. I'm building my VST2 on a M1 Mac using the readme from Github (github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge).

Sorry you are having problems, it may just be because I used the last VST2 version but now Surge is moved to VST3 and I am using the XT version anyway so I have not kept this uptodate (until Komplete Kontrol fully supports VST3 at least)

Thanks for your reply. I just downloaded an older version and it works great.

[bboxdw]

Hmm thanks that is peculiar. I'll ask some of our windows bitwig users to take a peek. I have zero problem in mac bws 432. Thank you.

Thanks for all the hard work on an amazing instrument!

I initially hesitated to share this additional background info because I don't recall all the details, but decided to add it just in case it's relevant/helpful:

Prior to installing the 7/25 nightly, I had tried to install one on 7/23 or 7/24, and got an error message (within the install) along the lines of the surge xt .clap file already existing, with the dialog box asking if I wanted to skip the file or try again. Trying again didn't work.

At some point in the process, I tried renaming the .clap file(s) already present in the program files/common/surge team directory to something like surgext_old.clap, to see if that would eliminate the installation error message. This was really weird: I got a Windows error stating that I couldn't rename the file because it already existed. At some point I just deleted the surge subdirectory from the clap directory, and was then able to get the Surge XT nightly to install without the error message.

I wonder if something else is going on, perhaps something lingering with directory permissions or something in the registry that related to the inability to rename files within the clap/surge subdirectory? And maybe whatever is going on there is impacting the ability of Surge XT to function within Bitwig? I have no idea. If it were such a thing, I'd think it would have kept the Hive CLAP preview from installing and working properly. But if someone else runs into similar issues on Windows, perhaps this will help to paint a full picture.

I also tried an uninstall/reinstall of Bitwig, and also marking Surge XT CLAP to run individually within Bitwig, but neither of those helped either.

[baconpaul]

Hmm thanks that is peculiar. I'll ask some of our windows bitwig users to take a peek. I have zero problem in mac bws 432. Thank you.

Thanks for all the hard work on an amazing instrument!

I initially hesitated to share this additional background info because I don't recall all the details, but decided to add it just in case it's relevant/helpful:

Prior to installing the 7/25 nightly, I had tried to install one on 7/23 or 7/24, and got an error message (within the install) along the lines of the surge xt .clap file already existing, with the dialog box asking if I wanted to skip the file or try again. Trying again didn't work.

We had a few nightlies with a broken installer and I worry if you were victim of them.

Given that I'm on a mac, so these paths are from memory

1. Quit bitwig etc...
2. find c:\program files\common files\CLAP (%CommonFilesFolder%/CLAP/) and in there should be a directory called `Surge Synth Team` and mabe one called `Surge XT.clap`. Delete everything in that CLAP dir which says 'Surge'
3. Reboot
4. Grab the latest nightly from https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/nightly_XT and re-install
5. Start bitwig and RMB on clap / reindex

does it work then?

Other users confirmed win10/sxt/clap worked so something got wedged in the nightlies on your system which the above may resolve?

Thanks for your patience.

[aMUSEd]

Based on the 64bit Mac VST build I have made a NKS version for use with Native Instruments hardware and together with a friend over on the NI user forum (Christos Adamos) we have converted and tagged the entire factory bank and all the third party ones available from the Github site. Christos also generated audio previews for each patch. So now Surge is pretty much fully 'NKS Ready'

@amused

I appreciate the hard work that went into this. I just build a VST2 from the latest version of Surge, have setup your Surge NKS integration and am testing it out in Komplete Kontrol.

I noticed you were using "Surge" as product name and "Vember Audio". I've changed "Vember Audio" to "Surge Synth Team" since thats the vendor in my recently built VST.

The images and previews are working and the instrument is being displayed properly in Komplete Kontrol. When I save my own preset it shows up with your presets and I can load it with no issues. However when I try to load any of your presets I get "Loading issue: Surge could not be loaded".

Do you have any idea what could be the issue here? Since I believe I've aligned the vendor and product names in the right places (json files in dist_database, komplete.db3 etc).

At this point I simply suspect that this is due to either version incompatability or that my build artifact does not match yours in some manner which is important for KK to load it correctly. It would be nice to see more information from the "loading issues" panel to assist with debugging (is it a mismatch in vst location or some configuration what is incompatable with my version of the VST*).

thanks in advance
Arnþór Snær

* I noticed you mentioned a 64bit Mac VST. I'm building my VST2 on a M1 Mac using the readme from Github (github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge).

Sorry you are having problems, it may just be because I used the last VST2 version but now Surge is moved to VST3 and I am using the XT version anyway so I have not kept this uptodate (until Komplete Kontrol fully supports VST3 at least)

Thanks for your reply. I just downloaded an older version and it works great.

Yeah it works but leaves you frozen with that old version if you want to use Komplete Kontrol as the host. If you have access to Bitwig you can try using the device map for the new Surge XT CLAP version which will also give you control using Komplete Kontrol if you have it selected as your main controller

viewtopic.php?p=8477756#p8477756

[bboxdw]

We had a few nightlies with a broken installer and I worry if you were victim of them.

Given that I'm on a mac, so these paths are from memory

1. Quit bitwig etc...
2. find c:\program files\common files\CLAP (%CommonFilesFolder%/CLAP/) and in there should be a directory called `Surge Synth Team` and mabe one called `Surge XT.clap`. Delete everything in that CLAP dir which says 'Surge'
3. Reboot
4. Grab the latest nightly from https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/nightly_XT and re-install
5. Start bitwig and RMB on clap / reindex

does it work then?

Other users confirmed win10/sxt/clap worked so something got wedged in the nightlies on your system which the above may resolve?

Thanks for your patience.

Many thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, that doesn't resolve it. I also deleted the VST3 / Surge Synth Team directory before reinstalling. A few more bits of info that may or may not be helpful:

While the VST3 version won't load the Surge GUI, it does load to the point of being able to output sound, responding to MIDI note input and parameter changes on Bitwig's little device interface for that instance of Surge XT.

After Bitwig gives up on trying to load the CLAP version (which never loads to the point of responding to any input), the following error appears in Bitwig's device interface: "Plugin host died: Could not read async reply: End of stream: Broken pipe"

[bboxdw]

does it work then?

Other users confirmed win10/sxt/clap worked so something got wedged in the nightlies on your system which the above may resolve?

Thanks for your patience.

One more thing in addition to my last reply above: The standalone of the latest nightly won't load to the point of the GUI appearing either. Windows task manager shows that it's running, but it's not visible. Surge XT 1.0.1 standalone, which I just reinstalled, still starts up fine.

[baconpaul]

does it work then?

Other users confirmed win10/sxt/clap worked so something got wedged in the nightlies on your system which the above may resolve?

Thanks for your patience.

One more thing in addition to my last reply above: The standalone of the latest nightly won't load to the point of the GUI appearing either. Windows task manager shows that it's running, but it's not visible. Surge XT 1.0.1 standalone, which I just reinstalled, still starts up fine.

Wow OK so something is wedging the latest surge and the gui on your system. Obviously we have loads of users who run the nightly standalone and vst3 regularly. I wonder what it could be.

Is there anything peculiar about your setup? graphics card? drivers? Do you have any dev tools installed?

Here's another thought. I wonder if you have somehow a corrupted surge settings. If you go to your surge documents directory (in %DOCUMENTS%\Surge XT) there will be a file called `SurgeXTUserSettings.xml` (or something similar). Quit everything and rename it to 'OriginalSurgeXTUserSettings.xml` and see if surge starts. If it still wedges rename the %Documents%\Surge XT to %DOcuments%\OriginalSurgeXT and restart. (Rename vs delete so the files stick around).

Interesting. EvilDragon - any other win debugging thoughts come to mind?

[bboxdw]

Is there anything peculiar about your setup? graphics card? drivers? Do you have any dev tools installed?

Here's another thought. I wonder if you have somehow a corrupted surge settings. If you go to your surge documents directory (in %DOCUMENTS%\Surge XT) there will be a file called `SurgeXTUserSettings.xml` (or something similar). Quit everything and rename it to 'OriginalSurgeXTUserSettings.xml` and see if surge starts. If it still wedges rename the %Documents%\Surge XT to %DOcuments%\OriginalSurgeXT and restart. (Rename vs delete so the files stick around).

Nothing peculiar that I can think of, other than it being an older machine (Dell 7010 I7-3770 w/ AMD Radeon HD 7470, with last available drivers available for latter) and being set up to dual boot into Linux Mint occasionally (can't imagine how the latter might affect this). I tried your suggestion re: the xml settings file, but that didn't work either. I'll give it another try in the future, and welcome any additional suggestions in the meantime. If I come up with anything, will let you know. Many thanks!

Edit: Just tried latest Surge nightly on Linux Mint 20.3, Bitwig 4.3.2, on the same machine, and it seems to work fine there. (Fun to be able to play with the per-voice modulation a bit!) While I hope to eventually figure out how to get it to work on Windows, at least I know my machine's not totally obsolete.