LUNA Free Beta 5

[muzycian]

Muzycian, i dont have the beta, but form the specs, it seems the project is gonna come out of the box a bit limited. For one: Why only 32 bit floating pioint? wuith the advent of 64 bit sytems just round the corner, i would think youd wnat to have a 64 bit version wiating.
Also a screen shot would be nice. Im not one for the prettiness of Traction or Live, and to be honest Cubase and Logic have the buisiness-meets-pleasure image down perfect. Im in the market for a new host, and I wnat something that appeals to eye as well as to hand. And how does one become a Beta tester?

LUNA is currently built with a 32 bit audio engine, but its architecture is quite prepared for a 64 bit version.

Note that the difference between a 32 bit and 64 bit audio engine only makes a difference at a very very high quality level, thus only if you really are a super producer!

LUNA itself is not (yet) on that level.

LUNA is a brand new, ultra-light virtual music studio, at the very start of it's life.

It's not yet a super-featured application, but the main focus is on being very easy & accessible.

At proper time, in harmony with its growth, a 64 bit version of LUNA will be available.

[muzycian]

Google didn't tell me much about "GrMach2b063".

Green Machine 2, beta 63 (the last one before the developer added copy protection to the beta and announced the price ).

Green Machine II loads and plays fine here...

So that's already the third or fourth plug that works ok here but not on another computer.

Mmm, strange.

Pljones, does Swarm Synth and Concrete FX Copier work well in LUNA on your system?

Jens, does Green Machine works on your system?

Oh, pljones, did you also try the latest demo of green machine?

[jens]

Jens, does Green Machine works on your system?

dunno - so far I haven't used any plugins


I'm gonna remove Copier temporarily now and willl check what happens...


- back in a few

[pljones]

... So that's already the third or fourth plug that works ok here but not on another computer. ...
... Pljones, does Swarm Synth and Concrete FX Copier work well in LUNA on your system? ...
... Oh, pljones, did you also try the latest demo of green machine?

Not tried the others, or the latest Green Machine.

Did anything change in the VST interface between the last two betas? That seems to have triggered the problems... Unless something else was masking an existing problem. (I had used GM in MuTon but not in Luna, I think.)

I don't think I'm going to have much time this weekend for testing, unfortunately (I need to do some refresher training on Java Server Faces and some C# coding...) If I get time, it'll be Sunday evening.

=edit= Oh, and sticking another Gb of RAM onto my mobo... =/edit=

[muzycian]

Did anything change in the VST interface between the last two betas? That seems to have triggered the problems... Unless something else was masking an existing problem. (I had used GM in MuTon but not in Luna, I think.)

Strange, can't think of a reason, but i'll do a code comparison check!

(the other strange thing is that all mentioned plugins work fine here; makes it difficult)

I don't think I'm going to have much time this weekend for testing, unfortunately (I need to do some refresher training on Java Server Faces and some C# coding...) If I get time, it'll be Sunday evening.

=edit= Oh, and sticking another Gb of RAM onto my mobo... =/edit=

Thanks man

Hope you find some party/relax time too

Cheers,

Jo

[jens]

*ouch* my butt hurts - a few other plugins (mainly COFX but not only) haved caused Luna to crash during the scan - they all have not been ingnored at the next scan. I removed them. Granite.dll caused Luna to crash and then she hang at the next start up, showing her splash-screen and refusing to close even when I tried to kill the process in the task-manager - restarting Windows also didn't work so I had to reset my machine.

At first I removed all the plugins that made troubles but in the end I somehow lost the joy in it.

I don't like this scan-process at all ( with Phrazor http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=129160 my plugins were instantly usable without any scan needed) but what I dislike even much more is the fact that the scan-process starts anew from the beginning after each crash - it doesn't continue somewhere in the middle where it got stuck. ('beta- please do not distribute' -> o.k., 'beta-copy - please do not distribute' -> o.k., 'beta-copy - do not re-distribute' -> o.k., etc. ad infinitum - wtf - I don't want to use them anymore at all (except for the projects I did in another sequencer back then, probably years ago)- why do I need to click all these bloody reminders twenty-seven times because twenty-seven buggy plugins made Luna crash twenty-seven times during the same poor twenty-seven attempts at recognizing and loading all my twenty-seven thousand vst-plugins - I only regularly use about twenty-seven of them (spread over twenty-seven folders)

but don't worry - Luna's vst-scan is great compared to Making Waves which scans the hard-drives automatically for plugin-folders during the first start-up and then scans all the plugin and crashes, and at the next start-up scans them again from the beginning, crashes of course due to the same buggy plugin, etc. blablabla -> 'are you sure you want to uninstall Making Waves and all of its components?' - 'yes, for Christ's sake, I am sure!'

Jo, sorry for the rant - but please think about it because I surely have a point
- I'll gladly try beta 6 but I deleted beta 5 now because I couldn't really use it for the reason I explained above.

[bradkvr]

I downloaded beta 5 and now see that CFM plug-ins are not supported on Mac. That's a deal-breaker for me - it eliminates about 75% of my plug-ins. Any plans to change this, or support AU?

Brad

[Newbie Brad]

Luna wouldn't scan lots of my plugins. There's some popping when I change presets of different VSTs, I wonder can it run Mobius looper (zonemobius.com)? I need that. I might have some beta trouble in the latest Mobius itself, I'll try to make sure.

[> DiGiT <]

jens whats the specs on yer machine? i had a few problems but nothing major with luna. nothing showstopping at least. same with making waves which has been a favorite for years now.

[jens]

jens whats the specs on yer machine?

Athlon XP2600+ (Barton), 786mb ram, Geforce FX5200, Echo Mia - but I don't think it's my system but the fact that I've got a shitload of plugins on my system - the scanning-process is is the culprit here - why does Luna have to try to scan them all over and over again? - that's imo simply not neccessary...

[muzycian]

First of all: why scanning plugins?

2 reasons:

-> If yo want to list e.g. all vst synths, then it's much faster if you have scanned your plugs a single time, then LUNA knows the properties of the plugs, and it can more quickly select all synths from the database.

-> By scanning the plugs a single time, then LUNA know which plugs are ok, and which one are problematic. It's better to have a single crash at defined time, than to have various crashes at jam times, so to say.

Jens, you're 100% right that IF a crash occurs during the scan, then it's clearly stupid and frustrating that the next scan starts all over.

Technical reason is that the scanned results are not yet written to disk when the crash occurs. But i'll improve that in beta 6!

Now what i can't find is that if you get the message "X seems to cause a problem during plug scan. It will be ignored during the next scan" that you say that it IS scanned again!

I just made a little test plugin with the special purpose to crash during initialization.

I ran the scan and it properly crashed at the crash-plugin.

Now i restarted and ran the scan again, and LUNA properly said "x seems to cause a problem...", and it started scanning all over again (that's the bad thing) but it did skip the crash plugin (messaging "x already in database")(that's the good thing).

I'm sorry to ask (i'm sure you're sure) but: are you sure that the ignored plugin is scanned again? and it's really the very same plugin?

[muzycian]

I downloaded beta 5 and now see that CFM plug-ins are not supported on Mac. That's a deal-breaker for me - it eliminates about 75% of my plug-ins. Any plans to change this, or support AU?

Soon, there will be a poll here on the MuTools forum about which features are most wanted.

[muzycian]

Luna wouldn't scan lots of my plugins.

Which ones it doesn't scan?

Do you get crashes while scanning these plugins?

There's some popping when I change presets of different VSTs

I assume this is plugin dependent.

I wonder can it run Mobius looper (zonemobius.com)? I need that. I might have some beta trouble in the latest Mobius itself, I'll try to make sure.

Will check it out.

[jens]

Now i restarted and ran the scan again, and LUNA properly said "x seems to cause a problem...", and it started scanning all over again (that's the bad thing) but it did skip the crash plugin (messaging "x already in database")(that's the good thing).

that's strange

I'm sorry to ask (i'm sure you're sure) but: are you sure that the ignored plugin is scanned again? and it's really the very same plugin?

yes - the scanning is pretty transparent - each time I removed the particular plugin from the folder the scanning went further than the last time until it finally crashed because of a different plugin - b.t.w: is the next scan supposed to happen automatically? Because it doesn't on my machine - each time I have to select the folder again manually.



I disagree about the reason for the scan - like I said: most of the plugins aren't used anymore at all (some I haven't used for years) but are still there because I need them for old projects - there's no use in scanning them - I want to decide myself which plugins get opened. I don't want the host to open them all because I might need them one fine day. But that's just me of course.


Anyway: I'm relieved to hear that the scanning-process will continue where it crashed in beta6 - that will do it for me.

[muzycian]

yes - the scanning is pretty transparent - each time I removed the particular plugin from the folder the scanning went further than the last time until it finally crashed because of a different plugin - b.t.w: is the next scan supposed to happen automatically?

No, not automatically.

It's up to you to decide when you want to scan.

Think that's a good thing.

I disagree about the reason for the scan - like I said: most of the plugins aren't used anymore at all (some I haven't used for years) but are still there because I need them for old projects - there's no use in scanning them - I want to decide myself which plugins get opened. I don't want the host to open them all because I might need them one fine day. But that's just me of course.

Note that the plugs are only opened once, i.e. when they're scanned.

Once the LUNA plug database is up to date, all these plugs are 100% untouched. Even for years if you want.

Until you plug one in in a LUNA session of course.