Wotja 22 - Generative Music App & Plug-in Host (Free, Pro; AUv3 / VST3)

[impete]

1) in the stand-alone, we badly need the mixer to apply to hosted VSTs.
Can you please clarify what you mean by this? Thanks!
I mean that currently there is no way to adjust the pan and levels of audio once you use hosted plugins.

Oh, right - does that mean you want to be able to do this on a per-plug-in basis?

At the moment we allow a "final" scaling factor at the of of each chain (and at the end of the final chain) - but you want finer-grained control than that.

I'd naively assumed that most plug-ins would include their own volume and/or pan controls. But I guess from what you're saying, that would normally be left to the host DAW?

Best wishes, pete

[JamminFool]

But Reaper is still bulletproof here, and is running this version just fine!

Reaper really is quite impressive!

Pete

Yes, Reaper is!

And I just tried out my final idea... bottom of the barrel, so I'm running on empty now!

I unplugged my Focusrite USB audio interface, and enabled the Realtek onboard audio in my BIOS, then rebooted, set my DAWs up for Realtek and the Windows audio driver, etc.

But the same darn thing happened! CPU overload on 3 different DAWs as each DAW plays Wotja. I was hoping that it might come down to some interaction with my Focusrite drivers, but with that apparently eliminated now, no such luck. Have already tried various sample rates and buffer sizes, so that doesn't appear to be the cause either.

Computation loop of some kind, perhaps? I have no idea!

hi zzz00m,
i loaded up Ableton with only Wotja running the V22 Play Me! mix and observed the CPU meter. It hit overload several times, and i even saw it spike to over 2000% at one point. As it runs, it climbs steadily to around 30-50% but often spikes over 100%. I didn't notice any problems with the audio itself.

Waveform (same test case as above) shows a value of around 8 in the CPU usage meter, but if i click it to open for more details, it shows the CPU for Wotja as either 0% or 100% as the mix plays.
I really don't know what to make of that output. Again, no glitching of audio though.

i downloaded and installed Cakewalk, but I can't find a CPU meter. is there one? interestingly, i got audio glitches and stutters while pulling down menus to try to find an option to display the CPU usage. this was using the same test case as above.

unfortunately, i did not take note of the CPU usage in earlier versions of Wotja since I did not ever experience any audio glitching, so i can't say whether this behavior is different that before. i noticed you stated it started after 22.0.10 but i cannot confirm since i do not have access to that version any more.

anyway, i agree with you that there is some unusually high CPU usage going on, but i am not in a position to evaluate it very well. perhaps you can suggest some specific tests i can run to see if we can isolate the cause or at least find a reproducible test case.

[JamminFool]

1) in the stand-alone, we badly need the mixer to apply to hosted VSTs.
Can you please clarify what you mean by this? Thanks!
I mean that currently there is no way to adjust the pan and levels of audio once you use hosted plugins.

Oh, right - does that mean you want to be able to do this on a per-plug-in basis?

At the moment we allow a "final" scaling factor at the of of each chain (and at the end of the final chain) - but you want finer-grained control than that.

I'd naively assumed that most plug-ins would include their own volume and/or pan controls. But I guess from what you're saying, that would normally be left to the host DAW?

Best wishes, pete

there is currently a mixer tab on the Music page. it allows you to pan and adjust audio levels on a per cell basis for the internal sounds.

but if i switch to using hosted plugins, there is no central place to control these attributes. all sound is now generated by my plugins. to be forced to jump to each plugin to adjust it's output level is not a solution, and there still would be no way to adjust pan (many VSTs do not have pan in the amp section). that is the role of a mixer, so that you can find tune the levels on the fly at critical points in the mix from a central location in the program.

in conjunction with this, meters are crucial, so that you can see what specifically is contributing to the final output at any given moment.

if you want to be seen as a "Generative DAW", these features are a necessity.

edit: i will check out the "scaling" you mentioned, in the meantime.

[JamminFool]

hi pete,

quick follow-up:
i don't know why i did not notice the Chain Levels on the Hosted Plugins page. they go a long way toward what i describe.
they aren't quite as convenient as i'd like since they can be hidden by an open VST GUI (but that can happen in any DAW, so not a critical thing), and you have to scroll down to access Chains 5, 6 and Master, but they seem workable.

but what do you mean by "scaling factor"? is it different than other level control?

perhaps just adding pan and meters to this (as well as meters to the mixers for the internal sounds) is all that is needed.

[impete]

hi pete,

quick follow-up:
i don't know why i did not notice the Chain Levels on the Hosted Plugins page. they go a long way toward what i describe.
they aren't quite as convenient as i'd like since they can be hidden by an open VST GUI (but that can happen in any DAW, so not a critical thing), and you have to scroll down to access Chains 5, 6 and Master, but they seem workable.

but what do you mean by "scaling factor"? is it different than other level control?

perhaps just adding pan and meters to this (as well as meters to the mixers for the internal sounds) is all that is needed.

Aha, excellent news!

Yeah, "scaling factor" is just a level setting.

I'll use your feedback here to update our internal request tracker (pan, meters)

Best wishes, Pete

[zzz00m]

Yes, Reaper is!

And I just tried out my final idea... bottom of the barrel, so I'm running on empty now!

I unplugged my Focusrite USB audio interface, and enabled the Realtek onboard audio in my BIOS, then rebooted, set my DAWs up for Realtek and the Windows audio driver, etc.

But the same darn thing happened! CPU overload on 3 different DAWs as each DAW plays Wotja. I was hoping that it might come down to some interaction with my Focusrite drivers, but with that apparently eliminated now, no such luck. Have already tried various sample rates and buffer sizes, so that doesn't appear to be the cause either.

Computation loop of some kind, perhaps? I have no idea!

hi zzz00m,
i loaded up Ableton with only Wotja running the V22 Play Me! mix and observed the CPU meter. It hit overload several times, and i even saw it spike to over 2000% at one point. As it runs, it climbs steadily to around 30-50% but often spikes over 100%. I didn't notice any problems with the audio itself.

Waveform (same test case as above) shows a value of around 8 in the CPU usage meter, but if i click it to open for more details, it shows the CPU for Wotja as either 0% or 100% as the mix plays.
I really don't know what to make of that output. Again, no glitching of audio though.

i downloaded and installed Cakewalk, but I can't find a CPU meter. is there one? interestingly, i got audio glitches and stutters while pulling down menus to try to find an option to display the CPU usage. this was using the same test case as above.

unfortunately, i did not take note of the CPU usage in earlier versions of Wotja since I did not ever experience any audio glitching, so i can't say whether this behavior is different that before. i noticed you stated it started after 22.0.10 but i cannot confirm since i do not have access to that version any more.

anyway, i agree with you that there is some unusually high CPU usage going on, but i am not in a position to evaluate it very well. perhaps you can suggest some specific tests i can run to see if we can isolate the cause or at least find a reproducible test case.

Thanks for checking!

The two DAWs here that show no sign of excessive CPU usage are Ableton and Reaper. But I'm ignoring Ableton at the moment for Wotja use due to its useless MIDI routing between tracks. Otherwise it's probably the most stable audio engine around.

So that is what's puzzling me the most. If the problem is on my end, why isn't it affecting those two DAWs at all?

But for Cakewalk, Studio One, and Waveform, the CPU use grows continuously until I get MIDI and/or audio dropouts, and CPU overload that shuts their audio engines off. Unusable.

I am going to try a clean install/wipe of Wotja to factory refresh all local Wotja files.

[JamminFool]

@zzz00m,
strange, since we seem to be getting some results that appear at odds.

is there a particular Mix that you use that shows this, or or you getting this in general, regardless of number of tracks or particular generators used? as i mentioned, i just used the V22 Play Me! but maybe i need to use a more specific test case.

i'd be happy to try any specific ideas you have or cases that you know will cause the issue on your system.

[zzz00m]

@zzz00m,
strange, since we seem to be getting some results that appear at odds.

is there a particular Mix that you use that shows this, or or you getting this in general, regardless of number of tracks or particular generators used? as i mentioned, i just used the V22 Play Me! but maybe i need to use a more specific test case.

i'd be happy to try any specific ideas you have or cases that you know will cause the issue on your system.

I just did a wipe and reinstalled Wotja 22 Pro from scratch. Ran the standalone briefly to install the VST3 plugin. Had renamed my old "/Documents/Wotja" folder, so was using a fresh Wotja folder with only the default .json file and default "V22 Play Me! file"

First run with the new install was with Cakewalk using only the Wotja VST3 22.1.2 with the default factory V22 Play Me! Used only the WAE option so the Wotja internal sounds were used. Got the CPU overload again! Same when I tried an earlier saved project using VST instruments on another track for sound.

[zzz00m]

i downloaded and installed Cakewalk, but I can't find a CPU meter. is there one? interestingly, i got audio glitches and stutters while pulling down menus to try to find an option to display the CPU usage. this was using the same test case as above.

Cakewalk has a performance meter in the control bar, to the right of the transport controls.
https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation? ... ar.09.html

[JamminFool]

@zzz00m
ok, i am getting the audio break-up in Cakewalk. it doesn't happen everytime, but on fresh run, the audio starts to break up when track 4 moves to the second column. there is a little bit of audio drop-out sometimes before that, also.
it seems like it runs a little better if i restart the Mix, but eventually i get audio stutter and crackle as i let it play.

EDIT: man, this is weird. if i restart everything, sometimes it runs just fine, even if i let it play. but then the next time, it crackles and stutters. everything else is the same. not sure what to make of it.

[zzz00m]

I think that Reaper has become my new Wotja Studio!

Respect!

[JamminFool]

@zzz00m,
the more i look at this, the weirder it gets. first of all, it is really hard to get a reproducible scenario. i played around with switching to my Yamaha (Steinberg) ASIO driver and that did not experience any dropouts in Cakewalk. but the Performance meter was showing a Max Audio Processing Load of 90.77% and a Max Engine Load of 1803.7%! wtf?

on Windows Audio using the laptop Realtek audio, I did initially get drop-outs, but now it seems to work fine. Max Audio processing was 86.92% and Max Engine Load was 448.9%.

meanwhile, trying this on Waveform, I could not get any dropouts to occur at all. CPU usage was slightly higher when I switched to the Yamaha ASIO driver, but never exceeded a reading of 9 (versus 8 using Windows Audio).

i really do not understand the CPU usage readouts in these various DAWs. but whatever.

SUMMARY OBSERVATION: something weird happens intermittently in Cakewalk which causes audio to break up badly, but it never stopped playing. it seems like if it is going to happen, it starts immediately when you hit "play" the first time. but if not, it seems to play nicely even after repeated start/stops.

[syncline]

@impete,

zzz00m wrote:
But for Cakewalk, Studio One, and Waveform, the CPU use grows continuously until I get MIDI and/or audio dropouts, and CPU overload that shuts their audio engines off. Unusable.

The same is true for FL Studio. Also, while the Wotja plugin is playing, memory use climbs gradually and in a matter of one or two minutes it reaches nearly 80% (out of 16 GB). At this point the host just hangs and has to be re-started. Audio dropouts and stuttering begin almost immediately and become more frequent as memory is consumed. This all begins when Wotja is started (by pressing the play button on the Wotja plug-in itself). Wotja does not respond to the master play button in FL Studio. Once the play button is pressed on the Wotja plug-in, the memory leak (if that is what is causing this behavior) continues, even if Wotja is subsequently stopped.

One idea that might help: is there a way to turn the Wotja visualizer off? I couldn't find one. If it continues to run in the background, I suspect that whatever CPU and memory that is using might be contributing to the memory leak, and it's probably superfluous in the plug-in anyway.

Also, I've been troubleshooting the issue with MIDI that I mentioned in an earlier post here. There is no way I can find to engage a normal MIDI-out from the Wotja plug-in, neither single-channel nor multi-channel. I did discover that single-channel MIDI-out works briefly if I set the delay within Wotja to zero and turn off Wotja's internal audio. Any amount of delay will shut down the MIDI-out. Unfortunately, even then Wotja only sends a brief, one note signal. The MIDI-out shuts down before sending the note-off for the initial note, so the plug-in receiving the MIDI signal will keep playing that note indefinitely until it is re-set. A positive outcome of setting delay to zero: the memory useage stabilizes or climbs much more slowly, so this may be another clue as to that issue. Unfortunately, the delay setting is not permanent and automatically re-sets to 10 ms on restart and reload. It would be nice if this was a persistent setting.

So, while I am enjoying the stand-alone application immensely, I can't get the plug-in to work normally on my system at this point. Right now, I feel like the monkey in the spacecraft, randomly pushing buttons and turning dials, but it's taking an immense amount of time and it's not getting me closer to my goal...I'd really like to get some guidance on what I should try next.

Thanks in advance!

[zzz00m]

I setup a Wotja 22.1.2 VST3 test in a no-frills plug-in host rather than a DAW. I used Kushview Element, which is a JUCE based host. Wotja ran just fine with no dropouts or CPU overloads. Used the same Mix ("V22 Play Me!") that has been giving me fits with a few DAWs.

Used one instance of Wotja, with MIDI ch 1-4 routed out to Kontakt for 2 pad instruments set for ch 1-2 and to Miroslav Philharmonik for 2 percussion instruments on ch 3-4. All channels 1-4 were routed correctly. Audio L/R from both Kontakt and Philharmonik were sent to my main USB ASIO outputs. The computer's "MIDI In/out" and "Audio In" were set to disabled for this session in Element.

Screen grab of the session showing MIDI Monitor and VU meters:

[impete]

Hi!

Now that I've got most of the "big bugs" out of the way, I'll look to do some profiling (memory, CPU) next.

However, I first need to take a few days off - things have been kind of manic around Intermorphic Towers since the turn of the year

Best wishes to all, Pete