KVR Audio

vortico · Post by **vortico** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:20 am

^ Join the club. https://github.com/VCVRack/Rack/issues/17

A fix is in the horizon. A helpful member is offering his time to bounce back and fourth debug builds and debug logs, since I don't have access to a Mac computer with this issue myself.

autodafe · Post by **autodafe** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:49 am

the "blank grid "problem on mac has already been reported by many users, (and I can also confirm it on 10.11.6), while on Sierra it's OK
I believe Andrew is alrady working on it.

Andrei Marchenko · Post by **Andrei Marchenko** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 2:15 pm

I'm on MacBook Pro MD101, 2,5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 Gb DDR3, macOS Sierra 10.12.6 and my laptop became mad after 20-30 minutes of using VCV Rack. I mean it can be just VCO + Audio Interface devices (In-Build mac soundcard selected). Laptop's cooler start to spin like crazy. I can be wrong here but this software need serious optimization because even single core Reaktor works fine in terms of CPU usage comparing with VCV Rack.

Anyway my fingers are crossed for this software! Very good work for beginning.

vortico · Post by **vortico** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:23 pm

Some low hanging fruit for reducing CPU:
- If your GPU is old, Rack falls back to software rendering. In this mode, I believe most of the CPU is spent drawing rounded rectangles on GUI widgets. I should find a way to make that faster. (More framebuffers?)
- I'm doing a lot of unnecessary sample rate conversion. I'm wasting a lot of time using libsamplerate with a ratio of 1.0. I might make a replacement for libsamplerate actually.
- Once the above is done, CPU usage will be much better. The next step is to multithread it, which should take not even an afternoon.

martin_l · Post by **martin_l** » Tue Sep 19, 2017 8:01 am

Just a quick info for fellow Windows users:

I managed to route the output of VCVrack back into Reaper for external effects using this virtual audio cable:

http://www.vb-audio.com/

It's a bit intrusive as it installs extra audio drivers over the Windows ones, and you might when using this one not be able to access your normal ASIO drivers. So it's not really ideal, but it works for now. In the future, however, we will hopefully get a proper VST bridge.

autodafe · Post by **autodafe** » Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:38 am

I started woring on some additional modules.

a quick preview here (LFO with CV input and 2x8 multiples)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxKhyJ9O5DY

SLiC · Post by **SLiC** » Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:06 am

autodafe wrote:I started woring on some additional modules.

a quick preview here (LFO with CV input and 2x8 multiples)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxKhyJ9O5DY

The multiples are very useful as the cables don't stack (I think), I don't use stackable very much on my real Euro so this is fine with me.

Great work.

autodafe · Post by **autodafe** » Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:24 am

yes cables don't stack. and the Audible Instruments multiple is just 1:3...i simply created thsi very simple but useful 2x8 for my work...

martin_l · Post by **martin_l** » Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:05 am

autodafe wrote:yes cables don't stack. and the Audible Instruments multiple is just 1:3...i simply created thsi very simple but useful 2x8 for my work...

Very nice. I also started coding some modules which I hope to finish next weekend or so. Are your modules available somewhere? I will create a repository on github and will post it there.

As I expect VCVrack to develop into a larger community effort for creating modules, I think we should think about some central repository for those modules which are offered as freeware.

What do you guys think?

Cheers,
Martin

autodafe · Post by **autodafe** » Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:15 am

Yes I am creating a repository but I need to clean up things a bit before proceeding.
Also, I will release the DLLs but at the moment they don't work in Rack 0.31 , only in the version built from source

If I launch Rack with My DLL plugin installed i get this:

any idea?

martin_l · Post by **martin_l** » Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:25 am

autodafe wrote:Yes I am creating a repository but I need to clean up things a bit before proceeding.
Also, I will release the DLLs but at the moment they don't work in Rack 0.31 , only in the version built from source

If I launch Rack with My DLL plugin installed i get this:

any idea?

When did you last update the rack source code? Maybe something has changed. I did not yet update these sources, and my builds still run in the 0.3.1 binary distribution.

I guess at the moment, we still have to expect that the whole API might suddenly change, requiring updates of our modules.

Martin.

autodafe · Post by **autodafe** » Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:32 am

yes, maybe I didn't update the whole rack sources...

autodafe · Post by **autodafe** » Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:49 am

the same applies oif I compile the Fundamentals plugin and then copy the DLL in my "plugins" folder in the binary version, I guess the binary is not up-to-date with the sources, and something is missing ...

martin_l · Post by **martin_l** » Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:54 am

autodafe wrote:the same applies oif I compile the Fundamentals plugin and then copy the DLL in my "plugins" folder in the binary version, I guess the binary is not up-to-date with the sources, and something is missing ...

Yes, it looks like that. Andrew seems very busy with the code at the moment. There are several github commits every day. I would suggest to Andrew to fork out a development branch and leave the master branch slightly more stable, and more importantly, compatible with the binary distribution. And then also update the binaries to the current version of the master branch.

I think this would help 3rd party developers a lot.

On the other hand, we need to be aware of the early started of the project, and that things might still change considerably.

Cheers,
Martin

vortico · Post by **vortico** » Wed Sep 20, 2017 12:00 pm

The "dev" versions are not ABI compatible with each versioned release. When v0.3.2 and any future version releases, you'll need to recompile it for that version specifically. I use git tags for marking releases, so you can checkout by version number. I prefer the git tags method to the dev branch method.

I should adopt some form of semantic versioning once things slow down and stabilize a bit to make it easier on developers. And help with cross platform builds by writing TravisCI scripts or Docker scripts or something.