Crashes and graphics problems with Waveform 10
-
- KVRer
- 26 posts since 30 May, 2004
And there is the problem right there, straight from the developer’s mouth. ‘It’s ALWAYS someone else’s problem, it wasn’t tested in Waveform’
Look, I’ll load those same plugins in Reaper, Ardour, Renoise, LMMS, Qtractor and a bunch of other minority DAWs that I can guarantee the plugins were not tested in and they will be fine, no crashes. Load them in Waveform, poof, bye bye. And yet Traction are still insistent it’s not their problem.
Utter bollocks!
Look, I’ll load those same plugins in Reaper, Ardour, Renoise, LMMS, Qtractor and a bunch of other minority DAWs that I can guarantee the plugins were not tested in and they will be fine, no crashes. Load them in Waveform, poof, bye bye. And yet Traction are still insistent it’s not their problem.
Utter bollocks!
-
- KVRAF
- 1777 posts since 30 Dec, 2012
What are you actually referring to specifically?
I've looked back over this thread and I can't see that you've posted a problem with a plugin? The last post on this thread was from October...
We never say "It’s ALWAYS someone else’s problem" but sometimes it's impossible for us to find out what's going wrong without some help from the plugin developers. It's like trying to find out what's wrong with a car without being able to look inside it.
Just because a plugin works in another host, it doesn't mean that we're doing something wrong, it could be that we're just asking some information of the plugin that another host doesn't like parameter text strings, text <-> value conversions, channel layouts, bus configurations, editor scaling, pre-monitor DPI awareness etc. (all of these are crashes I've found in plugins that "just worked" in other hosts simply because these methods were never called).
That's like saying, "this car works as long as you don't press that button" but there's no sign on the button to let us know that.
We always want to try and improve plugin compatibility but it's one of the most difficult and time consuming things to look in to because of the reasons already mentioned and because there are so many thousands out there.
Our plugin hosting capabilities are completely open source. That means any plugin developer can get a copy of how we host plugins (via the Tracktion Engine example projects) and see exactly where things are going wrong. That makes it a much more efficient process for plugin devs to quickly try this out, let us know what's going wrong and for us to add workarounds.
I've looked back over this thread and I can't see that you've posted a problem with a plugin? The last post on this thread was from October...
We never say "It’s ALWAYS someone else’s problem" but sometimes it's impossible for us to find out what's going wrong without some help from the plugin developers. It's like trying to find out what's wrong with a car without being able to look inside it.
Just because a plugin works in another host, it doesn't mean that we're doing something wrong, it could be that we're just asking some information of the plugin that another host doesn't like parameter text strings, text <-> value conversions, channel layouts, bus configurations, editor scaling, pre-monitor DPI awareness etc. (all of these are crashes I've found in plugins that "just worked" in other hosts simply because these methods were never called).
That's like saying, "this car works as long as you don't press that button" but there's no sign on the button to let us know that.
We always want to try and improve plugin compatibility but it's one of the most difficult and time consuming things to look in to because of the reasons already mentioned and because there are so many thousands out there.
Our plugin hosting capabilities are completely open source. That means any plugin developer can get a copy of how we host plugins (via the Tracktion Engine example projects) and see exactly where things are going wrong. That makes it a much more efficient process for plugin devs to quickly try this out, let us know what's going wrong and for us to add workarounds.
-
- KVRer
- 26 posts since 30 May, 2004
I completely gave up with Waveform at 9 when you said to me directly 'we'll fix it in the next version'. No, I'm not paying for a bug fix. Look, half the DAWs I've just listed are open source: you can download the open source code and examine it, you can even utilise it if you like. Clearly they are doing something that you aren't, they don't have the problems with plugins that you do, having said that, one of the plugins I continually had problems with was your own which is why I totally gave up on Waveform, I'm not prepared to put up with a DAW that crashes all the time. I don't care what additional features you're adding next time round, to me they are utterly irrelevant. It's frustrating Don't get me wrong I like the idea of Waveform but using it was a disappointment. If you want the DAW to be taken seriously you need to get the platform stable.
-
- KVRAF
- 2417 posts since 17 Jun, 2003
I'm not convinced the quotes you're providing have much basis in reality.
I mean, Jules literally said the opposite of what you put in quotation marks.
I mean, Jules literally said the opposite of what you put in quotation marks.
"my gosh it's a friggin hardware"
-
- KVRAF
- 2417 posts since 17 Jun, 2003
Let me rephrase that ... you're talking bollocks
"my gosh it's a friggin hardware"
- KVRAF
- 4281 posts since 3 Jan, 2003 from Vancouver
I'm very curious to know how other DAWS manage to deal with the plugins that crash Waveform. The programmer in me understands the value of strictness but the musician in me kinda wants my DAW to not poof.
Other DAW: Okay plugin, report to me your delay in number of samples.
Plugin: "mango pudding"
Other DAW: Meh. Whatever. Moving on.
Waveform: Okay plugin, report to me your delay in number of samples.
Plugin: "mango pudding"
Waveform: I will take you at your word. Setting delay compensation value to "mango pudding" samPOOF
Other DAW: Okay plugin, report to me your delay in number of samples.
Plugin: "mango pudding"
Other DAW: Meh. Whatever. Moving on.
Waveform: Okay plugin, report to me your delay in number of samples.
Plugin: "mango pudding"
Waveform: I will take you at your word. Setting delay compensation value to "mango pudding" samPOOF
the old free version may not work boots successfully on new generations of computers, instruments, and hardware
-
- KVRian
- 618 posts since 12 Mar, 2013 from Russia, Vladivostok
From my experience (Linux), other DAWs are not so bulletproof. Ardour and Reaper crashes on VST too, and they may fall where Tracktion stays fine.
I'd like to see WF being robust as Carla and Qtractor, these apps really can handle buggy plugins.
I'd like to see WF being robust as Carla and Qtractor, these apps really can handle buggy plugins.
-
- KVRist
- 488 posts since 16 Mar, 2017
It's not just Linux either. People have been asking for plugin sandboxing on Studio One for example due to their crashing the DAW:
https://answers.presonus.com/3908/plugin-sandboxing
Here is a similar request for Sonar:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Sandboxing-VS ... 71804.aspx
FL Studio:
https://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic.php?t=196289
-
- Chief Tracktioneer
- 532 posts since 14 Nov, 2002 from London
I like your analogy!pough wrote: ↑Thu Apr 02, 2020 1:00 am I'm very curious to know how other DAWS manage to deal with the plugins that crash Waveform. The programmer in me understands the value of strictness but the musician in me kinda wants my DAW to not poof.
Other DAW: Okay plugin, report to me your delay in number of samples.
Plugin: "mango pudding"
Other DAW: Meh. Whatever. Moving on.
Waveform: Okay plugin, report to me your delay in number of samples.
Plugin: "mango pudding"
Waveform: I will take you at your word. Setting delay compensation value to "mango pudding" samPOOF
..but in reality, it's a bit more like this:
Other DAW: Set your samplerate to X
Plugin: OK
Other DAW: Reset yourself
Plugin: OK
Other DAW: Set parameter X to Y
Plugin: OK
Waveform: Reset yourself
Plugin: OK
Waveform: Set your samplerate to X
Plugin: OK
Waveform: Set parameter X to Y
Plugin: Crash
It's very rare that the crash is on the DAW's side, more that a plugin just has never been tested for a particular order of instructions (or having them done on particular threads, or too soon after one another etc..), so when the DAW asks it to perform some perfectly reasonable, but untested, sequence of things, then a not-very-robustly-written plugin can get its knickers in a twist and crash.
-
- Chief Tracktioneer
- 532 posts since 14 Nov, 2002 from London
..I should add that obviously because these problems arise from generally quite subtle and unexpected situations, it's basically impossible for any DAW author to test every plugin in every possible context.
So what happens is that a small percentage of users will be unlucky with their combination of plugins and common use-cases, and will find themselves seeing a lot of crashes because they're tending to do the same actions a lot. (Whereas most users will rarely or never come across problems).
...and then a small percentage of those who do hit a lot of problems will then come on KVR and start shouting about how they can't understand how anyone can ever possibly use this terrible DAW, because it just fails all the time for them. Which from their perspective is true.
It is, however, particularly annoying for DAW authors, because having someone say "loads of my plugins crash all the time, and it's your fault because they work in [X] other DAW" is:
- useless in terms of helping us fix anything
- mis-represents the real stability of a product which we've sweated over for many years
- and yes, of course you can expect that a plugin that crashes in DAW A will work in DAW B... no plugin would have been released if it crashed *every* DAW. So the chances are that if you try it in some other one, it will work. That doesn't mean it's not the plugin's fault though!
So what happens is that a small percentage of users will be unlucky with their combination of plugins and common use-cases, and will find themselves seeing a lot of crashes because they're tending to do the same actions a lot. (Whereas most users will rarely or never come across problems).
...and then a small percentage of those who do hit a lot of problems will then come on KVR and start shouting about how they can't understand how anyone can ever possibly use this terrible DAW, because it just fails all the time for them. Which from their perspective is true.
It is, however, particularly annoying for DAW authors, because having someone say "loads of my plugins crash all the time, and it's your fault because they work in [X] other DAW" is:
- useless in terms of helping us fix anything
- mis-represents the real stability of a product which we've sweated over for many years
- and yes, of course you can expect that a plugin that crashes in DAW A will work in DAW B... no plugin would have been released if it crashed *every* DAW. So the chances are that if you try it in some other one, it will work. That doesn't mean it's not the plugin's fault though!
-
- KVRist
- 424 posts since 28 Dec, 2017
I bought a copy of Waveform8 and had it crash on me using some well known VSTs like Guitar Rig, Kontakt and Massive and gave it up fairly quickly. Sadly cause I really liked the easy apporach to midi-editing compared to Cubase. So I have been checking this thread to see if Waveform gets better and worth an upgrade, but as I follow this thread it seems not. Is there a list of plugins that are reliable or unstabile in the most current version? Some are dealbreakers for me other not.
-
- Chief Tracktioneer
- 532 posts since 14 Nov, 2002 from London
The internet contains countless thousands of threads where a few people moan about some DAW or other being unstable because they've had a bad experience with it. But they tell you nothing about that DAW's real stability, because you only hear the bad stuff. There could 10 million happy silent users and 2 grumbling ones who got unlucky. Or the DAW could indeed be rubbish and the grumbling users could be a representative sample. There's no way to know.GearNostalgia wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 3:44 am So I have been checking this thread to see if Waveform gets better and worth an upgrade, but as I follow this thread it seems not. Is there a list of plugins that are reliable or unstabile in the most current version? Some are dealbreakers for me other not.
You realise we now offer a free version of the latest version, right? Nobody on this thread or anywhere else can tell you whether your dealbreaker plugins will work OK, but it'd take you 10 minutes to download the free version and try for yourself. And if there's a problem, you can let us know so we can fix it.
-
- KVRian
- 826 posts since 25 Aug, 2006
On Waveform versions 8, 9, 10, 11 NI plugins (from Komplete Ultimate) work fine. I use Guitar Rig 5 a lot and it always plays nice with Waveform. This is on Win10.GearNostalgia wrote: ↑Thu May 07, 2020 3:44 am I bought a copy of Waveform8 and had it crash on me using some well known VSTs like Guitar Rig, Kontakt and Massive and gave it up fairly quickly.