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Yoshimi in QTractor - not stable

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 2:11 pm
by Musicteacher
Hi,
for spacy synth-sounds I use Yoshimi. Unfortunately, I encounter quite some crashes with the combination QTractor - Yoshimi (for instance when I change the midi channel, when I change the sound, things like that).

Does anyone share that experience? Is ZynAddSubFX (the "original") more stable? Or is there an alternative? (I am not looking for a QTractor alternative, all my projects are based on QTractor)

Regards, Andreas

Re: Yoshimi in QTractor - not stable

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 6:58 pm
by folderol
What version of Yoshimi are you running? The current one is 1.5.11.4
Can you let us know what the rest of the setup is? buffer sizes, sample rate etc.
I've never come across this with Qtractor, and I do frequently test on it. Indeed one of my tests has it swapping entire parts while playing MIDI controlled.

PS.
Just checked again, with buffer size 64 frames/period and sample rate 48k - no issues, not even an Xrun.

Re: Yoshimi in QTractor - not stable

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 7:47 pm
by Musicteacher
Hi,
I use 1.5.11.4 and QTractor 0.9.8 .

I am, to be honest, not sure that it is a Yoshimi-Issue. Could be something else, too, I have no stacktrace to see where it crashed. I have lots of projects, and it crashed when I changed the midi channel in a yoshimi-track, and I had crashes with Qtractor + Yoshimi before, so that's what I thought.

I use Yoshimi as a plugin in QTractor, not standalone + Jack-connection, is that the way you set things up, too?

I use 48 kHz, 64 frames/period, 3 periods.

Luckily, it never crashed while playing, only while changing settings. I use that setup for playing live, we have a very big concert coming Friday and saturday, and it simply must not crash!

If you say it's rock solid and you use the combination, too, this is comforting for me. Thank you!

Andreas

Re: Yoshimi in QTractor - not stable

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 8:11 pm
by folderol
That's pretty much the same except I set for 2 periods/buffer.
How many tracks are you running?
Do they each have their own instance of Yoshimi, or do you have a single instance and assign parts to tracks?
Separate can be easier for just a few tracks, but single instance is vastly more efficient.
Crashing when changing controls sound like a GUI issue, which is surprising as it's pretty well decoupled these days.
Also, are you self building, or running a distro version. If self building try the current 'master' - we've made some tweaks to the internal buffering.

Re: Yoshimi in QTractor - not stable

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 8:20 pm
by Musicteacher
I have only one track with yoshimi plugin (about 10 tracks in total, depending on project). I use arch-linux, so it's the distro-stock-version.

I see if I get any crashes during the rehearsals this week. After that, I think I will build a debug version of QTractor, I sometimes get lots of crashes, but without debug info, I cannot see where they come from.

Thanks, Andreas

Re: Yoshimi in QTractor - not stable

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 8:47 pm
by folderol
Interesting. I've not actually tried running in a host alongside other plugins :lol: I wonder if it's a GUI toolkit contention of some sort. Are any of the other plugins using FLTK?

Also what is your DSP/CPU activity at the time? I find I can run reliably at 40%DSP, and sometimes over 60% without Xruns. Lots of rapid note-ons can be problematical - but that's just Xruns.

While I think of it, what's your machine spec? 32/64bit? cores? I no longer have a single core machine to test on.

Re: Yoshimi in QTractor - not stable

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 9:01 pm
by Musicteacher
4 cores (real ones, 8 with hyperthreading on). But, remember, it crashed when changing a setting, there were no sounds produced at the time. This certainly is not a performance issue.

I can perfectly understand you - I'm a software dev myself, and if people say "it crashes" but don't know how to reproduce it, you're getting crazy, because you cannot fix it.

Thanks for your help, sorry I can't be more precise!

Re: Yoshimi in QTractor - not stable

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 9:05 pm
by Musicteacher
Addition: I just remember @tramp saying something about fltk not being thread-safe.

I am using (in the project where I use yoshimi):
- pianoteq (closed source, don't know the toolkit)
- carla for playing sfz (I think carla uses gtk, doesn't it?)
- QTractor (which uses QT, of course)
- gxSupersonic, gxCreamMachine
- Calf Reverb and Calf Limiter

the gx-stuff uses plain X. I don't know about calf, though.

Re: Yoshimi in QTractor - not stable

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:14 am
by folderol
Trying to pin this down a bit more...
Has this only started happening since V 1.5.11, or was it also doing it with 1.5.10 or earlier?

Re: Yoshimi in QTractor - not stable

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 8:55 am
by Musicteacher
This has happened before.

Today QTractor crashed when I activated the pianoteq plugin, so it might have nothing to do with yoshimi at all - or with the combination of both.

Re: Yoshimi in QTractor - not stable

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 2:32 pm
by folderol
I notice you have a couple of Calf plugins. I've no experience of these myself, but I've read they can cause problems with LV2. (but are apparently fine standalone).

In any case, if you can pin it down, please let us know.