[SOLVED] Major problem : Latest linvst / wine-staging

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jonetsu
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[SOLVED] Major problem : Latest linvst / wine-staging

Post by jonetsu »

I'm running wine-staging and linvst (which I compiled) since April 2018 with very good results. So good, that I did not hesitate to get several plugins. Lots of musical sketches done, about 250. Some complete pieces on soundcloud, like the ones in the signature below. All that on Linux Mint 18.1 KDE, with Bitwig mostly (and Mixbus32C for mixing for soundcloud). Now I upgraded to Xubuntu 18.04 LTS. Everything's good OS wise, so I installed the latest wine-staging from winehq and the latest linvst binary from linvst web site, and started to re-install some plugins. I started with the Tone2 synths. All good. Then I started with the Melda Production plugins. Disastrous. They crash jackd/Bitwig (hard to tell which one first) very quickly. For instance, once minimized, they
ll provoke a crash when brought up again.

EDIT/UPDATE

This is fairly new for me, running Windows VST, and more specifically installing them. What I do is that I install a plugin and then make music, basically. I then remembered that it's not possible at all to 'throw' many linvst.so files at once at Bitwig. For instance if I copy 5 .dll files with their 5 .so linvst counterpart at once in a Bitwig plugin directory then Bitwig will start to scan them and will have a difficult time doing so. OTOH, if I do them one by one Bitwig will scan each one OK. I think this might be due because Bitwig will scan in parallel in order to save time and this parallel scanning does not work well in the case of linvst.

I have re-installed some plugins from Sugar Bytes, Rob Papen and LinPlug. They all work fine. Then I re-installed only one MeldaProduction plugin (MBassador) and tried it out. It works until it is minimized and brought back to view. At which point it will crash Bitwig/jackd, even with the independent host process activated. This did not happen at all using the previous (April 2018) versions of wine-staging and linvst on Linux Mint 18.1 KDE. Actually the Melda plugins on LM 18.1 were ones of the most stable and predictable.

I tried 'GPU disabled' and 'GPU compatibility mode' : same result.

Any ideas as to what could be the problem on Xubuntu 18.04 LTS with the latest wine-staging and linvst ?
Last edited by jonetsu on Fri Feb 01, 2019 3:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
jonetsu
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Re: Major problem : Latest linvst / wine-staging

Post by jonetsu »

Also, is there a debug mode to linvst that would write to a log file the major steps (methods) with their arguments and results ?
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Re: Major problem : Latest linvst / wine-staging

Post by ubuntuuser »

I'll look into it.

It appears to be getting a X11 bad window error for some reason.
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Re: Major problem : Latest linvst / wine-staging

Post by ubuntuuser »

I think it's a Wine/Melda problem as it affects the standalone window version of LinVst as well which works in a more direct X11 way with Wine.

I think that earlier versions of Bitwig didn't close the vst's editor but just hid the vst window (and therefore the closing Meldas vst editor problem wouldn't happen) and later versions of Bitwig might close the vst's editor, that's what I think might have changed but I might be wrong.

Closing the Melda vst's editor seems to throw Wine into a loop for some reason.
jonetsu
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Re: Major problem : Latest linvst / wine-staging

Post by jonetsu »

Interesting. With the previous setup (April 2018 versions of wine-staging and linvst in LM 18.1 KDE with Bitwig 2.4.3 and previous versions) it worked OK but there was one thing very predictable and very stable in its own way with the Melda plugins: after resizing a plugin had to be minimized and brought back up for the resizing to actually take place. This is not the case in Mixbus32C and because of that, resizing of Melda plugins is still, to date, impossible in Mixbus.

I mentioned that to Bitwig support and they replied that Mixbus does not 'close' the plugin when minimized but Bitwig does and because of that when brought back up the plugin knows to redraw itself appropriately.

As of now, I use Bitwig 2.4.3 in both LM 18.1 KDE and Xubuntu 18.04 LTS. In LM there are no problems with the Melda plugins.

By now I've re-installed a few more plugins in Xubuntu (from IK Multimedia, Sugar Bytes, Sonic Charge, Image Line (vector-based UI and regular), KV331 (Synthmaster One and 2), Tone2, Rob Papen, Voxengo) and all are working just right. Only the Melda plugins have a serious problem. I still have the LM 18.1 system working well, so I'm not cornered.

Can you recommend a way to proceed to try to make the Melda plugins work in Xubuntu ? I can do some debugging if needed. I can also compile linvst sources if needed. OTOH, I do not know that much about wine-staging and winetricks (if winetricks have any role to play in that).
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Re: Major problem : Latest linvst / wine-staging

Post by ubuntuuser »

I can add a workaround to LinVst that doesn't close the Melda vst editor.

It seems to work but it's not the recommended thing to do as regards dealing with a vst plugins editor, but if it works then it works I suppose.

Edit: I've added the Melda workaround to the LinVst code.
jonetsu
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Re: Major problem : Latest linvst / wine-staging

Post by jonetsu »

Thanks, this actually works.

I'm interested to know just a bit about the technical aspect. Why would this be considered a workaround ?
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Re: [SOLVED] Major problem : Latest linvst / wine-staging

Post by ubuntuuser »

The Daw sends a command to the plugin to open it's editor (it's GUI) and then the Daw displays the plugins GUI in the Daws plugin window.

When the Daws plugin window is closed, the Daw sends a command to the plugin to close it's editor and it's this part that causes some sort of problem with Melda/Wine, so it needs a workaround to avoid closing the Melda editor or delaying the Melda editor closing.
nmimagenysonido
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Re: Major problem : Latest linvst / wine-staging

Post by nmimagenysonido »

jonetsu wrote:Thanks, this actually works.

I'm interested to know just a bit about the technical aspect. Why would this be considered a workaround ?
Hi. First of all i'm really newbie in linux/audio universe. So there's a lot of things that perhaps i missed. I'm from Argentina too, so my english is poor!

I'm having the same problem in Bitwig 3 with Waves v9 Plugins. They work nice in other DAWs (like Reaper) but in Bitwig crashed when I minimize the pop up window with the Plugin's GUI. I've tried with Jack and ALSA drivers and it's the same thing. I saw that it's the same behavior described here and you said it's solved.

So, how do you make this: "so it needs a workaround to avoid closing the Melda editor or delaying the Melda editor closing"??

Thanks a lot!
jonetsu
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Re: Major problem : Latest linvst / wine-staging

Post by jonetsu »

nmimagenysonido wrote: So, how do you make this: "so it needs a workaround to avoid closing the Melda editor or delaying the Melda editor closing"??
Hi, the Melda plugins are not actually crashing when minimized. The only thing is that once resized, the resizing does not take effect until the plugin is minimized and then brought back to view. Which is a couple of mouse clicks that I consider being a workaround as they would resize automatically and properly on Windows.

So this is not the same use case. I'm still using Bitwig 2.4.3, a bit wary to upgrade to 3.x, and I d o not run ant Waves plugins, which could very well be quite different in conception and implementation from the Melda plugins.

Cheers.
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