CALF plugins?

[GuntherT]

Hmmm....whose graph should I believe?

Yeah, I made that graph up. Right. My point is not that I "don't believe" x42, my point is that his issue with ardour+calf does not occur here with muse+calf. So I cannot regard his issue as a (significant) flaw at all, regardless of where his issue stems from. If I were using ardour, I may have had a different opinion.

Putting that aside, let's say x42 is wrong, and the CALF plugins are comprised of perfectly written code that the bumbling Ardour authors can't comprehend.

Straw man.

I don't believe you made the graph up, and I do believe you when you say you are not experiencing the issues x42 describes. The smiley face was meant to signal I was making a joke. If the CALF plugins work well for you, great! Keep using them. I am merely making the counterpoint that those who wish to avoid them have a merited reason for doing so. To each his own.

Perhaps that is a straw man argument, but my point was merely that even if the artifacts aren't audible or don't occur, why not use a set of plugins where there is no risk of it happening and whose GUIs are not destined to become non-functional over time?

[GuntherT]

Bashing CALF plugins is an at least 5 year old hobby of Ardour (and its commercial brother Mixbus) users

It is not my intent to bash CALF plugins, but it does seem there are legitimate technical issues that are a fair point of consideration when deciding to use them or an equivalent plugin by another author.

[Impostor]

Bashing CALF plugins is an at least 5 year old hobby of Ardour (and its commercial brother Mixbus) users :mrgreen:

Well, the well-documented flaws of Calf all seem to be traceable to Ardour and mixbus fora :)

[Impostor]

why not use a set of plugins where there is no risk of it happening and whose GUIs are not destined to become non-functional over time?

Maintained today, abandoned tomorrow. Could happen to LSP too...

And of course it's wise to look for replacements in case of Calf. I don't argue against that at all.

[GuntherT]

Maintained today, abandoned tomorrow. Could happen to LSP too...

Straw man.

True, but CALF was abandoned years ago while LSP is still making continuous releases, so those plugins will surely survive longer.

[Impostor]

Maintained today, abandoned tomorrow. Could happen to LSP too...

Straw man. :)

No, I wasn't misrepresenting your position. You seemingly did do that to mine by writing "let's say x42 is wrong, and the CALF plugins are comprised of perfectly written code that the bumbling Ardour authors can't comprehend", as if that were the gist of my post with the muse+calf test. And then arguing against their use because of their GTK2 dependent GUI, with which I happen to completely agree, while the subject of my post actually was "significant flaws in their code", not "replacing Calf is not a good idea".

:) :)

[GuntherT]

Fair. My understanding of what a straw man is seemingly incorrect. To clarify, I didn't intend to misrepresent your position or put words in your mouth. I was just pointing out that regardless where the truth lies on the topic of code quality, the GTK2 issue still exists and in my view, it alone is enough of a concern to avoid CALF plugins. However, it is clear others make great use of them, which is good to know as well. Cheers.

[bluebell]

Bashing CALF plugins is an at least 5 year old hobby of Ardour (and its commercial brother Mixbus) users

Well, the well-documented flaws of Calf all seem to be traceable to Ardour and mixbus fora

At least there are no feature requests for Qtractor from Ardour users like "Please make Qtractor crash when loading CALF plugins"

[sadko4u]

Maintained today, abandoned tomorrow. Could happen to LSP too...

To prevent LSP being suddenly abandoned, we need more developers who know how to deal with the code base.

[folderol]

Maintained today, abandoned tomorrow. Could happen to LSP too...

To prevent LSP being suddenly abandoned, we need more developers who know how to deal with the code base.

THIS!
It applies to all the software out there - including my pet project

[novalix]

Oh yeah, let's add another episode to the daw wars saga (not).

Following discussion.ardour.org in the last years i do not have the impression the devs delegate problems to the outside world. There have been a multitude of bug fixes due to problems in the handling of plugins. The other truth is, more often than not reported problems get forwarded and have to be fixed on the side of the plugin devs, which they often do when actively maintaining their software stack.

It seems a cold fact that the calf plugins are not actively maintained anymore. I am not happy about that.

[novalix]

That said, the problems of especially the multiband crossover filter implementation are well described and measured. They do introduce sonic artifacts.

That may be but in this time there are so many plugins that CREATE distortion and artifacts, and I wonder if a discussion about Calf Multiband Compressor artifacts is related to the real world and real music.

I am with x42:
"They can still be useful in some contexts. Just be aware there might be issue and trust your ears."

Multiband Compressors do change the sound a lot. The only thing that counts is: "Do I like the result?"

I want to be a believer in the trust-your-ears mantra.
But what does that mean for a dude like me, who every now and then works with an eq and only after a minute realizes that it's on bypass?

So my translation is: Constantly train your ears, so you can put trust in them.

A multiband compressors ability to change the sound (a lot) in my opinion should be dependent on the amount of compression you dial in and not on the pure existence of crossover points.

Throw on a calf multiband compressor with no compression dialed in. A/B what is going on. If you are not sure about what you are hearing, grab a crossover point and move it back and forth. That may help to identify the effect. Now decide if that's what you want over the whole timeline of a song.

[Impostor]

Fair. My understanding of what a straw man is seemingly incorrect. To clarify, I didn't intend to misrepresent your position or put words in your mouth. I was just pointing out that regardless where the truth lies on the topic of code quality, the GTK2 issue still exists and in my view, it alone is enough of a concern to avoid CALF plugins. However, it is clear others make great use of them, which is good to know as well. Cheers.

Hey, I'm just arguing for the fun of it. No need to take me seriously. I don't :)
I interpreted the term straw man argument a bit too liberally too.
I'll stop now.

[Impostor]

A multiband compressors ability to change the sound (a lot) in my opinion should be dependent on the amount of compression you dial in and not on the pure existence of crossover points.

I never use compressors, but there seems to be an equivalent "issue" with equalizers introducing phase shifting. Except, since when has that become a problem? Afaik, all analogue equalizers introduce phase shifting due to the workings of their electronic circuits. For dozens of years people have been using (and I still use) analogue equalizers, in studios as well as at home.

What I think, is that it is now regarded as a problem because dsp developers are perfectionists, and not because it is necessarily musically a problem. Any side effect of their coding not explicitly desired is unwanted, thus bad. At least, if I were a dsp coder that's probably how I'd regard it, being somewhat of a perfectionist myself.

[novalix]

Anything multiband in calf creates eq dips at the crossover points. That for itself does not create a whole lot of phasing. It does however change the frequency response which is usually not the intent of the user.
If one of those dips happens to be right there where the aggressive intensity (or sweetness) of the singers voice in the bridge part that gives you goosebumps sits, you might be disappointed about that.

As a follow-up: when you dial in compression/enhancement/whatever you then get uncalculated phase shifts between the bands.

Considering that multiband processing is often used on some kind of summing buss if not downright for mastering purposes, that is a land where you make subtle eq moves with wide bands, because you don't want possible phase shifts to get out of hand.

When you read the corresponding issue on calfs github, you can see that there is no denial of this being a problem (more an implicit acknowledgement). But no action has been taken. At least not from the calf folks. @sadko4u updated his code after explaining the math.