My thoughts about the current VST(i) problems

[Saga Musix]

Today, I had the following idea:

in the sound setup tab, add a checkbox

• close audio device and stop vsts
  that would be the current behaviour.
  if this is disabled, the Stop and Pause buttons will only cut off all instruments and the audio device remains active (like in other applications). if there's something stuck, a "PANIC!" button in the menu bar would be appropriate.
  
  you thoughts?

[LPChip]

I already suggested this once to Rewbs, and the only reason he didn't made is because he didn't know enough of the VST technology to correctly implement it.

If you do, then I certainly welcome such feature. It'll make playback more responsive too, cus at the start, the VSTi's don't require reinitialisation anymore.

[Saga Musix]

i guess that the only thing you'd have to do would be to send a noteoff for every of the 128 notes to every active VST...?

[psishock]

i guess that the only thing you'd have to do would be to send a noteoff for every of the 128 notes to every active VST...?

Not entirely sure what you have mean by that (and why 128 note exactly). Basically if you give a note off command to every VST instrument, that would be a proper way. VST effects should carry on their jobs after the stop or pause buttons are pressed (delays, reverbs example). What will happen' in real time if you send the note off command to VST effect? Not much i assume, so it's really not necessary to do so in stop/pause key triggering. Also, there are a lot of situations when the VST instrument is set to continual loop mode (not sustain), so a single note off command will simply not bring it out from that loop... we need to deal with this problem also (we're still at stop/pause key triggering, not in real time playing), and i think this sound trouble.
The second big problem is, when the VST instrument is not being used, it should automatically go to suspend (bypass) mode, so that it won't eat any processing power at all. Sure, that you can manually turn the feature off, but that's really "pain in the ass" when you're in the middle in the work and have many (i mean many) of random VST(i) instances, in other words not an efficient solution.
One thing for sure, the current note cut for all command is one of the worst solutions, because it leads to many problems afterwards (i'm aware, that it was "invented" for samples, it works perfectly there, but not on VSTi-s). Note off for all sound much more friendly, but then, we still need do deal then with continual loops in VSTi-s.

If you got a chance to look, i strongly recommend to check the behavior and functionality in Renoise (in general). They are already archived virtually everything that we aim in to do OMPT now.
(sorry for the typos, i'm very drunk atm but trying to make sense.)

[LPChip]

It indeed isn't just a matter of sending some note-off's to the VSTi's. Cus how do you know which notes you need to terminate? There are invisible channels that you need to take into account.

If you have a note on channel 1 and another one on channel 1, with instrument note set to continue, it'll play the 2nd note in a virtual channel.

Unless ofcource, you're saying: just send a note-off for each possible note to all vsti's so that if there's an active one, it'll be muted anyway. That would work I think. The only still possible problem, is when a plugin crashes, it can't be muted anymore. But I guess it would be trial and error to see how this works.

[bvanoudtshoorn]

Um, as far as I know, there's actually a command you can send in MIDI to the VSTis named "All notes off".

[Saga Musix]

oh yeah, there's also a "cut all notes" thing, yes, i remember than from midi (didn't work sometimes, hehe...).
and why 128? simple - MIDI only knows 128 notes...

[doveraudio]

i sometimes have to wait out a synth or  effect to finish processing the audio it's intent on producing. and often times synth1 will (seemingly randomly) - just punch in with a ghost note at the beginning of a track. hmmm. i wonders if i could reproduce some examples tomorrow? and i'll ask around on kvr forum maybe for some answers... there a couple (ha!) vst/midi gurus over there that may have a solution. a couple at least come to mind who are always ready with some problem solving code for the daring.

[LPChip]

i sometimes have to wait out a synth or  effect to finish processing the audio it's intent on producing. and often times synth1 will (seemingly randomly) - just punch in with a ghost note at the beginning of a track. hmmm. i wonders if i could reproduce some examples tomorrow? and i'll ask around on kvr forum maybe for some answers... there a couple (ha!) vst/midi gurus over there that may have a solution. a couple at least come to mind who are always ready with some problem solving code for the daring.

The ghost notes are the last notes you played until you stop the song, but they're not dead because the buffer isn't emptied.

To clear the "queue" go to the instruments tab and play a note. This will trigger the stream to play and your notes will wear off.

Not only VSTi's can cause this, but also effects like a reverb or echo can cause this.

[Saga Musix]

There's nothing like ghost notes in MIDI, as it does not work like Impulse Tracker. If you stop all notes from C-0 to B-9 of an instrument, you should be able to cancel all playing notes in theory. It's of course much more complicated than a simple "cut all notes" command, if such exists in every VST...

[Rakib]

Which version of vst  does OMPT currently support?

[Saga Musix]

it "suppports" up to version 2.3. more or less.

[Rakib]

Ok, looked at medsoundstudio which has builtin discodsp sampler in the program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdyOSPd__J0&feature=channel