Author Topic: VST Plugin: Continously increasing memory consumption with FabFilter Saturn 2  (Read 9079 times)

hiccup

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And it works like a sharm with my other VST plugins like Pro-Q 3. That's why I turned to this forum and was looking for help. However, a decision has been made, and I accept this while being genuinly sad about it. And I understand MusicBee is non-commercial.

What you (and others) probably should also understand:

VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology.
It was developed and designed for multitrack DAW software. That is professional (and semi professional) software for multitrack recording, mixing and processing. (DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation)

VST was never intended to be used for simple stereo playback on players such as MusicBee.

We should consider it a marvel that plugins and players such as MusicBee make it possible to even use some VST plugins that are intended for these DAWs to begin with.
Some VST plugins will work, some won't. Some with limitations or issues.

Complaining about it, and even being 'unhappy' or 'sad' when some don't work properly or perhaps even not at all, to me shows that the complainant does not have a good understanding of what VST and most of its compliant plugins are designed and created for.
Last Edit: August 16, 2021, 09:49:56 PM by hiccup

JustSomeone

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What you (and others) probably should also understand:

VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology.
It was developed and designed for multitrack DAW software. That is professional (and semi professional) software for multitrack recording, mixing and processing. (DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation)

VST was never intended to be used for simple stereo playback on players such as MusicBee.

We should consider it a marvel that plugins and players such as MusicBee make it possible to even use some VST plugins that are intended for these DAWs to begin with.
Some VST plugins will work, some won't. Some with limitations or issues.

Complaining about it, and even being 'unhappy' or 'sad' when some don't work properly or perhaps even not at all, to me shows that the complainant does not have a good understanding of what VST and most of its compliant plugins are designed and created for.
Ok, so once more, let's try to straighten things out.

I'm perfectly familiar with what VST is or originally has been designed for. No need to educate me. So I'm aware that VST plugins are initially not built for being hosted by music players. However, MusicBee offers a VST host plugin. Thus, there is an indication for me as a user that MusicBee would support such use cases. So, of course, there is some expectations - or let's say hope - that it would perform with my preferred plugins.

After a while I found out that one of my favourite plugins seems to be not properly working with MusicBee. So I compiled a bug report, encouraged by the section in this forum explicitly asking for it. I've tried to write my report in a way to make it as easy as possible to reproduce the behavior as I have experienced it. I genuinly hope that we can agree upon that this initial post of mine is anything but a complaint.

1h after posting my report Steven stated that he won't take any action on it without any explanation or rational. This is his absolute right to do so. And the decision can be very reasonable from his point of view e.g. because of my use case being rare or because of dependencies on legacy third party libraries. Nevertheless, it was that response that left me disappointed. And I articulated exactly that with all due respect. So consider this as my open and honest feedback as one of your many users on the decision made and the communication style. Steven, you or anyone involved can take that feedback as food for thought for improvement, dismiss it or ignore it entirely. Totally up to you and genuinely fine with me whatsoever.

But I begin to get the impression, that you try to tell me that I have an obligation to be grateful for being "swiftly" turned down within 1h (as this would be any better than to be turned down after e.g. 2 days) and to ignore that potential bug because all the other great things with MusicBee. This is, frankly, bullshit. I can perfectly love MusicBee for all the great things it does (which I made absolutely clear in my posts I do) while recognising a bug which degrades my personal use case and looking for support. And as it is Steven's right to take no action upon my bug report without further explanation, it is my absolute right to be disappointed about that.

Apart from that, based on the decision made, and because the Saturn 2 plugin is important to me, I do exactly what even Steven himself told me to do, namely looking for an alternative to MusicBee. And fortunately JRiver and Audirvana seem to be two other music players working fine with my preferred plugins. Furthermore, FabFilter currently looks into the bug report I raised with them and investigates whether they can do something with reasonable effort on their end - although my use case does not belong to those use cases these plugins are originally built for and although they suspect the VST host to not clear the cache. Whatever the outcome is, and I personally think it is far more likely not to be the outcome I hope for, I feel valued as their user and customer. Having said that, I certainly respect the fact, that FabFilter is a whole team with paying customers while MusicBee seems to be developed by one man and offered for free.

I sincerely hope that we can settle this discussion now as I don't believe that it would take us anywhere useful anymore from here.
Last Edit: August 17, 2021, 07:16:30 PM by JustSomeone

sveakul

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Presented more as a "voice crying in the wilderness,"  have you updated your bass_vst.dll to version 2.4.1.1?  I "think" there were changes in the newer version regarding caching behavior; downloadable here: https://www.un4seen.com/stuff/bass_vst.zip

I assume from a previous post you are already using the July 2019 update of Steven's 1.0 VST host (which kept the 1.0 version but changed from the 2016 original).
Last Edit: August 17, 2021, 08:23:07 PM by sveakul

JustSomeone

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Presented more as a "voice crying in the wilderness,"  have you updated your bass_vst.dll to version 2.4.1.1?  I "think" there were changes in the newer version regarding caching behavior; downloadable here: https://www.un4seen.com/stuff/bass_vst.zip
Many thanks for your hint, sveakul. I just gave it a try and unfortunately no luck, the combination of MusicBee and Saturn 2 still shows the same behavior. Anyway, much appreciated!

I assume from a previous post you are already using the July 2019 update of Steven's 1.0 VST host (which kept the 1.0 version but changed from the 2016 original).
Yep, I've downloaded MusicBee as well as the VST and UPnP plugin from this website in May 2021.

hiccup

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But I begin to get the impression, that you try to tell me that I have an obligation to be grateful for being "swiftly" turned down within 1h (as this would be any better than to be turned down after e.g. 2 days) and to ignore that potential bug because all the other great things with MusicBee. This is, frankly, bullshit. I can perfectly love MusicBee for all the great things it does (which I made absolutely clear in my posts I do) while recognising a bug which degrades my personal use case and looking for support. And as it is Steven's right to take no action upon my bug report without further explanation, it is my absolute right to be disappointed about that.

Nope.
You really shouldn't feign being grateful if you aren't.

My responses to your posts were triggered because you:

- implied that the developer responded to your original post/request without him having a good understanding or having considered the underlying details.

He replied swiftly.
Not to your satisfaction, but unless you think you have a deep and better technical understanding of everything involved, you could accept and appreciate the prompt responses on this forum. Even by the developer himself.
Or you can be unhappy. As you were, and still seem to be.


- implied (and still do) that since there is a VST addon for MusicBee available, users should expect it to work perfectly with all sorts of VST plugins.

You are aware there are hundreds of them, right? Probably thousands.
And pretty much all of them are designed to be used in DAW studio production software.
(or maybe you know some that claim and advertise they will work perfectly on WinAmp/foobar2000/iTunes/MusicBee/et al. ?)
Posting and sharing with the community (and the developer) which ones work, or which ones don't is of course appreciated and can be useful.
But voicing being unhappy (or disgruntled or whatever) that some won't work, and complaining when that is the case and it can't/won't be addressed or solved for you is something else.


- implied that MusicBee (its developer) is not able to solve this for you since it is not commercial and paid-for software.

Again, by phrasing it like this, you are implying that in principle each and every VST plugin should not only work on professional DAW studio software, but on consumer audio players as well. And if it doesn't, it's likely a lack of programming skills, interest, time, or resources.
Which I believe is a very wrong assumption and standpoint.


My only intention to participate in this thread was to present a broader and alternative view on the matter.
I am not interested in having discussions with you, nor have any inclination to educate you.
It's just that I disagree with the tone and content of your posts, and I would not want other MusicBee users to read them and believe that you might be right, since nobody argued or contradicted your publicly shared opinions on this matter.
 
Last Edit: August 20, 2021, 10:36:22 PM by hiccup

JustSomeone

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Hm... thanks for sharing this openly, hiccup. I can't connect to some of the impressions and views you seem to have gotten from my posts, so may I ask further?

- implied that the developer responded to your original post/request without him having a good understanding or having considered the underlying details.

He replied swiftly.
Not to your satisfaction, but unless you think you have a deep and better technical understanding of everything involved, you could accept and appreciate the prompt responses on this forum. Even by the developer himself.
Or you can be unhappy. As you were, and still seem to be.
Where did you get the impression I would think that Steven responded to me without a good understanding?

That was never my thought or intention and would be quite arrogant of me if I would. The only assumption I made based on his response (from my point of view as IT professional, not being specialized in audio software but familiar with software development and IT management processes) is that within 1h he wouldn't have conducted a code inspection in a search for the root cause of the reported behavior. I made this assumption because I wouldn't be able to do that in that timeframe on my own code, especially when it comes to potential memory allocation issues which I find quite tricky to hunt down. However, what I usually can do within 1h is a prioritization of a bug report / request on a number of aspects. Which aspects would have been relevant for Steven to not further investigate for the root cause are not known to me as he didn't elaborate.

Furthermore, why do you think that someone needs to have a better understanding of the technology involved in order to be disappointed with her or his report not being further investigated?

From my point of view users or customers are not expected to have a better understanding of a product. However, if they emotionally connect with a product, of course there will be expectations for their use cases, and naturally there will be disappointments when expectations important to someone are not met. So, as long as things don't get personal, what's the big deal? There always will be expectations not being met. Having said that, I believe that providing a brief rational would help to understand a decision to not further investigate a user report.

- implied (and still do) that since there is a VST addon for MusicBee available, users should expect it to work perfectly with all sorts of VST plugins.

You are aware there are hundreds of them, right? Probably thousands.
And pretty much all of them are designed to be used in DAW studio production software.
(or maybe you know some that claim and advertise they will work perfectly on WinAmp/foobar2000/iTunes/MusicBee/et al. ?)
Posting and sharing with the community (and the developer) which ones work, or which ones don't is of course appreciated and can be useful.
But voicing being unhappy (or disgruntled or whatever) that some won't work, and complaining when that is the case and it can't/won't be addressed or solved for you is something else.
Well, I don't see it in this absolute terms. I don't expect that MusicBee would work smoothly with every and each of available VST plugins out of the box. My expectation is around the situation if someone finds and reports a potentially faulty behaviour with a concrete plugin. Let me elaborate:

Based on my experience there is a variety of different potential root causes for 2 pieces of software to not properly work together, even via standardized interfaces. Some of them can be related to the interface or to the interaction of the pieces of software. And the more parties involved (different developers for different pieces of software, other parties for interface standards etc.) the trickier to resolve. However, other root causes might be around a bug in only one of the software pieces, in this case the VST host or the plugin. (This bug may not surface when combined with another piece of software due to differences in interaction.) Such a potential root cause could be further looked into by a developer on his own within his piece of software. In this context, I personally do have an expectation that a developer of a still supported software is in principle willing to look into such kind of potential bugs. However, I see perfectly reasonable reasons to not look into a specific case - see my next comment below. So my expectation is not that something works flawlessly from the very beginning, or that something gets finally resolved for me, but that a developer is in principle (not in every concrete case) willing to look into a potential bug - with open result.

Can we agree on this or do you have a different view?

Do I get my point across that I make a difference between MusicBee throwing an error in combination with one of my favourite plugins and the response from Steven on my initial bug report? Am I understandable pointing out that I do not complain about the potential bug in the first place, but that I was unhappy with my report not being further looked into and no brief rational for it being provided?

- implied that MusicBee (its developer) is not able to solve this for you since it is not commercial and paid-for software.

Again, by phrasing it like this, you are implying that in principle each and every VST plugin should not only work on professional DAW studio software, but on consumer audio players as well. And if it doesn't, it's likely a lack of programming skills, interest, time, or resources.
Which I believe is a very wrong assumption and standpoint.
Where do you get the impression I would think that the developer is not "able" to solve this for me?

I've neither seen Steven in action nor have I ever had a glance at MusicBee's code. So how should I be in a position to judge Steven's programming skills. Anything in this direction would be nothing short of arrogance and ignorance.

In contrast, I see time and resources as prefectly valid reasons to not look into a specific user report. Genuinely, I'm not sarcastic about this. Time and resources are the main limits for not being able to work on all reports or requests and the reason for the need to prioritize. I myself prioritize every day for me and my teams based on time and resources. And I stated that in one of my early posts to indicate what I would understand as a reason for the decision being made. Furthermore, I see commercial software developers in general to have more resources availabe than the ones developing software in their spare time for free.

Regarding interest, that's where I make another difference between commercial and for free software. Again, no sarcasm, while being a tough argument to defend for commercial software, I personally consider interest as absolute legimite aspect of software shared for free. I could think of a couple of reasons to develop and maintain software in my spare time and offer it for free to others. And one of them is simply my personal interest in a coding challenge or a product I'd like to have for myself. And in such a case, for me interest would be the main aspect when deciding which things to work on.

Again, I pointed this out in my later response to you when mentioning the example of FabFilters response to my report in order to make clear, that I do not have the same level of expectations to a software offered for free than to a commercial software and that I would honestly understand if Steven would say something like "no interest to make MusicBee work with Saturn 2 in my spare time for free".

I am not interested in having discussions with you, nor have any inclination to educate you.
Thanks for clarifying this as it felt that way at times.
Last Edit: August 21, 2021, 08:58:41 AM by JustSomeone

hiccup

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I'm sorry but I am gonna leave it at this.
Thanks for sharing and explaining your opinions.
I think enough has been said about this now, and other users/readers can make up their own mind on the matter.

Steven

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JustSomeone

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try this version of mb_vst.dll
https://www.mediafire.com/file/smvaba4coqboamh/mb_VST.zip/file
unzip and replace the existing mb_vst.dll file in the Plugins folder
So many thanks, Steven! Just gave it a try and seems to work like a charm now. Highly appreciated!