VSTPlugin v0.5.4 released!

john-d-murphy · November 29, 2022, 12:44am

Put in an issue!
I was able to recreate it today - sorry for the noisy log, I picked a bad synth to load.

pikseliahky · August 18, 2023, 3:51pm

Not sure if this is the right thread, but: I am wondering, if it is somehow possible to generate and send MIDI events to the VSTPlugin Ugen at audio rate (such as mc.midiplayer~ in Max)?

Spacechild1 · August 18, 2023, 10:53pm

Hi, MIDI events can be sent at any rate if scheduled as OSC bundles (the \vst_midi Event type does this automatically).

jamshark70 · August 19, 2023, 12:45am

mc.midiplayer~ accepts audio signals as input and produces (presumably accurately-timed) MIDI messages for vst~ as output. There is no exact analog to this in SuperCollider.

However, messages to the server are timestamped. I confirmed through testing that the timestamp accuracy for VSTPlugin is accurate within control blocks. (I set control block size to 512 – block duration is 512/48000 = 0.01066667 – then I sequenced notes with a non-multiple 0.065 seconds between notes. Because it’s a non-multiple, if timing were quantized to control blocks, you’d see ~0.06 then ~0.07. Instead, the performance of the MIDI notes was consistent, proving that we get sub-control-block accuracy without doing anything special.)

That is, SC’s timing model is better than Max’s; we don’t need Max’s “audio-rate sequencing” workaround for good timing.

hjh

Spacechild1 · August 19, 2023, 2:01am

Neither does Pd, BTW! I haven’t really checked, but I think Max/MSP cannot do this because the message scheduler runs independently from DSP processing. In Pd, on the other hand, the scheduler runs synchronously to DSP processing, so [vstplugin~] can simply use the logical time to generate the necessary offset.

jamshark70 · August 19, 2023, 2:55am

This came as a surprise to me in Pd – I thought Pd’s control messages were quantized to control blocks, but [delay] and similar objects do schedule according to logical time, with sub-block accuracy.

My SC test goes like this:

s.options.blockSize = 512;  // ~= 0.01 or 0.011 sec
s.boot;

(
SynthDef(\vst, { |out = 0|
	Out.ar(out, VSTPlugin.ar(numOut: 2));
}).add;

SynthDef(\offsetOut, { |out = 0, freq = 440, amp = 0.1|
	var sig = SinOsc.ar(freq) * EnvGen.ar(Env.perc(0.001, 0.08), doneAction: 2);
	OffsetOut.ar(out, sig * amp);
}).add;

SynthDef(\normalOut, { |out = 0, freq = 440, amp = 0.1|
	var sig = SinOsc.ar(freq) * EnvGen.ar(Env.perc(0.001, 0.08), doneAction: 2);
	Out.ar(out, sig * amp);
}).add;
)

// prepare VST: run these one by one
a = Synth(\vst);

c = VSTPluginController(a);

c.open("Vital.vst3");

c.editor;

… and set up a synth patch with a very short envelope (like 10 ms decay, 0 sustain).

~normalOutBus = Bus.audio(s, 1);
~offsetOutBus = Bus.audio(s, 1);
~vstBus = Bus.audio(s, 2);
a.set(\out, ~vstBus);

(
p = Ppar([
	Pbind(
		\instrument, \normalOut,
		\freq, 880,
		\dur, 0.065,  // at 44.1 kHz, maybe 0.064 or 0.063 would be better
		\amp, 0.1,
		\out, ~normalOutBus
	),
	Pbind(
		\instrument, \offsetOut,
		\freq, 440,
		\dur, 0.065,  // at 44.1 kHz, maybe 0.064 or 0.063 would be better
		\amp, 0.1,
		\out, ~offsetOutBus
	),
	Pbind(
		\type, \vst_midi, \vst, c,
		\freq, 220,
		\dur, 0.065,  // at 44.1 kHz, maybe 0.064 or 0.063 would be better
		\amp, 0.8
	)
]).play;
)

// record some of that
b = Buffer.alloc(s, s.sampleRate, 3);

{ RecordBuf.ar(In.ar([~normalOutBus, ~offsetOutBus, ~vstBus], 1), b, loop: 0, doneAction: 2) }.play(s.defaultGroup, 1000, addAction: \addAfter);

// wait 1 sec, then
p.stop;

b.write(thisProcess.nowExecutingPath.dirname +/+ "23-0819-vst-timing.wav", headerFormat: "wav", sampleFormat: "int16");

[b, ~normalOutBus, ~offsetOutBus, ~vstBus, a].do(_.free);

Then in the file, channel 0’s notes are quantized to block boundaries, 1’s notes match the equally-spaced timestamps, and 2’s notes come from VSTPlugin.

… and conspicuously, in the first channel, occasionally there is a longer time delta (i.e. poor timing has been reproduced) that is not found in the OffsetOut and VST channels, which are in perfect sync (i.e. VSTPlugin doesn’t suffer from that problem).

@pikseliahky Conclusion: It’s done correctly for you, so, don’t worry about it.

hjh

pikseliahky · August 19, 2023, 7:14am

That is great, thank you very much for your explanations!

kev · December 16, 2023, 11:30pm

Hi! First time poster here!

I’m trying to run the VSTPlugin extension in SC and running into some issues when I run VSTPlugin.search;. I’m on an M1 mac.

Taking a step back, here are my steps to have gotten this far.

I first tried to download the mac binary for VSTPlugin-0.54 here.

When I extract that into my Extensions folder, follow the steps to workaround macOS Gatekeeper, and compile my class library, I get this error/warning:

*** ERROR: dlopen '/Users/kevin/Library/Application Support/SuperCollider/Extensions/VSTPlugin/plugins/VSTPlugin.scx' err 'dlopen(/Users/kevin/Library/Application Support/SuperCollider/Extensions/VSTPlugin/plugins/VSTPlugin.scx, 0x0002): tried: '/Users/kevin/Library/Application Support/SuperCollider/Extensions/VSTPlugin/plugins/VSTPlugin.scx' (mach-o file, but is an incompatible architecture (have 'x86_64', need 'arm64')), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/Users/kevin/Library/Application Support/SuperCollider/Extensions/VSTPlugin/plugins/VSTPlugin.scx' (no such file), '/Users/kevin/Library/Application Support/SuperCollider/Extensions/VSTPlugin/plugins/VSTPlugin.scx' (mach-o file, but is an incompatible architecture (have 'x86_64', need 'arm64'))'
*** ERROR: dlopen '/Users/kevin/Library/Application Support/SuperCollider/Extensions/VSTPlugin/plugins/VSTPlugin_supernova.scx' err 'dlopen(/Users/kevin/Library/Application Support/SuperCollider/Extensions/VSTPlugin/plugins/VSTPlugin_supernova.scx, 0x0002): tried: '/Users/kevin/Library/Application Support/SuperCollider/Extensions/VSTPlugin/plugins/VSTPlugin_supernova.scx' (mach-o file, but is an incompatible architecture (have 'x86_64', need 'arm64')), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/Users/kevin/Library/Application Support/SuperCollider/Extensions/VSTPlugin/plugins/VSTPlugin_supernova.scx' (no such file), '/Users/kevin/Library/Application Support/SuperCollider/Extensions/VSTPlugin/plugins/VSTPlugin_supernova.scx' (mach-o file, but is an incompatible architecture (have 'x86_64', need 'arm64'))'

So I used sc-plugins-build-scripts from this post to build with arm64. Thank you @madskjeldgaard! I copied the resulting folder into my Extensions folder and that allowed it to compile without errors. However, I noticed that there wasn’t a plugins folder in there.

In any case, whether I compiled the Extension extracted from the binary or that I compiled with the script, I get this error when I run VSTPlugin.search::

FAILURE IN SERVER /cmd failed
ERROR: Failed to read tmp file!

It looked like the same issue as this but without the same resolution.

Would anyone be able to offer any guidance as to the next troubleshooting steps? Thanks!

Spacechild1 · December 17, 2023, 11:24pm

Hi, when I released VSTPlugin v0.5.4, our CI system did not have a machine that could produce macOS ARM binaries. Luckily, this has changed, but I forgot to upload new binaries to the release page.

I just added links for universal macOS binaries: v0.5.4 · Pure Data libraries / vstplugin · GitLab

Please try and report back!

kev · December 18, 2023, 3:35am

This worked great!! Thank you so much @Spacechild1!

Spacechild1 · December 18, 2023, 3:53am

Glad to hear it works!

Bubo · December 29, 2023, 10:53am

I am facing the same issue by installing through the released binaries. VSTPlugin lives at /Users/bubo/Library/Application Support/SuperCollider/Extensions/VSTPlugin on MacOS. I authorized the various binaries through the security panel as is the case for most unsigned binaries:

FAILURE IN SERVER /cmd failed
ERROR: Failed to read tmp file!

Spacechild1 · December 29, 2023, 5:07pm

FAILURE IN SERVER /cmd failed
ERROR: Failed to read tmp file!

Please post the full console output (since the start of the server). Are sure you installed the right binaries?

I authorized the various binaries through the security panel as is the case for most unsigned binaries:

This shouldn’t be necessary with the new binaries.

Bubo · December 30, 2023, 5:52pm

Sure, here you go:


*** Welcome to SuperCollider 3.13.0. *** For help press Cmd-D.
SCDoc: Indexing help-files...
SCDoc: Indexed 2377 documents in 2.15 seconds
-> localhost
Booting server 'localhost' on address 127.0.0.1:57110.
VSTPlugin 0.5.4
read cache file /Users/bubo/.VSTPlugin/cache.ini
Found 0 LADSPA plugins
Number of Devices: 9
   0 : ...
   9 : ...
"Micro MacBook Pro" Input Device
   Streams: 1
      0  channels 1

"Haut-parleurs MacBook Pro" Output Device
   Streams: 1
      0  channels 2

SC_AudioDriver: sample rate = 48000.000000, driver's block size = 512
SuperCollider 3 server ready.
Requested notification messages from server 'localhost'
localhost: server process's maxLogins (1) matches with my options.
localhost: keeping clientID (0) as confirmed by server process.
Shared memory server interface initialized
-> VSTPlugin
searching in '/Users/bubo/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST'...
'/Users/bubo/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/Rnbo PlateReverb.vst3' is black-listed.
found 0 plugins
searching in '/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST'...
'/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/ADSR Sample Manager.vst' is black-listed.
**'Long list of over 100 plugins all black-listed'**
found 0 plugins

In doubt, I have re-downloaded the latest version v0.5.4 and the result is similar. I also had to authorize the binaries again through the security panel.

Note: The code I use to generate this output is:

s.boot;
VSTPlugin.search;

My machine is a MacBook Pro Intel 2020 on Ventura 13.6.3.

Spacechild1 · December 30, 2023, 8:28pm

Ok, now it seems that you have correctly installed the binaries.

In doubt, I have re-downloaded the latest version v0.5.4 and the result is similar.

Which version did you download, i.e. what’s the name of the .zip file?

I also had to authorize the binaries again through the security panel.

This really shouldn’t happen. The SC app contains the necessary attributes to allow loading of unsigned and unnotarized plugins. ~~It would be great if you could open an issue on GitHub:~~ Issues · supercollider/supercollider · GitHub
EDIT: I just reopened Allow to load unsigned/unnotarized plugins on macOS · Issue #6132 · supercollider/supercollider · GitHub and added a link to your post.

Long list of over 100 plugins all black-listed’

Please try the following instructions in the README: https://git.iem.at/pd/vstplugin#macos-1015

Spacechild1 · December 30, 2023, 8:38pm

I also had to authorize the binaries again through the security panel.

Which binaries exactly?

Bubo · December 30, 2023, 10:05pm

The zip file name is VSTPlugin_v0.5.4_macOS_universal.zip.

From what I can remember, .scx files. The popup appears when booting the server. Most likely all files from the VSTPlugin/plugins folder.

I followed your instructions and authorized everything under /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3. After that, I runned VSTPlugin.clear and VSTPlugin.search. Another security popup appeared: the usual one with unauthorized binaries that could be malware. Meanwhile, the scan was still going on and I authorized it mid-process.

VSTPlugin now finds 98 plugins but some of them are still black-listed for no apparent reason, like Uhe Diva or Artura Matrix-12 (even though I have their whole collection installed and authorized). It’s already a huge progress

Spacechild1 · December 31, 2023, 9:47am

Cool!

Can you do me a big favor and provide some definite proof that you had to explicitly authorize the .scx file(s), i.e. by posting screenshots of the OS popups and security panel. (You probably need to delete and reinstall VSTPlugin for this purpose.)

EDIT: let’s move this to a private thread. Just send me a PM!

VSTPlugin now finds 98 plugins but some of them are still black-listed for no apparent reason’

Please open an issue at Issues · Pure Data libraries / vstplugin · GitLab and list the offending plugins. Start a clean search (VSTPlugin.clear; VSTPlugin.search) and copy the relevant lines of the console output.

Spacechild1 · January 8, 2024, 11:14am

I have finally found the reason for these security warnings: Allow to load unsigned/unnotarized plugins on macOS · Issue #6132 · supercollider/supercollider · GitHub. I have added appropriate notes to the release page.

Also, I have uploaded new binaries because the old ones accidentally had no amd64 plugin bridge (which would cause probe errors for Intel plugins on Apple Silicon).