Delay Compensation bug in PT11 with AOS plug-ins (fixed in PT 11.2.1)

[nigelpry]

Tim, your .02 of, in your own words, 'pure speculation' is posted for what purpose?

To irritate people who are already struggling with the problem?

To dampen any hope they may have that Avid will actually get its act together and sort the problem out?

To display to the world your innate pessimism?

I am curious ... what leads you to suspect that the problem will require plugin rewrites? Many plugins are combo 32bit/64bit AAX plugins, that work without the same issue in Pro Tools 10.

I'm happy to speculate that no plugin rewriting will be necessary, as the problem is wholly within Pro Tools 11 itself.

Does my speculation have any more merit than yours? Well at least it is based on an underlying fact that the very same AAX plugins work fine in Pro Tools 10.

What is your speculation based on?

Unless there is some issue that only exists, and has to exist, solely within the code comprising the 64bit part of the plugin, then it is difficult to see why every plugin would need to be rewritten.

Plugins will use common code for both 32bit and 64bit use as much as possible, otherwise there would be no benefit in having a single plugin that works in both Pro Tools 10 and 11. I imagine that the bulk of the plugin's code will be common, and called by the 32bit and 64bit 'delivery wrapping' that allows it to communicate with whichever Pro Tools version is currently running.

And, so, I also speculate that the problem will be fixed and released as a 11.x update, not held back until the release of Pro Tools 12.

Why? .... well I speculate that Avid well knows what a showstopper this problem is, and also knows that anyone affected is unlikely to take the leap of faith necessary to upgrade to Pro Tools 12 if a business plan is demonstrated that involves hanging people out to dry by only fixing fundamental problems via 'paid for' version upgrades.

That's my £0.02 worth of speculation for today ;-)

[rainsong]

After spending far too much time experimenting and cursing at my computer (seriously...what a ridiculous bug), I came up with a workaround today for EZ Drummer multi-outs that took me a while to set up the first time, but I think will work for me from now on as part of a template until Avid finally fixes this.

First, I tried the suggestion of using empty aux's as tunnels between EZ Drummer's multi-outs and another aux with the desired plugins. This sort of worked for me, but not in relation to other tracks and not in a consistent manner.

So... Here's what I did. Apologies if someone else did this same thing and I missed it.

First create 8 stereo busses named EZD1 thru EZD8. Then make 8 aux channels, assigning the output to EZD1 thru EZD8 consecutively. Place a *new separate instance* of EZDrummer as a plugin on each of those aux channels. Then in each separate EZ Drummer instance, solo the desired channel in EZ Drummer's mixer (leaving the outputs in the EZ Drummer mixer to "Track 1"). Also, to save on memory usage, only load the drum that track's bus will be using.

So, on aux EZD1, I inserted EZ Drummer. In EZ Drummer, I loaded my desired kit, then I loaded the "None" preset (so no drum samples are loaded). Then I select my desired kick drum, and on the EZ Drummer mixer, I solo'd just the kick channel. Then I repeated this for each EZD aux track in Pro Tools. Note, for overheads and rooms, you'll have to load the whole kit (and solo just the overheads or room channels).

After that, you've got 8 instances of EZ Drummer outputting to separate aux's which output to separate busses.

Now, make 8 stereo (or some mono, if you wish for direct mic sample tracks) aux tracks with EZD1 thru EZD8 as their inputs. These are the tracks you'll be able to put plugins on and not have the ADC all screwed up.

Finally, to make it functional. Create a MIDI track. Assign the output of that MIDI track to "EZdrummer 1 channel 1" through "EZdrummer 8 channel 1" by first selecting "EZdrummer 1 channel 1" and then control-shift clicking each of the next 7 MIDI channels to add them to the MIDI track's output assignment.

Done.

It's not perfect and its a lengthy setup (the first time anyway), but so far it's working and totally in sync for me. I wasn't sure if the CPU hit of 8 instances of EZ Drummer would be too big to pull this off, but my 2010 6-core Mac Pro does all this with a hit of about 5-7% total.

I think its absolutely ridiculous and insulting that a bug this huge has gone unfixed this long, and this probably won't help for all VI's (i.e., Maschine, etc), but at least EZ Drummer has become useable for me again. If I hadn't made this work, I was about to jump back to PT10. Or seriously consider another DAW.

[StratoBobster]

Hi Rainsong - How are you dealing with Overheads and Room?

[Intransit]

These last few 'workaround' suggestions just highlight how ridiculous this bug is.

[rainsong]

With overheads and rooms you have to load up the whole kit on those plugin instances and then just solo the overhead or room channels.

One thing I hadn't thought of when I first did this...you lose the ability to easily use the EZD MIDI beats/fills/etc. if you have it set to this way when you're programming. But so far I've been making an extra EZD track with no multi-outs while programming and then copying the MIDI to the new EZD track after the song is programmed (or before it's mixed anyway).

Seriously hope there's a fix for this soon. I'd rather spend my mental energy being creative with music, not coming up with technical workarounds for software bugs.

[mesaone]

Would it work if you create a midi track and set it to multiple outputs (every available instance of the plug-in)?

[rainsong]

Originally Posted by mesaone

Would it work if you create a midi track and set it to multiple outputs (every available instance of the plug-in)?

That's what I did. It all works, except that there's not one "master" plugin that you can audition EZDrummer MIDI files on, etc. But once your MIDI data is there it's all in sync at least.

[Niilo Nuori]

Originally Posted by Intransit

These last few 'workaround' suggestions just highlight how ridiculous this bug is.

Not only that but how poorly PT11 was tested before it went out

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Niilo Nuori

Not only that but how poorly PT11 was tested before it went out

I wouldn't say it was poorly tested, because I understand how major rewrite we're talking about. It needed to be released at certain date so that 3rd parties have a platform to build their plugs against. Should Avid have waited for all bugs to be fixed, it would have never been released.

Avid acknowledged this by bundling PT10 license with all PT11 purchases. I'm happy with PT11 and could not very easily go back to PT10 anymore, but sure if someone else faces a certain PT11 bug very often it surely sucks.

64-bit Protools is less than a year old now. Give it some time...

[Numi]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Should Avid have waited for all bugs to be fixed, it would have never been released.

Thanks for your reply, but I think the original point was.. How did such a major bug, such as this…get missed, and then released(or maybe wasn't missed, and released anyways)?

Not so much all the bugs should have been ironed out before the PT11 release.

I believe most of the members on this forum are bright enough to know better than that.