Hi.

I'm not sure which version of cubase had this problem first, but I think it's only the very last one, 7.5.30.

I'm full 64 Bit (vst, host, os) on Windows 7. In any and all of my project where there is a Synplant (v1.2.0 (185)) track, there is a brief interruption of the sound before the first note is played by Synplant, only the first time it is played.

Then I can listen to the full project any number of time and there will never be any interruption anymore.

I checked the AsioGuard status fo Synplant, and there is no difference whether it is on or off for the synth.

I guess this could be seen as a Cubase problem, but Synplant is the only VST giving me this trouble (or any trouble at all, for this matter).

What are your thoughts on this? Are you guys aware of any problem?

Thanks.

...and a whole month later....

Is Sonic Charge belly up in the water? Apparently not, you can still buy things.

I guess the word "support" does not mean what I thought, or this forum would not have that name...

Well, happy thanksgiving!

Cheers.

Sorry, but I have waited for Steinberg several months to have my Cubase test license extended. (Turned out that my contact at Steinberg had left the company. But my emails didn't bounce or anything.) I finally just received a new test license the other week, in the midst of a massive beta for upgrades to all our four products. Found several minor issues with the upgrades (that I would have loved to be able to solve earlier) but your particular problem was not one of them. Neither have we ever heard of anyone else with a similar problem. Does Microtonic behave the same way? They are built very similar.

Sorry, but don't BS me, your excuse doesn't cut it. A 5 seconds response telling "We are waiting for this or that..." would have been very welcome before a month went by.

Microtonic is definitively not behaving like Synplant regarding this problem. In the same project with one instance of Microtonic and several instances of Synplant, just after opening the project, Microtonic plays immediately as soon as I play a note on my MIDI keyboard. Synplant on the other hand takes almost a second before starting to play a sound, whichever instance I try first. Then, all instances play normally until I open the project again. (Same goes for any project containing an instance of Synplant.)

It looks like some kind of an incomplete initialisation. Devices > Plug-in informtation shows 64 as latency for Synplant and 60 for Microtonic. These values don't change later, after resuming normal behavior. ASIO-Guard disabled on both.

I'm not currently having any other issue with Sonic Charge synths, and this one isn't very annoying. No other troubles at all with other VSTis either. Do you think it might be CPU related (AMD Phenom II X6 1055T)?

I'm sorry if my reply sounded like a poor excuse. You caught me in a bit of a bad mood to be honest. I have been quite frustrated by the situation with Steinberg and (lack of serious) developer program for a long time. It is the one DAW we have had most problems with over the years (even more than Logic). Many of these problems are random in nature and difficult to reproduce. Some go away in minor upgrades while other ones appear. As I said I've finally been able to look up and fix a number of minor problems in Cubase for our upcoming updates, but I have not seen anything like you are describing.

And yes, I am sorry that Fredrik and I missed answering on this support thread directly. It happens and it's not acceptable and we need to improve how we work with this forum. We currently have four different channels for support (forum, support emails, facebook and twitter), and not being able to synchronize our support efforts over these systems is one of the problems we need to work on.

We are constantly working on improving our products in all hosts. Every issue that I hear about is noted down and I really do try to go through everything in due time.

Now about the actual problem. Nearly a second of silence is of course not acceptable. Synplant has 64 samples latency, as does Microtonic actually, but because we have had issues with the first transients when bouncing we report 60 to add a 0.1ms "headroom". In all other aspects they work the same way. They do not allocate any memory in real time. They do not use mutexes, but lock-free synchronization techniques. Synplant does clear it's reverb the first time around, but these are short delay lines and I've measured the CPU impact to be totally negligible. I can't see how it can be related to CPU architecture either.

I have no clue at the moment, but I'll make some more efforts in reproducing this on Monday. Trying different Cubase settings etc. Have you ever run Synplant in another host on your hardware?

I would also like to invite you to the beta test of our upcoming releases if you are interested, although I haven't made any changes to the Synplant audio engine since April as far as I can remember. Most changes are to Permut8 and Bitspeek. If you are interested, sign up to URL removed and let me know your chosen user name so that I can approve you.

- Magnus Lidström wrote:
I'm sorry if my reply sounded like a poor excuse. You caught me in a bit of a bad mood to be honest.

I might have bouts of short temper myself.

- Magnus Lidström wrote:
I have been quite frustrated by the situation with Steinberg and (lack of serious) developer program for a long time. It is the one DAW we have had most problems with over the years (even more than Logic).

I'm well aware of the shortcomings of Steinberg. As a user, I can see they don't care much about QA and have a general inclination to treat all bug reports as slander, and users as dimwit nuisances. There, I told you about my temper.

- Magnus Lidström wrote:
Many of these problems are random in nature and difficult to reproduce. Some go away in minor upgrades while other ones appear.

This one indeed appears to be of that variety.

- Magnus Lidström wrote:
And yes, I am sorry that Fredrik and I missed answering on this support thread directly.

Apology accepted. Sorry for my harsh tone.

- Magnus Lidström wrote:
We are constantly working on improving our products in all hosts. Every issue that I hear about is noted down and I really do try to go through everything in due time.

That is really good to hear. I'd hate to see your VST go unsupported. I use them a lot.

- Magnus Lidström wrote:
Now about the actual problem [...] I can't see how it can be related to CPU architecture either.

OK.

- Magnus Lidström wrote:
Have you ever run Synplant in another host on your hardware?

I looked before answering and unfortunately, none other than Cubase, (on Windows... can you tell I'm of the wrong crowd somehow?).

But I do have the last 3 version of Cubase and started some tests. Creating a simple project with only one instance of Synplant in Cubase 7.0.7: no problem. Saving that project and opening it in Cubase 7.5.30: still no problem. Now, trying a pristine new project in Cubase 7.5.30 with only Synplant: no problem either.

Interesting.

So I can reproduce that problem every time with existing projects, which depending on the case I might have converted through the succeeding versions of Cubase, but I can't create a project from scratch with these symptoms.

Going the other way, I stripped down a malfunctioning project to only one track with Synplant, no content at all. I can save it and reopen it and every time I'll get the 1s muting before playing the 1st note. Would you care to have a look? I might very well have made something stupid with some setting somewhere but I could not see anything, no insert, etc. (And I doubt I'd make the same mistake in many projects.) Tell me how to send you that project if you're interested.

- Magnus Lidström wrote:
I would also like to invite you to the beta test of our upcoming releases if you are interested,

Yes I am. Better that than waiting for updates later... I'm not sure I'll have much time, though. Same user name there than here.

Cheers

- Akod wrote:
Going the other way, I stripped down a malfunctioning project to only one track with Synplant, no content at all. I can save it and reopen it and every time I'll get the 1s muting before playing the 1st note. Would you care to have a look? I might very well have made something stupid with some setting somewhere but I could not see anything, no insert, etc. (And I doubt I'd make the same mistake in many projects.) Tell me how to send you that project if you're interested.

This is great news cause it means that I could possible reproduce the bug. Please, do send the project file either to support@soniccharge.com or simply attach it here (I believe it should be possible).

Yes I am. Better that than waiting for updates later... I'm not sure I'll have much time, though. Same user name there than here.

Good. I have authorized you now. Bear in mind that beta versions are generally a lot more sluggish than release versions. Also, you need to run our log-shipping software (BetaTracker) in the background while using them. Also, I am just about to upload new beta versions today, so wait for "Beta 2".

I just answered with a few project files by e-mail.

I have a small observation to add that render rather inconclusive my previous tests.

I tried to save the stripped down malfunctioning project with Synplant UI opened and then opening that new project and test again for the 1s lag before the first note. The lag was gone. So I tried again new projects from scratch in Cubase 7.5.30 and 7.0.7, but this time, saved the test projects with the plugin interface closed. Every time the interface is closed, the 1s lag is back.

I hope this helps narrow down the problem source.

Cheers.