Biotic VSTi-now native FS VST3 x64

[nix]

OK- I'll pass this on and pm if he needs more detail
Thanks

[adamszabo]

I am going to install a fresh windows on my computer, and not update it at all so it wont install any libraries and I will try the vsts myself, I need to get to the bottom of this because none of this makes any sense.

[nix]

I was just looking at task manager again,
and I have a modern machine- an i9 7900x-
maybe something is amiss.
Reason is just sucking cycles(20%+), and Reaper is totally different(nearly idle1.8%).
The figures are for all cores combined.

Thanks for looking at this Adam!
I don't recommend a fresh Windows unless you have a spare machine though,
maybe that would be unnecessary I hope, coz of such hassle.
If we really need to- I have the install disc and an old system

[adamszabo]

Luckily I just bought a new SSD and I planned to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 anyway so this is a perfect chance to check out what the hell is going on. I will dual boot it so I can export plugins from Windows 7 and try them in windows 10 and see what I have to install to make the plugins work.

[nix]

OK cool, ideal.
We are not sure if Tula's issue is due to a dependency.
Will talk to Maik when he's got some time.
I'm pretty sure both of us(Tula and me) are willing to share our .dwi with you

[tulamide]

Here's more info, that proves it has something to do with externals:

Today I found out that Cakewalk Sonar is now free to use, and so I downloaded and installed it. It took some time and I couldn't see everything it installed, but when it was ready I started it and the VST scanning took progress. To my surprise, both, Viper and Biotic, were available afterwards. I tested them and they seemed to work (Biotic only the first 4 presets, the rest is messed up with an empty ui -backgrounds only- and just audio crackles). But when I tried to exit, a bluescreen occured. It was due to Cakewalk only closing the window while the process(es) kept running.

After restart and a long HDD scan+repair, I tried Reaper, just for fun. Guess what, they were scanned now successfully and could be used in Reaper as well. However, when exiting, Reaper also only closed the window while the processes kept running at unusual 60% CPU load in total. Only this time I could stop them with the task manager instead of another blue screen.

Whatever dependencies Cakewalk installed, it seems it were the ones that Flowstone plugins also need. But the issues I got were new as well. So either they were introduced by the installed externals, or by the plugins (or both in conjunction). I hope, MyCo gets to read this. He can't solve issues, if us plugin developers don't report them!

[MyCo]

Any Windows with somehow modern Software on it should be able to load FS VSTs in 32/64bit. The reason is, we are using a "modern" (ehm... 5 years old by now) compiler from Microsoft. This compiler like any older versions of it has a dependency on a runtime DLL (those start with msvcr and followed by 3 digit number). Win10 has the correct version always preinstalled, as you would need it anyway for any modern programm build with MS Visual Studio.
However older Windows versions might not have this runtime unless another program added it with its installer.

So I guess Cakewalk just installed a runtime... you can check that if you go to "App & Features" (where you can see all the stuff you've installed), and you'll see quite a lot of "Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable" installers. There should be one being installed at the same time as Cakewalk.

For FS Beta & Alphas you would need this one:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/downloa ... x?id=40784

You would have to install both 32 & 64bit version of this package...

To the bluescreen thing... I don't know, that's very odd thing. Although I'm developing software and fuck up quite a lot I haven't seen a BSOD for almost 10 years. In fact they can only be caused at Kernel level, and not in user space. So either a driver is broken or hardware is dying.

[nix]

Thanks for updating us Tulamide- hmm,
- with Biotic's presets being wonky,
I was only using the first one. So only the first preset init may have values set.
If the init preset is copied to any other slot, it should work though.
The controls disappear because they have no colour values preset.

This was kind of lazy of me, but it is ready to have presets written.

edit- on my system Cubase and Reason need multithreading off, or the CPU is radical. This may not be just FS plugins though.

[tulamide]

Win10 has the correct version always preinstalled, as you would need it anyway for any modern programm build with MS Visual Studio.

To the bluescreen thing... I don't know, that's very odd thing. Although I'm developing software and fuck up quite a lot I haven't seen a BSOD for almost 10 years. In fact they can only be caused at Kernel level, and not in user space. So either a driver is broken or hardware is dying.

First, thanks for reading! You are not quite correct though. I have Win 10 Pro and obviously it did not have them pre-installed. Also, if this is an issue with older systems (musicians just love Win 7), it would be better to bundle the msvcr installer with each plugin (just like Cakewalk did), instead of hoping that they will be installed already. If I understand it correctly, it installs only missing files, so can't do any harm?

Yes the blue screen really frightened me! I haven't seen one either in at least a decade! I can report that the Win 10 one is much less blue and uses an emoji (sad face) and modern screen resolution. I'm just glad you mentioned a possible driver issue, because now I think that due to the incomplete closing process, ASIO4ALL might have been in an undefined state. At least I hope so!

[tulamide]

Thanks for updating us Tulamide- hmm,
- with Biotic's presets being wonky,
I was only using the first one. So only the first preset init may have values set.
If the init preset is copied to any other slot, it should work though.
The controls disappear because they have no colour values preset.

This was kind of lazy of me, but it is ready to have presets written.

edit- on my system Cubase and Reason need multithreading off, or the CPU is radical. This may not be just FS plugins though.

Oh, I see. Thanks for the explanation. You should however place some initial values at all presets you offer. It is much less irritating