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Problems with NS2 Mixdowns freezing
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I've had NS2 for a few weeks but just getting to the point of doing some mixdowns on tracks I'm working on. I have been constantly having issues where it will get halfway through the progress bar on the mixdown and slow to 0.4x real time, 0.3x or 0.0x realtime and then it will just hang forever and I have to quit the app and restart. Reading some on NS2 forum it seems to be related to AU plug ins in the project and people specifically mention Audio Damage plug ins. Well I do have a lot of Audio Damage effects that I'm using along with a couple of other AU effects. The current project I'm working in is all Obisdian and Slate for instruments.
Just curious if anyone else is having these mixdown issues using plug ins?
Comments
Yep. Audio Damage plugins have been the main culprit for me every time. I avoid them at this point.
What device are you on?
On my 2017 base iPad lowering my audio buffer size helped in some cases. Getting a10.5 Pro helped even more.
The latest model regular ipad
Freezing tracks would be great
I can survive without most but I need Replicant 2. But I'll remove all and replace with built in for now
Me too. Luckily, Replicant 2 is the Audio Damage plugin that has given me the least trouble with NS2. Grind being the worst.
Grind is definitely the worst in NS2. It makes NS2 pretty much unusable.
To avoid any issues with your track and to prevent corruption and data loss, the best way I’ve found is to just delete grind from your iPad.
Export all your tracks from NS2 (grind will obviously be missing) and then create a new blank project inNS2.
You can then reinstall grind and add it back to the tracks it’s missing from in another app.
Ns2 will then operate normally. Just avoid grind. And most other AD plugins unfortunately.
FWIW I have not had the same issues using grind or any other AD plugins with GarageBand.
So you could load all your stems from Ns2 in to GarageBand and put grind back on the tracks where needed and mix your track there.
Replicant works OK for me in NS2, I use it on most projects and can mixdown without issue.
One other plugin that can cause NS2 to freeze on mixdown is Delayrium.
I replaced all AD effects except for Replicant and able to mixdown now. The ones I was using that may be a problem are Eos and Dubstation. I guess I'll put one back at a time and see if it works. I'm pretty sure I had Eos on a mixdown that worked so I suspect Dubstation is the culprit. I have Grind but rarely use it
I know that this is not necessarily NS2’s fault but the way it handles misbehaving plug ins is pretty bad. It is resulting in some of us having had some pretty awful experiences using NS2 at times.
Not being able to use plugins that work fine on other hosts isn’t a great experience either.
When I started using ns2, the audio damage bundle was my only real auv3 fx library. Obviously I wanted to use them.
This has been known about for a very long time now. If audio damage aren’t going to fix their plug ins then Blip interactive need to put some checks in place to prevent the freezing. Not being able to save a project is a particularly unpleasant side effect of these audio damage+Ns2 issues. You can’t expect new users to know which combination of plug ins they shouldn’t be using in NS2.
Again, I’m not apportioning blame. But new users shouldn’t still be suffering from these issues a year down the line should they?
Blip and AD need to get together to fix this.
@klownshed on the flip side of that, you also can’t expect blip to handhold every possible plugin that has issues. Personally I’d rather him work on features that people want than trying to make other people’s plugins work. I’ve had problems with grind in BM3 as well. I don’t expect Matt to fix AD’s problems. New users have this sort of problem on all platforms, but I certainly don’t expect the host or DAW makers to run point on all these bad actor plugins.
I don’t expect anything.
But I would think it is in Blips interest to present an app to the public that doesn’t have major issues with certain well known plug ins. From the DAWn of DAWs, Most of the apps I’ve used have had mechanisms in place to prevent problematical plug ins from loading after they cause problems.
It’s an incredibly poor user experience to run into these issues as a user. Especially when the ‘bad actors’ work in all your other hosts.
The way in which NS2 freezes when you use AD plugins causes major difficulties. Ones which most users will rightly or wrongly blame the host for.
If the developers of the host apps are happy with that then fine. It’s their app after all.
But I can speak from personal experience. I wasted countless hours troubleshooting and losing very valuable, to me, time with these issues. They were very frustrating.
I don’t use NS2 on my iPad anymore as a result.
I recall another dev saying that when they support AU plugins in the future that they would list AUs with a little (!) (or something) next to the AU name to let the user know there are known issues with it. To me this would be great.
I've had plenty of problems in BM3 with plugins (including Grind). Solving for all possible scenarios for problematic plugins is a waste of the Host developers time. Doesn't matter if the plugin is popular or not. There are just too many to shake a stick at. I've had a handful of plugin problems in NS2, but none of caused near the issues for me as AD plugins. Matt can't fix those problems. Should he just deny the loading of any AD plugins to fix the problem? If AD doesn't want to work the issue, not much can be done from blip's side of things.
AD's plugins do not work flawlessly in all other hosts.
I certainly don't blame blip.
You certainly put in a metric shed load of time trying to sort the issue. You should be commended.
Conversely, I don't use AD plugins on my iPad as a result. But still use NS2
It's just one guy, and I believe not at full-time for economic reasons. Audio tracks is (and should remain, IMO) #1 priority.
My personal opinion (which means exactly nothing), is that simply freezing on any error condition, no matter the cause, is never OK in any program. If I were in this situation, I'd try to do everything possible in my code to gracefully handle such errors. I definitely wouldn't throw time after putting workarounds in to accommodate buggy plugins, but I'd absolutely to do everything i could to harden my program against such threats.
But, there is always only so much that can be done with the resources available. I'm blown away by how amazing NS2 is. I don't expect it to be perfect, but I bet it will always be approaching that. I'm totally willing to avoid buggy plugins for as long as it takes to get there. I'm especially glad that the focus remains on the plan, and that the plan is to get audio tracks done next.
Modstep always comes to mind when I think of lost focus. The day they decided to host IAA and AU apps is the day Modstep stopped progressing on its core strength. I can only imagine how many hours of developer effort after that day was diluted into chasing iOS and plugin bugs and workarounds. I can only imagine what Modstep would be today if that had never happened.
Bleh! Enough prognosticating. Even I'm thinking what a presumptuous dickhead I am.
I really wish this forum had hearts/likes as on elektronauts.com.
So many hearts I’d like to give.
If something doesn’t work for me I notify the devs and use something else that does work. Not going to waste my time troubleshooting. There are plenty of apps that perform essentially the same function in most cases.
...
...
I don’t expect Every plugin to work perfectly (although it would be lovely if they did!) but major crashes, file saving and freezing issues?
I’d want those situations worked around though. urgently.
As a priority.
Not necessarily ‘fixed’ but definitely worked around even if that just means detecting when a plugin has been naughty and disabling it (with a mechanism in place to re-enable it at the user’s risk).
That might not mean having to work around specific plugins but definitely working around whatever causes the issues in the first place.
Sure it takes time but we all have to do stuff at work that we’d rather not have to do but is important none the less.
That was probably me (at least I know that I suggested it and will definitely do it when AU support arrives in Xequence). It's a good thing for everyone: Users are spared grief and bad investments, and plugin developers get motivated to fix bugs
kindof like the "social score" you get in China... 
👍
I look forward to Xequence being an AU host :-)
#metoo! And sorry for the China remark... it's just there has been a time when that has been "featured" on German news at least 10 times a day for a week or so, so it has been burnt into my brain (as if that's anything "special" and other countries don't have that, either implicitly or explicitly...). But we're getting OT (my favorite hobby...)
I’m thinking of buying a gravel bike to commute to work. Any suggestions? ;-)
Little chance of that IMO.
X2 is basically perfect now. Modstep had more need to improve (IMO. No one shoot me please.) and tons of potential to grow. They also tried to support both IAA and AU. Just supporting AU seems to be hard enough.
Not that I think it's a good direction, but I also don't think @SevenSystems is going to screw it up.
I'd say the number of people hollering for audio tracks far outnumber those who are seriously impacted by the types of issues you're having. The impact on new sales by adding audio tracks is bigger I'm sure. That's hard to hear when you're the one on the short end of the stick, but totally makes sense to me.
Other hosts have real-time mixdown option to get around plugins that do not behave. But this is just a kludge as it should not be needed. I like SevenSystems idea of marking problem plugins, as long as this can be kept up to date. I think we need to start shouting more at the plugin authors to follow a standard and fix them. Also the host should do as much as possible to prevent freezing itself as the AUV3 plugins are designed to run on separate process so this should be preventable.
Actually that's a very good point: you can workaround this issue by adding NS2 as an input into AUM, and then recording the channel in AUM for a realtime mixdown. You could optionally add your mastering plugins in the chain after NS2 as well.
Wow, what a simple but super effective soulution !
Not sure if it applies to this specific case but there’s a feature of NS2 I’m the Mixdown section called “Wait For AUs to Load” with settings ranging from “No” (0sec) to “30sec”.
Had a couple AUs (not from AD) that gave me the same issues before I messed w/ this. Anything non-AD works just fine for me w/ only a 5sec buffer.
Might be worth a shot?