Comments

pwppch wrote on 3/5/2005, 8:32 AM
When in surround mode, only plugins that support surround channels can be used on the master bus. Vegas supplies two - eq and WaveHammer.

Currently, third parties have not released surround capable plugins. We have communicated with Waves and others the details to add surround support, but alas, none have opted to support this.

Peter
Rednroll wrote on 3/5/2005, 11:45 AM
"Currently, third parties have not released surround capable plugins."

Ok, I'm confused. I almost considered purchasing a Waves surround plug bundle, but then I noticed it only supported TDM. So is it that Waves hasn't released a surround capable plugin, or is it that Vegas doesn't support TDM? Or Both? I also looked at the TC surround verb and saw that it natively supported Nuendo, or else you would need to buy the Powercore version. So would the TC powercore surround Verb not work in the master bus of Vegas? That's strange, that no third party vendor have yet developed surround plugs. I wanted Forge to support multitrack Wave format, so that I could start looking into doing some surround mastering. It looks like I'm a little premature on my asking, if I'ld only have Wavehammer to use as a plugin. It Makes me wonder how Wavelab 5 handles this, and the value in that feature?

My personally gripe and vision is that one day technology can be developed on a colaboratory basis. I mean how many plugin formats do we need? TDM, DX,VST, RTA. Technically speaking as a consumer, I have no clue as what the differences are between all these formats, but I think it's rediculous that a vendor has to choose one type to develop or spend a lot of extra development time making various versions. Even audio driver formats, ASIO, WDM, WAVE. Why did Steinberg have to develop their own driver? Why couldn't they have worked with Microsoft and made a Wave 2.0 driver, which would be both backwards compatible and have lower latency. I know the reasons why, but damn do we really need 4 or 5 different itterations of the same technology, or could we work together through something like the AES to come up with a standard format? Midi was the only studio technology that had the consumers best interest in mind when developed. Long live midi.

Could you imagine if there wasn't a redbook standard for audio CD's? Maybe a bad analogy because you do have CDA vs CDrom. But could you imagine? Damn, I can't play the latest Emimen CD because it was released with the CD-B format, and my player only plays CD-A format. I guess we got that now with DVD+R and DVD-R. Unfortunately I only have a rant and not a solution.

Sorry for straying OT,
Red
pwppch wrote on 3/5/2005, 1:53 PM
Ok, to be clear Red:

No third parties have released DX compatible Surround/Multichannel plugins as specified by the DX standard. (One exception : Cakewalk has two DX surround capable plugins. The Pantheon Verb which only works in SONAR and the sonitus Compressor.)

You know we don't support TDM or RTAS.

Nuendo/WaveLab/Steinberg : VST : We don't support VST in Vegas and don't support the surround formats in ACID or Forge 8.

>>My personally gripe and vision is that one day technology can be developed on a colaboratory basis.<<

Dream on. This is a cut throat business sector. The idea of working for the greater whole is absurd by the MI standards.

MS does not care about the MI channel.

Steinberg developed ASIO because it provided an archicture to do the types of things that an audio host needs. Digi has theirs as well - DAE.

Microsoft kinda/sorta opened the door to WDM by allowing WDM Kernel Streaming. It is a hack on top of things, and is not better than ASIO - regardless of what press/critic claims. Most - if not all - hardware has ASIO drivers, so the need for WDM KS was only to prevent Cakewalk from having to adopt Steinberg technology (which is royalty free BTW.) In the end, Cake had to support ASIO due to industry demands. They didn't want to, but they ended up being an island when it came to WDM KS. (We actually started the whole WDM KS with Cakewalk, but the technology has enough limitations, that we opted for ASIO instead.)

Many times we have met as a "industry' trying to form a single model for audio i/o that would just work. When Steinberg was asked to participate, they said they have ASIO, and would be willing to allow anybody use it, but they would never turn it over to a standards group. It is their technology, and they are not very supportive of third party hosts using the technology, though they don't prevent it.

Steinberg barely supports VST dev and really only for plugin developement. Again, no interest to turn it into an industry standard under a broader level of control.

Digi does not allow RTAS or TDM/HD to be supported under Windows by third parties. (We tried to get a SDK to permit us to talk their DAE audio engine format, but they currently don't allow this on Windows, only Mac.)

There is an effort under the auspice of the MMA to develope a generic plugin format called GMPI (read "gimpy"). It has taken the collective group nearly 2 years JUST to agree on how to agree on a spec. There is basically one host vendor - Cakewalk - involved. The rest are all plug in vendors who seem to take the attitude that the plugin is more important than the host, and that anything a host can do, the plugin can do better. It is unlikely we will see anything fruitful

So, while in an ideal "user centric" world, one standard would evolve, the business side of this prevents such occurances. The players are very protective of their technologies that set them apart. The press tends to buy into the "benevolant" developer of these technologies, that that is far from the reality of what happens.

We do what we have to to support as many standards as we can.

Peter




Rednroll wrote on 3/5/2005, 9:08 PM
Thanks for the detailed information Peter.

I have a few questions that I've always have been a little confused about with my Echo drivers. My Gina's have both Wave drivers and ASIO drivers installed. The later is what confuses me and their interaction with the Echo console. In Vegas, and Acid it shows "Classic Wave driver" and "ASIO Echo WDM" as available driver selectons. In the Echo Console for each Input and output, I can select either "Purewave" or WDM for each I/O pair.

What I've been doing is running all the channels in "Purewave" mode and selecting "Windows Classic Wave Driver" in the host app. I've been doing this mostly because Forge until 8.0 hasn't supported the ASIO driver model, and the Echo Wave drivers via their "Purewave" technology, hasn't caused any major latency issues for me in Vegas, because most of the time I'm monitoring the input on my mixing board. It tells me in the Echo literature if I'm running the ASIO driver in the host, to use WDM in the echo console. This kinda makes since to me. I can also choose WDM in the echo console and then select Classic Wave driver. It works, but at times it seems a bit buggy, so I've just avoided it thinking I was probably doing something I shouldn't. I can also choose "ASIO Echo WDM" in the host and have "Purewave" selected on the Echo console. So obviously with all these choices of options this is what confuses me. I guess the main part I would like to clear up is with the Echo ASIO driver, because it exposes itself as "ASIO Echo WDM". So is it ASIO, or is it WDM? If I select WDM in the echo console and then select "Classic Wave driver" in Forge/Vegas then is this a problem? Ultimately I want to avoid ASIO driver sharing problems when running Vegas and Forge at the same time, and then WHEN/IF Vegas supports rewire host, I would like to rewire Acid to Vegas also and again avoid an ASIO sharing issue. So my plan is to select WDM in the echo console, then in Vegas select the ASIO driver. Then in Forge select the Classic Wave driver. This seems like it wouldn't cause any problems. Just for analogy since Vegas doesn't support rewire host and we can't say for sure if it will. Let's suppose I have Sonar. So now I want to rewire Acid to Sonar<cough... Vegas>, and then be able to open audio from each into Sound Forge. So basically, I'm running 3 apps simultaneouly, sharing the same sound card. I think the feature of "close audio ports when Acid/Vegas is not the active window" helps out tremendously in the ASIO sharing conflicts. So my question is, what is the best scenario, to give myself the best performance, least amount of latency in Sonar <cough..uhnmm Vegas> and then avoid ASIO sharing conflicts with having Acid as a rewire slave, and still be able to open events from each in Forge?

Here's my thought.
1. WDM selected in Echo console
2. Classic Wave driver selected in Forge.
3. Asio driver selected in Sonar <cough>
4. ASIO driver in Acid, rewire host

Now in this setup, I'm not sure if I should enable "close audio/midi ports when not active", with Acid rewired to Sonar <cough>. Should it be enabled in either Acid or Sonar (which might not have this feature). Also, am I faced with any problems by having WDM selected in the Echo console, and having "Classic Wave driver" selected in Forge?