Wine 1.2 breaking VSTs, making unusable/glitchy. these plugi

[jordan johnston]

hi,

I posted about a week ago, when i had updated to wine1.2-rc6.

I had warned that i had seen regressions in wine. This applied to
Commercial VST instruments that i have been using in linux for about 2
years.
At first, when using Jack-audio-connection kit (after the upgrade) i
began to notice certain plugins were now causing Xruns, when they
started up.
this never used to happen. so i posted.

Now the situation is even worse. In particular, a plugin i had
mentioned before Native Instruments FM8, is now causing xruns whenever
i am switching
to a new preset - this makes it now useless!! It is a sound app and
you can't have it causing audio glitches/xruns.
I don't know what has changed in Wine recently, but what i do know is
that i posted before and didn't get a single response on the issue,
and now it
is worse. - i wonder if i had been posting about a game, if the
result would have been the same?

I not only did a fresh Wine install, but also I have re-installed
linux (i was planning to anyway). and this problem is still present.
Clearly, it must be
a regression in Wine.....

I don't play video games in wine, frankly, i don't see the point in
hacking a game to run under linux at the cost of 30% fps drop in
performance.
Now, i didn't get a single reply with to my problem, which is
ridiculous when you watch this list filled with replies on how to make
some stupid game half-work
with it's crappiest "low as possible" GFX settings. This is ironic,
when you consider That there are more Linux Distro's geared towards
Pro-audio (most of which are using Wineasio) then there ever will be
linux gaming distro's. A lot of linux musicians require wine, as Linux
doesn't exaclty have a lot of Pro - type plugins and yet VST support
hasn't changed much, and i think is actually getting worse. (it's
frustrating).

I use wine for Photoshop, but mostly for VSTs using WineASIO + jack.

For the latter, i would be more than willing to give any information
needed to sort out some of these new issues, that are slowly ruining
my Pro-audio setup.
something new in wine is causing the problem, i don't know how to get
to the bottom of it. but i am more than willing to help and provide
any information that might be useful, in fixing these issues. I just
need to know how to go about it, properly.

sorry, if i come off a bit frustrated. But man, to have something work
well for so long, and then
have it be absolutely useless....it's a real hard one...not to mention
that i use this setup in live shows (music/band).

Lastly, this is important to me becuase i am running a VST hardware
platform, and if wine goes to crap for my Commercial VST instruments,
There won't be any point in me using it. to the point, that i might as
well just use OSX - which has way more overhead, and doesn't achieve
as low
of latency on my hardware

thanx

jordan

[dimesio]

Now, i didn't get a single reply with to my problem,

Not true. You were told by two people to run a regression test and file a bug.
http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=9006

[Peter L Jones]

Hi Jordan,

The WINE guys pay very little attention to WineASIO and real-time JACK usage as
it's not one of their larger support demands - games and office apps hugely
dominate. (If you look at the small number of people who use a PC for doing
"real" media work, you'll see why.)

When WineASIO was being developed, there was some push for changes in WINE and,
as I understand it, these changes were made or patches applied.

However, WineASIO isn't currently under development (I'm maintaining the source
on sourceforge but I rarely have Linux running).

The other group you'd expect to have an interest are the JACK users and
developers. However, they have more interest in getting Linux "up to speed" as
a full media system without reliance on Windows software, so again have little
interest in spending time on WineASIO. Again, changes in JACK can be pushed
for and made.

What's needed here is someone with the development skills, time and motivation
to keep WineASIO current with both WINE and JACK, identifying changes needed
either in WineASIO or the projects its dependent upon and getting these made.

And that's where it falls down, unfortunately -- unless someone steps up and
takes that challenge, WineASIO will slowly fall into dereliction.

I've a wishlist of things I plan to do should I ever get time to work on
WineASIO (getting it working in 64bit has recently been added as I imagine it
doesn't show up to 64bit apps). One of them is merging in JackWASIO - which
seems more actively maintained. Indeed, my approach might be to generate a
patch to JackWASIO and close down WineASIO.

Hope this helps you understand the situation. I'm afraid I can't help with the
frustration it causes.

-- Peter

On 22/07/2010 13:34, jordan johnston wrote:

hi,

I posted about a week ago, when i had updated to wine1.2-rc6.

I had warned that i had seen regressions in wine. This applied to
Commercial VST instruments that i have been using in linux for about 2
years.
At first, when using Jack-audio-connection kit (after the upgrade) i
began to notice certain plugins were now causing Xruns, when they
started up.
this never used to happen. so i posted.

Now the situation is even worse. In particular, a plugin i had
mentioned before Native Instruments FM8, is now causing xruns whenever
i am switching
to a new preset - this makes it now useless!! It is a sound app and
you can't have it causing audio glitches/xruns.
I don't know what has changed in Wine recently, but what i do know is
that i posted before and didn't get a single response on the issue,
and now it
is worse. - i wonder if i had been posting about a game, if the
result would have been the same?

I not only did a fresh Wine install, but also I have re-installed
linux (i was planning to anyway). and this problem is still present.
Clearly, it must be
a regression in Wine.....

I don't play video games in wine, frankly, i don't see the point in
hacking a game to run under linux at the cost of 30% fps drop in
performance.
Now, i didn't get a single reply with to my problem, which is
ridiculous when you watch this list filled with replies on how to make
some stupid game half-work
with it's crappiest "low as possible" GFX settings. This is ironic,
when you consider That there are more Linux Distro's geared towards
Pro-audio (most of which are using Wineasio) then there ever will be
linux gaming distro's. A lot of linux musicians require wine, as Linux
doesn't exaclty have a lot of Pro - type plugins and yet VST support
hasn't changed much, and i think is actually getting worse. (it's
frustrating).

I use wine for Photoshop, but mostly for VSTs using WineASIO + jack.

For the latter, i would be more than willing to give any information
needed to sort out some of these new issues, that are slowly ruining
my Pro-audio setup.
something new in wine is causing the problem, i don't know how to get
to the bottom of it. but i am more than willing to help and provide
any information that might be useful, in fixing these issues. I just
need to know how to go about it, properly.

sorry, if i come off a bit frustrated. But man, to have something work
well for so long, and then
have it be absolutely useless....it's a real hard one...not to mention
that i use this setup in live shows (music/band).

Lastly, this is important to me becuase i am running a VST hardware
platform, and if wine goes to crap for my Commercial VST instruments,
There won't be any point in me using it. to the point, that i might as
well just use OSX - which has way more overhead, and doesn't achieve
as low
of latency on my hardware

thanx

jordan

[DanKegel]

Can somebody give a recipe to reproduce the problem
that uses only freely downloadable apps?

[jordan johnston]

Let me think about that one.

I own the Applications, so i am not sure. I'll investigate though.

I also am going to try a few things before i am totally positive that
it is a regression in wine.

I'll get back to you, k?

ninez

[DaVince]

OpenMPT can use VSTs, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't use ASIO.

[James McKenzie]

Peter L Jones wrote:

Hi Jordan,

The WINE guys pay very little attention to WineASIO and real-time JACK usage as
it's not one of their larger support demands - games and office apps hugely
dominate. (If you look at the small number of people who use a PC for doing
"real" media work, you'll see why.)

When WineASIO was being developed, there was some push for changes in WINE and,
as I understand it, these changes were made or patches applied.

Actually WineASIO, as I understand it, is not a part of the basic Wine
package. Maintaining this code would be up to those who made it. Jack
support continues to be fluid. This may all be superseded by support
for OpenAL.

However, you have a real problem that needs to have a bug report
submitted for the appropriate product.

James McKenzie

[jordan johnston]

On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 9:33 PM, James McKenzie
<[email protected]> wrote:

Peter L Jones wrote:

Hi Jordan,

The WINE guys pay very little attention to WineASIO and real-time JACK
usage as
it's not one of their larger support demands - games and office apps
hugely
dominate.  (If you look at the small number of people who use a PC for
doing
"real" media work, you'll see why.)

When WineASIO was being developed, there was some push for changes in WINE
and,
as I understand it, these changes were made or patches applied.

Actually WineASIO, as I understand it, is not a part of the basic Wine
package.  Maintaining this code would be up to those who made it.  Jack
support continues to be fluid.  This may all be superseded by support for
OpenAL.

yes, you are correct, we both understand that wineasio isn't
core-wine. I only half-agree on jack support being "fluid".
It continues, and is decently supported. but it is also a fact that
wine apps can cause xruns, and this is often associated with
the graphical emulation in wine(i can't prove this myself, but i have
read this a lot in forums). so don't don't know if i could claim
fluid, but jack is definetly supported, and i am glad. wine is truly
brilliant, and i respect those who having the knowledge
and skills to develop it.

However, you have a real problem that needs to have a bug report submitted
for the appropriate product.

yes, you are correct. I am going to have another stab at it this week,
when i can make some time. i am going to test wine - ie: registry,
versions, etc, one by one. I think it started to break around 1.2rc-6.
gimme a few days, i am going to read up the Wine wiki, bug reporting,
debugging, etc. so i can have a better grasp as to what is going on,
and how to go about things.

thanks james

jordan

[dimesio]

yes, you are correct. I am going to have another stab at it this week,
when i can make some time. i am going to test wine - ie: registry,
versions, etc, one by one. I think it started to break around 1.2rc-6.
gimme a few days, i am going to read up the Wine wiki, bug reporting,
debugging, etc. so i can have a better grasp as to what is going on,
and how to go about things.

Read this: http://wiki.winehq.org/RegressionTesting

[jordan johnston]

update:

hey James, Peter and Everyone else...

so over the weekend i ended up installing fedora 13 from scratch, used
my regular kickstart, and
some custom rpms + all of my usual configurations. i then installed
wine 1.2 + wineasio
after this i upgraded wine through "testing" and got wine 1.2-2

My system is pretty much the exact same, except my VSTi's are working
again with almost no xruns!
im not sure what the difference is now, other than grabbing the
testing repo version of wine(and i can't imagine
too much has changed in that). But i am happy, as things seem to be on
"the up and up" again.
The only xruns i get is from Native Instruments Battery3, when
highlighting the drum cells or loading new kits.
Massive and FM8 are functioning normally now. So everything is back to
normal and working - phew....

maybe something was messy in the registry or possibly some other
oddity. I haven't been able to figure out what exactly, But it's
definetly NOT a regression in Wine. i am quite happy to report!

I just thought i should post an update.

oh and Peter I looked up jackwasio, but there is no source code
around. seems to be OSX .pkg only.
I was going to check it out. i read that the code had been revised a
bit, something about semiphores being removed to work nicer with Jack.
I also read it had been tested with Slakcware, but again i couldn't
find packages(rpm) or sources(gzip). If you got a link, i would be
interested. google didn't turn up a whole lot.

thanks again

[Peter L Jones]

Hi Jordan,

I've finally got around to merging JackWASIO into the wineasio repository on
sourceforge. I've not tested it yet.

It's actually not much of a change from wineasio-0.5 - my config file removed,
a different config file on non-Linux, uses mutexes rather than semaphores. It
was originally written as a port of wineasio to Jack on OSX.

It's also using jackringbuffer, which makes the buffer handling code a lot simpler.

Anyway -- a couple of good ideas to merge back into the latest wineasio code
when I get time!

Thanks for giving me the push to get this merge done at last.

Glad to hear everything's working well, too.

-- Peter
(cross-posted to jack newsgroup for info on JackWASIO merge.)

On 04/08/2010 05:40, jordan johnston wrote:

update:

hey James, Peter and Everyone else...

so over the weekend i ended up installing fedora 13 from scratch, used
my regular kickstart, and
some custom rpms + all of my usual configurations. i then installed
wine 1.2 + wineasio
after this i upgraded wine through "testing" and got wine 1.2-2

My system is pretty much the exact same, except my VSTi's are working
again with almost no xruns!
im not sure what the difference is now, other than grabbing the
testing repo version of wine(and i can't imagine
too much has changed in that). But i am happy, as things seem to be on
"the up and up" again.
The only xruns i get is from Native Instruments Battery3, when
highlighting the drum cells or loading new kits.
Massive and FM8 are functioning normally now. So everything is back to
normal and working - phew....

maybe something was messy in the registry or possibly some other
oddity. I haven't been able to figure out what exactly, But it's
definetly NOT a regression in Wine. i am quite happy to report!

I just thought i should post an update.

oh and Peter I looked up jackwasio, but there is no source code
around. seems to be OSX .pkg only.
I was going to check it out. i read that the code had been revised a
bit, something about semiphores being removed to work nicer with Jack.
I also read it had been tested with Slakcware, but again i couldn't
find packages(rpm) or sources(gzip). If you got a link, i would be
interested. google didn't turn up a whole lot.

thanks again