This brings the builtin, LV2, and VAMP effects inline with the
Audio Units, LADSPA, and VST effects. All effects now share
a common UI.
This gives all effects (though not implemented for all):
User and factory preset capability
Preset import/export capability
Shared or private configuration options
Builtin effects can now be migrated to RTP, depending on algorithm.
LV2 effects now support graphical interfaces if the plugin supplies one.
Nyquist prompt enhanced to provide some features of the Nyquist Workbench.
It may not look like it, but this was a LOT of work, so trust me, there
WILL be problems and everything effect related should be suspect. Keep
a sharp eye (or two) open.
1) Shell VSTs were completely unrecognized...that is no longer the case
2) All VSTs will now ALWAYS be initialized and cleaned up from the main
GUI thread. I found that some Waves VSTs would freeze Audacity when
initialized in the audio thread and closed in the GUI thread.
3) While realtime previewing, it was possible that the wrong slave
could be used to process new blocks of audio.
4) I found that the Waves AUs don't crash on a real Mac (instead of a
virtual machine), so I removed the "black list" I'd put in just for
them. (Something to do with needing full 3D support I think.)
Anyway, #2 and #3 were quite intrusive, so as much RTP testing as possible
would be a good thing.
Solves the problem of what the "Settings" button should say
by converting it to a bitmap button.
Adds the missing "bypass effect" button.
The Ok/Cancel buttons are now Apply/Close buttons and the
dialog stays open after the apply is done.
Record is no longer disabled when an RTP effect is open as
the RTP effect now monitors when recording starts and disables
its buttons as needed.
Added "Play", "Skip forward", and "Skip backward" buttons.
While the other stuff is required, this last one is in to
get a feel for its usefulness. We'll need to get feedback
on it pretty quickly so we can rip it out if need be.
Warning...this required a small hack that allowed updating the
menus even if the toplevel frame is not the project window. This
is because with the active frame actually becomes the effect dialog
and UpdateMenus() bailed if it wasn't the project frame.
This should be removed when we get multiple effect support.
Needed to redo a bit of code so that effects would work
without the rack in the middle. I wanted to disconnect
it completely as I'm not sure it something that will be
kept around.
During realtime preview, effects will be applied in the
order their dialogs were opened...hmmm...what happens
if they don't have a dialog??? I look into that.
Fixed the focus target for windows when cycling among
active windows as suggested by David B.
Fixed plugin registration if the plugins were located
in the "Plug-ins" folder. I believe this problem may
have played a role in the duplicate menu items.
I've added some of the new plugin stuff to LV2, Nyquist, and
Vamp so that they play better in the new system. They no
longer get bunched in with the Audacity effects when sorting
or grouping the menus. They have not been fully converted
but they should be good for 2.1.0.
Nyquist plugins now include ";author" and ";copyright"
statements.
Added the 4 new Nyquist plugins to the Windows build.
Audiounits are still coming...had to push them to the back
burner to get this other stuff out of the way.
Scanning for new plugins has been improved so that newly
discovered ones will be shown to the user when Audacity starts.
Effects menu sorting has been fixed and improved.
Disabling effect types in Preferences works again and you
no longer have to restart Audacity for them the change to work.
Effect usage in chains works again.
Plugin registration dialog code simplified a bit.
Group names in the pluginregistry are now base64 encoded. I
never really thought about it, but wxFileConfig group names
are case insensitive and since I was using the group name as
the plugin ID, I ran into a conflict on Linux where there
were two plugins with the same name, just different case. (And
they were different plugins.) Hoping all of this will change
when/if the config file gets converted to XML. (wx3 if finally
including XML support)
A fair amount of cleanup of this new code has been done and
will continue as more stuff is converted.
The big thing is the common efffects UI. Right now Ladspa and VST
have been converted to use it and Audiounits will be next. It makes
everything nice and consistent while reducing the clutter in the
dialog.
Other goodies are:
Ladspa effects now show output controls when supplied by the effect
Ladspa effects now work fine as Analyze type effects
Ladspa now has user presets
VST effects dialog is now less cluttered...leaving more room for the effect
Ladspa and VST effects now share a common UI
Ladspa and VST effects are now usable in chains
Ladspa and VST effects now handle user presets the same way
Currently active effects settings automatically saved and reloaded
Can now do numeric range checking on input fields.
And, as always, plenty of critter squashing.
This also (hopefully) corrects some additional problems in general
realtime support. Particular focus should be given to the handling
of various combinations of stereo, left channel mono, right channel
mono, and true mono as this has been a particularly troublesome
area.
This gets meter type VST effects working again by extending the
The master now maintains his own internal buffers and sums (mixes) all
playing tracks into those buffers. The buffers are then fed into the
VST effect that is presented to the user. This allows the effect to
provide feedback to the user if it support it. Such effects may display
meters or clipping indicators.
Several issues with treading have also been corrected (hopefully ;-)).
These showed up mostly on Linux, but could have happened on the others
as well.
The realtime support is no longer limited to 2 channels per logical
track. Once support for more channels is added, this should be ready
for it.
The rack dialog can now be toggled via the edit toolbar button. It
doesn't stay pressed because the closing of the dialog would have to
be communicated back to the toolbar.
As the rack is updated with new or removed effects or active state
changed, all effects in the active list were shutdown and all effects
in the updated list were initialized. This now shuts down only the
effects no longer in the list and initializes only new ones.
The rack now uses wxBitmapButton instead of Audacity's AButton. The
AButton has a timing issue that prevents it from being deleted while
processing the click event. I looked into it, but gave up and switched
to the wxBitmapButton. Unfortunately, there's a problem with the
wxBitmapButton as well...at least on my setup here. Either the bitmaps
are being scaled or antialiased. Will have to get feedback on this.
I finally figured out why some VSTs didn't seem to do anything in
realtime, at least in my case anyway. I've installed a lot of demo
VSTs and while they work in "batch/offline" mode, some of them will
not work in realtime since vendors tend to remove automation as one
of the demo limitations.
More changes coming shortly...
This changes the realtime preview from using 1 effect for all tracks
to an effect per track (logical track). This should clear up the
bad audio when more than one track (or a stereo track) is present.
An unfortunate side effect is that meter effects no longer work since
the one presented to the user is not the one doing the actual work.
Suggestions on how to remedy this are welcome.
I've made it where you can enable and disable via experimentals:
EXPERIMENTAL_REALTIME_EFFECTS
EXPERIMENTAL_EFFECTS_RACK
You will notice that, as of now, the only effects currently set up for
realtime are VSTs. Now that this is in, I will start converting the
rest.
As I start to convert the effects, the astute of you may notice that
they no longer directly access tracks or any "internal" Audacity
objects. This isolates the effects from changes in Audacity and makes
it much easier to add new ones.
Anyway, all 3 platforms can now display VST effects in graphical mode.
Yes, that means Linux too. There are quite a few VSTs for Linux if
you search for them.
The so-called "rack" definitely needs some discussion, work, and attention
from someone much better at graphics than me. I'm not really sure it should
stay in as-is. I'd originally planned for it to be simply a utility window
where you can store your (preconfigured) favorite effects. It should probably
revert back to that idea.
You may notice that this DOES include the API work I did. The realtime effects
were too tied to it and I didn't want to redo the whole thing. As I mentioned
elsewhere, the API stuff may or may not be very future proof.
So, let the critter complaints commence. I absolute KNOW there will be some.
(I know I'll be hearing from the Linux peeps pretty darn quickly. ;-))
Steve Daulton
Paul Licameli
Leland Lucius
lllucius
lllucius@gmail.com
benjamin.drung@gmail.com
martynshaw99
ra