Best 32 bit wrapper/bridge

[jloeb]

You understood any of that?

The poster is Albanian, presumably using GTranslate.

If you squint with your brain, you can sort of get it, or the gist of it anyway. Google Translate output can be kinda fascinating that way.

[kgdrum]

i suspect it's a bot that cuts and pastes bits of previous threads to seem somewhat relevant,whatever it's a pretty strange.

[James Steele]

Well, I just updated this Mountain Lion this morning. So maybe I'll go buy this 32 Lives thing. I like jBridgeM... it's a great deal for what it does, especially at the price, but would love something more transparent. I haven't seen videos on the developers site showing how 32 Lives actually works in practice. What I'm not crazy about in JBridge is that when adjusting a plug, you're actually in another app besides DP, so you loose transport control on the Mac keyboard, as an example. Also, I've had a few spontaneous quits on loading projects that I suspect jBridgeM playing a part in.

[Prime Mover]

Well, I think I might need to get 32 Lives, I'm trying to get MainStage 3 up and running (Jambalaya finally broke... partially... with Mavericks), and the world is still piss out of luck for a good 64bit B3 VI, so I need to get the old B4 up and running.

If anyone HAS found a good new B3 VI (don't give me that VB3 crap... sounds like dirt, doesn't work in DP or 64bit), please let me know!

[James Steele]

I just bought 32 Lives. I have found an issue already where you can get into a state where DP's window bar at the top of an open plug's GUI disappears and in essence strands it on top of DP floating and you can't get rid of it. You also cannot close it with Command+W. I had to remove the plug and the reinstantiate it to get it to go back to normal.

I made a screen capture movie, but it's still to big (pixels-wise) to embed in this message. What is happening here, like in jBridgeM, is the developer is using his 32 Lives app as a host. When you open a project that has plugs bridged by 32 Lives in it, 32 Lives app opens in the background, but it's trying to allow DP to stay frontmost when you interact with the plug's GUI, unlike jBridgeM. (One symptom of that is that when you move a bridged plug around on your screen, DP's window moves first, the plug GUI lags behind until you settle.) When you open a plug that's bridge by jBridgeM, two windows open: a jBridgeM plug window in DP with it's options visible, and then the plug itself which opens in jBridgeM's hosting app, "auxhost." When you manipulate the controls of the plug, you MUST switch away from DP and auxhost becomes the foreground app, hence you lose transport control from the Mac keyboard.

I'm still working at this and evaluating. Right now I'm experimenting with a project that has instance of both jBridgeM and 32 Lives bridged plugs so auxhost and 32 Lives are both running in the background. I'm going to slowly turn this into a "32 Lives only" project for better testing.

Obviously... 32 Lives IS beta and as is unfortunately the case for us in this community, I'd be surprised if the developer is actually testing on DP. I am going to contact him, as well as MOTU, and see if I can use what little influence I have (it ain't much) to see if maybe MOTU will hook this guy up with an NFC license for DP8 and see if he's willing to address any issues that crop up in DP that may not be in Logic.

[James Steele]

Okay... I'm gonna call this:

32 Lives Digital Performer plug window STRANDING

(As is STRANDED like the castaways in Gilligan's Island.)

Below is a movie of what's happening. It has happened in LiquidMix and Slate FG-X and I suspect it's going to happen for all bridged 32-bit plugs. Can others confirm?

If you watch the movie you can see that first that when I drag the plug around, FG-X's GUI lags behind. That's cosmetic and something I could happily live with. I think this is due to the fact that (like jBridgeM) the developer is hosting the plug in his own hosting app called "32 Lives" which is running in the background. Note that when I click FG-X to load another preset, you'll see the menu bar at the top show I'm switching to the 32 Lives app.

When I come back to DP everything seems normal. DP's window bar is still above the FG-X GUI. But then watch when I bring forward the Track Overview window by clicking on it's title bar. FG-X's title bar disappears and now the window is stranded with no way to move it or to close it. (Command+W does not work, and trying to cycle through windows with Command+~ doesn't work either.)

I had thought previously the only way to clear this up would be either quitting and relaunching DP then loading the project, or removing the plug in's instance at the mixing board by selecting it and deleting it, then reistantiating. But then the answer to where the missing title bar went occurred to me and I had to make a new screen capture. Notice at the end of the movie, I select the Track Overview and move it down, revealing the title bar of the FG-X plug which is damned to an existence forever as the bottom-most window in DP! LOL

However, now there's a work around... in my case I move or minimize the Track Overview window to reveal the FG-X title bar, then close the plug, then bring the Track Overview window back. On next open of FG-X it will be normal again. Seems the moral of the story for now, until this is hopefully fixed, is make your adjustments to your plug in and keep the window in the foreground until you're done adjusting, then CLOSE it before switching to a window that will cover the plug.



I OPENED UP A NEW TOPIC ON THE BOARD FOR THIS IN TROUBLESHOOTING:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... =1&t=56031

[dave pine]

this happened to me, but i was able to get the fx window to get back to normal, i forgot how.... i'll let you know next time.

oops , didn't finish reading and watch the video.... i guess that's how i did it

[James Steele]

Well, as much as I initially liked 32 Lives, my opinion tonight after much futzing around and experimentation is that although less polished, jBridgeM is winning the contest for stability on my system so far. I've been experimenting and building one plug-in set in DP enabling 32-bit VSTs for jBridgeM, and another set enabling 32-bit AUs for 32 Lives.

Once I got a project all set up so that it was just using VSTs bridged by jBridgeM, things were quite stable.

I'm going to continue to experiment and get a project that is solely using 32 Lives, but 32 Lives is not working for Altiverb 6.3.7 for me. Every attempt to instantiate it causes 32 Lives to crash. Also when using 32 Lives it seemed rather unstable. I got crash reports pointing to LiquidMix frequently, but also to MachFive 3 which IS 64-bit. 32 Lives does launch IK Philharmonic for me no problem where as there's a workaround for jBridgeM I understand but I haven't been able to do that yet.

Bottom line is my gut says jBridgeM edges out 32 Lives so far for stability. That may change as the 32 Lives developer works on this some more.

At some point I'm going to experiment and figure out if there's an optimum mix. For example, 32 Lives for certain plugs like Philharmonik, etc. And then using jBridgeM for Altiverb 6, etc. Because one bridges AUs and the other bridges VSTs, it doesn't seem like there's any reason they both can't be active at once. 32 Lives for AUs and "auxhost" for VSTs.

One other quirk: although Slate FG-X seems to work with either 32 Lives or jBridgeM, using it with jBridgeM yields an interesting benefit. jBridgeM has a checkbox for "Performance mode" and whatever that does it SIGNIFICANTLY reduces FG-X's usually considerable CPU hit, yet it continues to function just fine. It may be worth using jBridgeM just for FG-X for the improved CPU efficiency... it's that noticeable.

[James Steele]

P.S. I'd rather not have to bridge Altiverb 6, but the upgrade to Altiverb 7 is just over $200! I know Altiverb is a great reverb, and AudioEase is an excellent developer, but it feels to me like times have sort of changed. It feels rather steep. I may spend more time with MOTU's ProVerb if I get tired of having to use jBridgeM for Altiverb 6.

[James Steele]

Oh... I should mention that jBridgeM has an option "Bridged plugin's GUI always on top" and seems like if you use this, you can make adjustments to plug and still have transport control. The plug window WILL definitely be on top of anything and everything. It's stays on top of my web browser I'm typing this post in.

[James Steele]

Got a reply to my email from 32 Lives developer. They know about Altiverb being broke and say they are working on the issues. High marks for responsiveness and hopefully effort. In fairness this app is still in beta. Hope they can iron out the wrinkes.