Altiverb 7.1.2 defaults to MAS even if AU was saved

[Gabe S.]

Hi.

As, I mentioned in my previous thread, I just upgraded from 10.6.8 to 10.8.5, doing a fully manual upgrade, no auto-migration.

Anyway, I ran into a couple of problems when setting up DP. I worked my way through them, but I thought I'd share, in case anyone else runs into these issues.

My large orchestral template has 15 Altiverbs in it. I create stems at the same time as the final mix, and the only way to do that is to have discreet reverbs for every stem. Anyway, the point is that I'm deep into Altiverb. When AudioEase first created a 64-bit Altiverb, there was only an AU version. With these latest releases of Altiverb, they created a 64-bit MAS version.

With my brand new installation of everything, I let the Altiverb installer install everything. When I went to open an old session that had the 15 Altiverbs, all the Altiverbs had lost ALL of their settings. All 15 were in a generic default mode. After awhile of struggling and looking through the plugin list in the DP prefs, I could see that Altiverb-MAS was enabled along with AU. I wondered if maybe DP had defaulted to MAS, which would be strange since the session was saved with Altiverb-AU.

So, I pulled Altiverb-MAS out of the plugins folder, rebooted DP, re-opened the session, and-----everything pulled back up properly. All settings in Altiverb were back to where they should be. So, it seems that DP defaults to MAS if it's available, even if you saved a session with the AU version of a plugin……that's kind of a bummer. I would think that DP should save a specific plugin, and stick with it. This makes things unpredictable……

Anyway, just thought I'd let you know what I found. (I reported this to MOTU.)

Cheers.
-gabe

[mikehalloran]

Gabe, I strongly recommend that you post your hardware, OS and DP setup in your signature. There are some potential problems with the way that you did things - or not depending on the unknowns. Also some easy workarounds - again or not.

Not enough information...

[outofhand]

Huh. I had this problem, but in reverse.

I had all the Altiverb plugin formats installed (VST, AU, MAS) and for some reason decided to uninstall the MAS version as I had some (incorrect) idea that it was basically pointless and I could just use the AU in DP.

When I ran the Altiverb installer and deselected the MAS, the result was that DP loaded the AU and all my existing projects opened with the Altiverb settings wiped.

The fix was to reinstall the MAS.

This is on my "old" kit: 10.6.8, DP 7.24, Altiverb 6.3.5

[Gabe S.]

Gabe, I strongly recommend that you post your hardware, OS and DP setup in your signature. There are some potential problems with the way that you did things - or not depending on the unknowns. Also some easy workarounds - again or not.

Not enough information...

Ok, I've included a signature. But I'm not sure what you mean when you say I did something wrong. It's quite simple. In OS 10.6.8, I had been using Altiverb 64-bit extensively in the only configuration available at the time of my previous install--AU. When I upgraded to 10.8.5, and I fresh-installed the latest version of Altiverb, a MAS version of Altiverb was now available. So I installed it along with the rest of the stuff available in the installer. When DP opened a previously saved session that contained Altiverb-AU, it ignored the fact that the Altiverb had been an AU plugin, and instead used the MAS version. By doing this, all the settings were lost and the plugin was in a generic default state. The settings are not cross-compatible between AU and MAS.

When I removed the MAS version of the plugin out of the "MAS" plugins folder, DP was forced to look into the AU folder for Altiverb. When it did that, it loaded up the AU-Altiverb and the settings of the plugin were all retained, and the session opened normally.

I found the workaround, I just wanted to let the community here know that this situation exists.

In the last week, I have spent a LOT of time doing a manual migration---days and days and days of 16 hour days, manually moving my rig from 10.6.8 to 10.8.5---well over 100 apps that had to be redownloaded, reinstalled, reauthorized and settings/prefs/templates/presets/favorites found and moved over. I have run into pitfalls that senior Apple techs didn't know the answer to, that required patience to finally figure out. A couple of these head-scratchers involved DP. So, I decided to share DP things I found with you guys in case these experiences were worthwhile to anyone else upgrading. There's a lot of us guys still stuck in 10.6.8 hesitating to move up. I'm happy to report that so far, 10.8.5 is very stable.

One of the main reasons I decided to upgrade to 10.8.5 is that the latest version of Kontakt (5.3.0) is not compatible with 10.6.8. It requires at least 10.7. I am heavily invested in Kontakt libraries---over 40 serial numbered products. I simply could not fall behind with the latest Kontakt releases. It's a bit of a bummer doing all this upgrading, and not upgrading to Mavericks, but the simple truth is that, at the moment, the music world is just not ready for Mavericks. At the NAMM show, many vendors said they just weren't ready for it, and everyone I talked to agreed that 10.8.5 is a great and stable music platform, and to stick with that for now. So I decided to clean install into 10.8.5, and not try to auto-migrate in, dragging along three previous auto-migrations from three old computers. That way I'll feel more comfortable simply upgrading to 10.9 whenever all of the music vendors are fully supporting it.

Cheers.
-gabe

[Gabe S.]

Huh. I had this problem, but in reverse.

I had all the Altiverb plugin formats installed (VST, AU, MAS) and for some reason decided to uninstall the MAS version as I had some (incorrect) idea that it was basically pointless and I could just use the AU in DP.

When I ran the Altiverb installer and deselected the MAS, the result was that DP loaded the AU and all my existing projects opened with the Altiverb settings wiped.

The fix was to reinstall the MAS.

This is on my "old" kit: 10.6.8, DP 7.24, Altiverb 6.3.5

That makes sense. Altiverb 6 had a MAS version and DP defaulted to it and so that's what you used. And when you didn't install it later, you learned that the settings don't crossover between MAS and AU. So, you re-installed the MAS version, and everything went back to normal.

But when AudioEase came up with a 64bit version of Altiverb, there was no MAS version at first until more recently, so the only version available for use in DP 64-bit was the AU version. I created a LOT of sessions using Altiverb 64bit-AU. Now, the latest version of Altiverb includes a 64bit MAS version. The rude surprise, and the reason I started this thread, is that, if both AU and MAS versions are available, DP defaults to the MAS version----even if the session was saved previously with the AU version. To me, that's a problem.

btw, back when DP8-64bit first came out, I got hosed pretty bad when I moved to DP in 64bit mode BECAUSE there was no 64bit MAS version. I was like you---MAS was the default version for me in 32-bit. Check this out: If I opened an old session with DP8 in 32bit mode, all the Altiverbs were fine. BUT, if I then switched DP to 64bit mode, there was no MAS version yet, and so all the Altiverbs would pull up as AU and all the settings were lost. It was quite a pain in the neck to manually recreate ALL the settings across 15 Altiverbs. They had to be done manually because you couldn't even save presets in MAS and open the presets in AU…….totally sucked.

hehe---ah the beauty of being on the bleeding edge, right?

Cheers.
-gabe

[HCMarkus]

Thanks Gabe.

[Dan Worley]

Gabe,

Good work.

Somewhere in the manual it states that MAS plug-ins have priority over AU plug-ins, so if you have both versions of the same plug-in installed, only the MAS one will load.

[Killahurts]

I've never understood the difference between the MAS and AU versions.. I don't even know which one I'm using. I do know that the only problems I had with AV is that it stole the transport in DP, but they fixed that with the last version.

I just downloaded 7.1.2, but I guess I better read this whole thread before I install.

btw Gabe, you're so right about staying on 10.8.5, I wish I had.. it was very stable for my rig. It is that Apple promised better utilization of memory, and better performance with Mavericks. I bought the line, now I regret.. you Mountain Lion folks really should stay where you are.. just my opinion.

[Gabe S.]

I've never understood the difference between the MAS and AU versions.. I don't even know which one I'm using. I do know that the only problems I had with AV is that it stole the transport in DP, but they fixed that with the last version.

From talking to tech support, my understanding is that if there is a MAS version of a plugin, DP defaults to the MAS version in all cases, even if the session was saved with an AU previously. The only way to force DP to see the AU version is to remove Altiverb from the MAS plugins folder, or I guess disable it in the Audio plugins prefs window (although I've never tried that.)

I love Altiverb and use it heavily. But AudioEase kind of bit us in the ass a little bit. Back in the 32-bit days, Altiverb was available in MAS, AU and VST. I installed it pretty much like everyone which meant all three flavors were installed. With a MAS version being there, DP defaulted to it. We all used the MAS version of Altiverb and that was fine.

But then DP 64-bit came out. When AudioEase released Altiverb in 64-bit, the first release did not include a 64-bit-MAS version. It only came with 64-bit-AU. The problem here is that the AU version cannot not read the settings of the MAS version of the plugin. The problem wasn't that the 64-bit plugin couldn't read 32-bit settings; the problem was MAS and AU settings are not cross compatible. This hosed guys like me with massive templates with 15 instances of Altiverb-MAS. All the plugins were there in the session, but they all had generic settings.

I contacted AudioEase back then and asked what had happened, and they said that AU and MAS settings weren't compatible, and that some day they would make a 64-bit MAS, and that all would be fine. But for the time being, I should just open the old sessions with DP in 32-bit because all the settings would still be ok, since the 32-bit MAS would still work in DP8-32-bit. This was fine for them to say, but my sessions were REALLLLLY heavy. They pushed DP7.24 to the max from a memory standpoint, and I found that I was unable to open these older DP7.24 sessions in DP8 32-bit, because it would crash from demanding too much memory. So, DP8-32-bit was not an option for me. So, all my old sessions were hosed.

So, then I rebuilt the templates with Altiverb-AU-64-bit, and manually copied every setting from the old template. That was fun. You can't even save a preset between AU and MAS. And for the next year, I worked with Altiverb-AU-64-bit doing a bunch of sessions. Then recently Altiverb released a 64-bit-MAS plugin. When I installed that, DP defaulted to MAS and then all my 64-bit-AU settings were lost! AHHHH!!! How many times do I have to lose my Altiverb settings?!!!!!!!! Then I figured out what was going on, and got rid of the MAS version, and now the template I've been using sees the AU Altiverb again and all the settings are fine.

So, basically, in my daily production now, I need to forget that an Altiverb-MAS-64-bit version exists because my current Altiverb life revolves around Altiverb-64-bit-AU. HOWEVER, I need to keep the MAS version around because if I need to go back to an old DP session back when I was using Altiverb-MAS, and I want to open it up in 64-bit DP, I can at least do that now and retain the Altiverb settings because the 64-bit MAS version will read those old settings…….

phew, that's not complicated, is it??

Cheers.
-gabe

[Killahurts]

Man that sucks. I don't use Altiverb as heavily as you.. but I can say the transition to 64 bit, for me, was a painful, year-long+ process that involved recreating/editing my massive templates several times. I hated it.. but it's over. Nowadays my major issues seem to be with Apple, Mom-and-Poppin' my ass out of a usable DAW with their increasingly gadget-like OS.. but I digress..

[mikehalloran]

Back in the 32-bit days, Altiverb was available in MAS, AU and VST.

But not in DP 7 or earlier.

[Gabe S.]

Back in the 32-bit days, Altiverb was available in MAS, AU and VST.

But not in DP 7 or earlier.

I'm not sure what you mean.....haven't there been MAS, AU and VST versions for years? I wasn't saying that all three were available in DP. But MAS and AU were.

[mikehalloran]

. I wasn't saying that all three were available in DP.

It read like you were.

I do that often enough - forget features of versions I no longer use. Yes, we can select AU for awhile - was that DP 5? I know it wasn't 2.6 but I barely remember what feature happened when anymore.

I just upgraded to an iPhone 5S and yesterday was wiping my old phones having sold them. My iPhone 4S felt familiar enough but, while clearing my G1, I had completely forgotten how it worked. I had to look up the manual online to see how to turn it on. Yikes!

[Gabe S.]

You know-----you've been actively policing this thread, badgering me------and you haven't offered a shred of worthwhile input. I have never called out a troll----ever. But thanks to you, I am today:

What the heck is your problem????

If you have some worthwhile input, please contribute. Otherwise, stop polluting this thread with your jabs. I'm only sharing my experiences with fellow DP users, so they can avoid pitfalls that I've encountered while doing a massive upgrade. Lots of us have stayed in 10.6.8 out of fear of what will happen during upgrading. If my experiences during the upgrade could possibly help others, then I post about them. For some reason, this doesn't sit well with you. Why do you feel the need to police this thread?

I have a history of positive input on this forum, giving advice to aid others in their DP setups. I make my living on DP. I have a long history of beta-testing for many major music software developers. I wrote the user guide for Stylus RMX for Spectrasonics. When I encounter things that I think could help other DP users, I share them. What are you out doing?? Picking on this thread? Good job!!

[mikehalloran]

I have no problem with you or your posts.

You seem to forget that, when you post incomplete, careless or inaccurate information, other people not as knowledgeable as you are also reading. Lots of lurkers who read only.

You did make it appear that one could select VSTs in DP 7. I wasn't correcting it for you.

You're welcome.