VSTs break when bouncing/freezing

[ben.feddersen]

Just ran into a really weird error that I can't explain that popped up in one particular project recently. So I have all the tracks mixed and it sounds great. But then when I bounce, I get a wav file that's silent. OK, I've read all the suggestions about making sure the routing is correct and so on, checked everything, it's all fine. But then I notice something really weird:

On my individual tracks and master bus, after I freeze a track or try and bounce the master and then go back, certain VSTs have completely stopped passing audio through. It seems to happen "pre-freeze", that is, once a track is frozen, it's silent, and when I unfreeze I can see that a VST somewhere in the chain is seeing input from the track but not passing anything to its output anymore. When I delete that VST, the audio will get passed through the other VSTs as normal, unless there's another plugin halfway down the chain with the same problem, and lo and behold, usually there is. If a track has 8 plugins on it, maybe three of them will be broken like this.

If I cut and paste the plugin right back into its original spot, it works again. So I can go through the whole project, test every individual track and cut/paste the broken plugs, and get my whole project back into perfect working order. But when I try to bounce again, again I get silence and when I go back to the project, the same plugins will be broken again.

This happens from multiple manufacturers, Kazrog, Oeksound, Plugin Alliance...but not all the plugs from that company do that, just some of them, and ONLY after a bounce or freeze command.

Live 12 on Windows 10 but this started happening with Live 11.

I wonder if anyone has the slightest clue what could be selectively breaking certain VSTs, but only after a bounce command and in a way that does not actually cause the program to crash.

[Kazrog]

Shane here from Kazrog...

We're 2 maintenance updates into trying to work around this issue, and it's still unfortunately present in our current releases. However, it's been resolved in our latest internal beta updates for all of our plugins, and this will be fast-tracked for release ASAP.

So what's the deal with this? It's all down to the implementation of the VST3 SDK within Ableton. It appears that Ableton is not listening for changes to PDC values during or after bounce. Our upcoming "fix" is to add Ableton to a blacklist that also includes other hosts that have similar issues (Pro Tools, Studio One as of this writing and our latest beta.) Once a host is on that blacklist, offline render settings in the plugins are disabled in those specific hosts until the issue is (hopefully) resolved at some later date.

It's not just me saying this - other plugin developers I've spoken to have reached the same conclusions independently. Given that Ableton Live is such a popular host, and is so great in every other way, I'm hopeful that the Ableton team will resolve this soon, but I haven't been able to reach them yet.

In any case, I'm sorry for the inconvenience. Until our next update is released, I'd recommend using VST2 or AU versions of our plugins. If you absolutely must use VST3, try matching your online and offline oversampling settings in our plugins.

PS - Other developers have gotten around the issue by padding their plugins with the maximum amount of latency they need at all times, irrespective of online/offline settings. I'm reluctant to take this approach, as it would result in our plugins becoming unusable for realtime tracking and performance in several popular hosts.

-Shane McFee

[H20nly]

[ben.feddersen]

Hey Shane, thanks for the details! Excellent support from Kazrog and it seems like it should be a fixable problem on Ableton's end, I've reported it to them as well and will add your reply to my support ticket.

[hoping2produce]

thank you! I have this exact issue and had opened a support ticket.

[[jur]]

Thanks for chiming in here Shane.
I’ll forward (though it’s highly unlikely that the devs aren’t aware).

[hoping2produce]

Is there any way for us to track the status of this bug? With this issue present Abelton should give some sort of guidance or state that VST3s aren't fully supported in their current release. This issue is not easy to troubleshoot and you can basically be dead in the water with your project, unable to export successfully.

[ben.feddersen]

Bug is still present in the latest builds. Instead of jamming a bunch of new features please fix your basic functionality please.

[[jur]]

Bug is still present in the latest builds. Instead of jamming a bunch of new features please fix your basic functionality please.

Please report to Support, thx.