Strange Ableton-only bug uncovered when using Premium Trance

[HYPNAGOGIA]

There shouldn't be any difference at all. Right ?

True, but I'm contributing them to differences in volume and stuff like that - possibly maybe even some engine differences that I'm not aware of.

You can hear my comparison here.

As shown in the video demo above, the sound difference is anything but minimal on my system.[/quite]
Yes, I've seen your videos. To be honest, it's quite baffling.

If you are not hearing a dramatic difference (such as missing entire sound layers and sequences as explained above) then this would suggest that DUNE 2 is making unreliable assumptions about the memory passed to it from the host, leading to different sonic results depending on the system.

That doesn't make sense. A software cannot make any "assumptions" what's passed to it from memory. Any anomaly like that would most likely cause a violation and would just crash the software.

We could look at the whole situation in a more deductive way. I'll mention right away that I don't have the Premium Trance banks, so I can't test those in Live here.

To begin... what is known so far?
Patches don't play properly in Ableton, but they play properly in other DAWs => rules out the patches.
DUNE2 plays those patches ok in other DAWs and in a wrapper => rules out DUNE2.

What's left?
Logic would suggest that it's either Ableton or your system. But since Ableton plays quite ok on my PC (and many others that used Ableton during testings and making those patches - and none reported any problems, and I think even Rich has it, IIRC), seems like there's only one conclusion left.

But that's only my way of thinking. You should definitely follow Marcin's instructions and maybe he/they will be able to help you out with this. Good luck.

[great-bear]

Hi HYPNAGOGIA,

Thanks for your reply.

For reference I'm a senior staff member (30 years audio experience) in a major organisation which develops audio plugins (not VST ones). I've also personally developed VST plugins. I have a lot of experience in building and debugging complex audio systems and indeed continue to do so every day - so let me explain my thinking here:

> A software cannot make any "assumptions" what's passed to it from memory.
Developers often have to make assumptions about system behaviour, since not everything is fully-specified. For example when receiving memory blocks, code may be assuming that (a) it is zeroed (b) pre-filled with valid data, (c) pre-filled with reasonable but potentially invalid data, or (d) filled with complete random nonsense and needs zeroing or other initialisation upon receipt.

> Patches don't play properly in Ableton, but they play properly in other DAWs => rules out the patches.
> DUNE2 plays those patches ok in other DAWs and in a wrapper => rules out DUNE2.

Sounds logical, but unfortunately false. On any API boundary, it's possible to come across areas that rely on convention rather than formal specification - and where there are exceptions to that convention which catch people out. You will find that many plug-ins need to have in place "defensive programming" where the specification is unclear or where DAW vendors themselves have made untrue assumptions.

It would be really lovely if it were possible to accurately define and create what could be described as a "fully compliant" plug-in and have it work consistently across all hosts. Unfortunately that's not the way things are.

Anyway, there's no point in us second-guessing what's going on without access to the relevant code or tools - that's something for the guys at Synapse to look in to, since we can safely assume that Ableton have no justification to allocate resources for an investigation into this issue.

In summary I'm just trying to be helpful. I'm neither casting judgement on the product nor am I complaining. Personally I'll just wrap DUNE 2 in Komplete Kontrol when using Ableton until I hear the problem has been formally resolved.

[HYPNAGOGIA]

It's all good. Likewise, I wasn't blaming you in any way. I don't have a lot of software development experiences, but I know my way around hardware, and usually when something's wrong, you just rule things out until you come to the possible cause. That's been my guide in all my testings so far (not just this one). I'm man enough to admit when I'm being schooled

In any case, since I can't really help much beyond this, I'll be waiting for a resolution of this. And I sincerely hope it won't be dealt with behind "closed doors" (the all-too-familiar "check your PM please" thing).

Cheers!

[great-bear]

Could you please record how do you hear these patches (like the previous movie)?
On the first movie it sounds like the 1st voice is playing only.

Hi Marcin,

Thanks for your reply. I'm a bit tied up right now but happy to do so in the next couple of days.

Also - I think you may be right about first-voice-only. In Ardour (which works fine) I tried those presets and solo'ed the first voice, and the results did indeed seem consistent with the sound that Ableton produces when loading those presets.

[Teksonik]

For reference I'm a senior staff member (30 years audio experience) in a major organisation which develops audio plugins (not VST ones).

I can't claim such lofty credentials but several members of this forum are also members of the Synapse Beta Team. I think at least one member of the team is an experienced user of Live.

All I can go on is personal experience. I have not seen anyone else report your particular issue in all the time that DUNE 2 has been released. I have not experienced your issue on four different systems running three different Operating systems (Win 10, Win 7 and WinXP) on four different DAWs (Sonar, Reaper, FL Studio and Orion). I do have Live Lite 9 on my laptop but I haven't spent enough time with it to use it as a test bed. I did test your issue on this computer (internet Win 10) and my studio computer (Win 7) all 64 bit OS, DAW and Plugins.

So given the data I have at hand I can only surmise that it's a system specific issue or an issue with Live. I'll try to spend more time with Live Lite on my laptop to see if I can reproduce the issue here. If there is an issue with DUNE 2 obviously I want to help find it and help with any fix. Marcin is on the issue so let's see where it goes from here. I'm sure everyone here is willing to help and I'm sure the issue will be resolved in a short time.

[great-bear]

I have not seen anyone else report your particular issue in all the time that DUNE 2 has been released

Ah - but how would anyone even know in the first place?
Most people simply don't notice such things and assume they've made some kind of mistake

i.e. people load a patch, assume that's how it is meant to sound, and move on.

From a personal perspective, I got a little bit curious when I watched the "headline" video of Premium Trance on the front page of Synapse, saw Kevin (I guess it's him?) demonstrate his presets, and then thought: "Hang on - I do not remember them sounding quite that good? What's going on?" and so I started doing a deep dive.

As an aside, it took a very long time (and lots of research), but I selected my synth "of choice" to be Dune 2 because:
a) The sound quality clearly lifts it a step above anything else out there, and...
b) The folks who did the presets are obviously genuine craftspeople, not some random teenager off the streets of Berlin

I am extremely grateful that Synapse not only produced something of technical note, but have also had the presence of mind to commission preset designers who would make the effort to advance the art of sound design.

Thanks to all involved.

Rgds, J.

[Kriminal]

Do you have any hardware controllers connected when you use Live? Is it possible some template or midi learn stuff is affecting D2?

[Teksonik]

I have not seen anyone else report your particular issue in all the time that DUNE 2 has been released

Ah - but how would anyone even know in the first place?.

Ah but how did you know ?

Most people simply don't notice such things and assume they've made some kind of mistake

You are underestimating "most people". Or overestimating your own skills..........

[Teksonik]

Do you have any hardware controllers connected when you use Live? Is it possible some template or midi learn stuff is affecting D2?

That could have something to do with the issue.It could also be related to Komplete Kontrol. I'm looking at the D2 gui in his Youtube video and I'm not seeing anything obvious that could account for the difference in sound. Of course we can't see the Mod Matrix page.

Anyway where is Chris ? Isn't he a LIVE user ?

[Christophe]

Anyway where is Chris ? Isn't he a LIVE user ?

yes, i am here but did not test it

[great-bear]

I've not got any controllers connected at this time.

I don't own any Komplete Kontrol hardware - it just serves as (not particularly good) librarian to the NI Komplete content. I do use Ableton Push (v1) from time-to-time but it's not connected right now, and there are no MIDI mappings in place (and I cleared all the remote controller slots to be sure nothing odd was going on there).

[great-bear]

It appears that it isn't a simple case of just the first voice loading.

On Aquatix EDT it is only Voice 3 that loaded properly as per this video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEFcmcIge0k

J.

[Christophe]

i don't hear any difference between Dune2 loaded into ableton 9.7 and loaded into orion 7.52.
I am using Aquatix EDT from the onscreen keyboard and from my Novation Remote 37 SL
How many active voice do you see in the lcd ?

[Christophe]

OK - there's no shortage of standard presets that don't load properly under Ableton Live

Here's the first few, from the Factory/Arp bank alone:

• Aquatix EDT (entire bass sequence missing)
• Brick Wall KS (sub-octave missing)
• FM Arpmod EDT (harmonic content markedly different)
• Freakstylez KS (very different - layers missing in Ableton)
• Groove Behind Me ST (high chord component missing)
• Magic EDT (sub-octave missing)
• Plucked Outburst KS (harmonic content markedly different)

I'm sure there are many more - but that should be enough for the guys at Synapse to figure out what is going wrong.

no problem detected on these presets

[Christophe]

did you use the last version of dune ?