VST3 Plugins glitchy on Linux

Help, Support & Bugs
25

after cleaning my renoise installation and Surge XT config files I rescanned the VST3 plugins and opened Surge XT in an empty project.

Log.txt says:

Blockquote
Blockquote Application: A new document was created.

Blockquote GraphPort: Initializing in WindowedMode…
GraphPort: Successfully initialized

Application: Init OK

StartupWindow: Closing the window…

Application: Enter MainLoop…

Vst3Plugs: Instantiating: /usr/lib/vst3/Surge XT.vst3…
Vst3Plugs: Failed to apply initial controller state to controller (not critical)

Vst3Window: Creating a new main window…
Vst3Window: Setting window properties…
Vst3Window: Creating plugin parent window…
Vst3Window: Mapping the window…
Vst3Window: Attaching the plugin to the plugin parent window…
Vst3Window: Plugin requested new Windowsize 1814, 1130
Vst3Window: Setting new Windowsize 1815, 1382
Vst3Window: Plugin window attached via _XEMBED_INFO
Vst3Window: Closing the Editor…
Vst3Window: Editor was closed
(END)

So surge requests a windowsize 1814x1130, but renoise opens a window 1815x1382, that’s why it’s too tall

seems to be a bug @taktik

1 Like
26

I switched from Ubuntustudio to MX Linux and VST3 is unusable.

27

Now it’s working more or less after switching on Compton.

28

We’re only setting new window sizes that are checked/acknowledged by the plugin via Steinberg::IPlugView::getSize. So that second size come from the plugin, not from Renoise.

Maybe we should stop checking the size this way and just pass the requested size, but that might break other things. I’ll have a look at it…

3 Likes
29

Without Compositor it’s glitchy and unusable. With compositor it only glitches once when opening the VST3.

edit: seems to be related to this:

30

Did you try using a compositor?

31

tried, didn’t make a difference :person_shrugging:

32

I’ll check if I also get the size log message

33

Is this comment on the yabridge site maybe related?

“Renoise doesn’t handle VST3 editor window sizing correctly”

34

“Renoise doesn’t handle VST3 editor window sizing correctly”

This was fixed a long time ago (two years ago). I had been in contact with them then.

I’m very interested in solving these VST3 GUI problems, but I’ need more info here.

Which distribution are you using with which plugin at which display settings (UI scaling) and what exactly are the problems? The only thing I can see here is that some people have problems with some plugins. The problems seem to be wrong window sizes and random? crashes when opening the GUI.

With Wayland enabled or not and VST3’s XEMBED support, this is quite a can of worms. There are so many possible WM/plugin host combinations and UI scaling settings that behave slightly differently, that it will be impossible to nail this down completely. But we could of course try to solve the most obvious common problems.

1 Like
35

I’m on Ubuntu 23.04, X11 with nvidia-drivers, no wayland, no compositor. I’m using icewm but the problem occurs also on xfce.

Renoise GUI scaling is set to “auto”, the problems are posted above, with screenshots, sometimes renoise crashes because of this.

Troublesome Plugins are e.g. Surge XT, Stochas, Quanta 2, TAL-Drum, TAL J8, Speedrum, Odin 2, I haven’t enountered any problems with VCV Rack 2, pianoteq, ACE or redux.

With Surge XT, after loading the plugin and opening the window, the GUI size is wrong. I can manually resize the window and save the GUI settings, but after closing and reopening the window all settings are wrong again.

1 Like
36
  1. Tested Live System Ubuntustudio 22.04
    System:
    Host: ubuntu-studio Kernel: 5.19.0-1017-lowlatency x86_64 bits: 64
    Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.24.7 Distro: Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
    Graphics:
    Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics
    driver: i915 v: kernel
    Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.3 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
    unloaded: fbdev,vesa gpu: i915 resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
    OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 4600 (HSW GT2)
    v: 4.6 Mesa 22.2.5

Ubuntustudio uses kwin as a compositor by default and also x11. Without kwin being enabled Hive VST3 looks fine after opening. Only shortly after opening the GUI there is an empty black box at the bottom of the GUI that sometimes flickers. Size of the plugin is 100%.

With compositor being disabled it sometimes behaves the same, but sometime the box starts flickering and does not dissappear and I see the Renoise GUI flickering through. In the screenshot however it’s all black. I can get rid of the box by moving the window downwards and upwards again. When moving the GUI the window is strongly tracing (Bild zieht nach und ich kann damit den ganzen Bildschirm abdecken). This only happens while the flickering box is present.

iij

  1. Tested Main System
    System: Host: fox Kernel: 5.10.0-23-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce 4.18.1
    Distro: MX-21.3_x64 Wildflower September 18 2022
    Machine: Type: Desktop Mobo: MSI model: H81M-E34 (MS-7817) v: 3.0 serial:
    UEFI: American Megatrends v: 17.5 date: 03/30/2015
    CPU: Info: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-4460 bits: 64 type: MCP cache: L2: 6 MiB
    Speed: 1139 MHz min/max: 800/3400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1139 2: 1242 3: 1246
    4: 1165
    Graphics: Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics
    driver: i915 v: kernel
    Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
    resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
    OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 4600 (HSW GT2) v: 4.5 Mesa 20.3.5

Again x11. Without compositor I’m getting the black again that flickers. It vanishes when I move the window down (to the border of the screen) and up again. However here I’m getting the tailing effect also when the plugin GUI looks fine.

fWkcaYPnnnnn
fWkcaYPnnnnn1920×1080 366 KB

This does not happen with compositor (compton or the xfce compoositor) enabled. Changing the size from 100% to any other values does not help.

All U-he plugins tested (only VST3) have such issues. No problems in any other DAWs.

All tested without compositor:
Surge XT shows the same tailing (without compositor), but the GUI looks fine.
Odin (2.3.4) also looks fine, I only get tailing which maybe is normal? No issue in Reaper though.
Vital 1.5.5 looks fine except a short flicker similar to U-he plugins, but it crashed Renoise some days ago.
Plugdata 0.7.0 → fine
Carla → fine
Tal Sampler → fine
Granulizer 2 | Inertia Sound Systems (V 2.4.0) → flickering sometimes like U-he

37

Thanks to both of you for your detailed feedback!

I can now replicate the initial wrong window size and have a fix for that. Also a problem where VST3 GUIs would sometimes break after being opened/closed a few times.

I can’t replicate this yet, but will try to install Xfce for this. Does this “tailing effect” only happen with plugin windows or also with other Renoise windows such as the Renoise Preferences window? Does it only happen where there’s this black unused area?

1 Like
38

Thanks for looking into it (again). The tailing also occurs with the preference window of Renoise and while I move the window the spectrum analyzer slows down. Maybe that’s another problem and related to this:

All other installed programs I have behave normal, i.e. no tailing. But I get the tailing when e.g. moving windows of Firefox ontop the Renoise GUI. This happens on my Desktop PC and my Laptop (Lenovo T440p) both running MX Linux

39

“Does it only happen where there’s this black unused area?”

It’s the whole window, but as written above also other windows are affected as long the Renoise GUI is underneath it.

40

Thanks. Could be a HiDPI scaling issue.

Which resolution is your monitor set to? Is HiDPI scaling enabled in the system? Which scaling are you running Renoise at? If it’s set to auto, which percentage is applied here?

41

Monitor resolution is 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz
Renoise is set to Auto, but I don’t see any difference when setting it to 100%.

Window scaling in MX Linux is set to 1 (=no scaling)

“If it’s set to auto, which percentage is applied here?”

Is there an option I’m overlooking? I can only choose “auto”

42

Sometimes the Renoise GUI also very shortly freezes and audio continues (no xruns). Never had this before with this PC. This also happens when saving the project, but this seems to be normal as this happened always.

edit: This seems to be because of auto backu, so it’s totally fine.

43

thanks so much for fixing this @taktik :tada:

1 Like
44

Hello,

I don’t know if this is still relevant for people, but I also used to have a lot of problems with vst instruments (especially the u-he ones) on Linux even with Renoise 3.4.3. Sometimes they would just freeze/crash renoise or the GUI would just remain a black window.

It turns out that for some strange reason this issue was related to glibc locales. Installing the glibc-locales packages on Arch instantly fixed all those issues for me. On Ubuntu the package would be called locales-all, I think

Maybe this will help someone who runs into similar issues at some point

1 Like