Developing x64 plugins on windows?

Need to check that your stuff works when memory gets full (i.e. when you’re operating over the 2GB threshold) ?

Here, have OneGig! It’s a 64bit VST2 that allocates 1gb of ram per instance. Easy!

Now you can memory-load your DAW for testing as you please! And yes, if you only have 4GB of ram, the third instance will make your computer CRAWL as it attempts to swap a whole bunch of ram to disk 😉

Attached is the source, plus a 64bit VST2 build for windows (by far the most useful version).

OneGigSource

OneGB VST2 x64.dll

Enjoy!

 

So, it has indeed been quiet.

Well, we got the new site up. That was pretty major. There were times when I thought I was going to die from overwork. Krzysz is a slavedriver on these things.

EQuality and Compassion just got significant feature updates.

EQuality just stopped using CPU in Digital mode. You can run it on a calculator now. Which is nice. Try imagining how excited I was when that optimise worked out. Now multiply by 6. Still not even close.

Compassion just got all the edges polished off. Smooth as can be now.

These took a while to come out because, basically, I wanted to soak them in QA for a while, so we could be certain that they were rock-solid and working perfectly. There are some features/preferences we still want to add, so even though development will never cease (! :o) we’re extremely happy with these versions.

But the big news has been another product that’s, well, in beta already. It’s actually doing pretty well.

It’s been a lot of thinking, this one, and trying to meld together a lot of different ideas from different places. Seems reasonable to imagine that some of these ideas will be retrofitted into other things too. I guess sometimes making something new allows you some fresh perspective.

Also, I’m not hyping this one. I want to see everyone’s honest reaction.

There’s nothing too strange going on, this product is designed to fill a niche we found in use-cases, but many of the beta group have found themselves actually using it outside of those use-cases too. Perhaps that’s too cryptic. I’m at risk of hyping.

 

In other news (pun intended), we’ve had AMAZING reviews from Computer Music and Sound on Sound! I think the line was: “If you’ve a problem you can’t fix with EQuality and Compassion, it can’t be fixed with EQ or Compression”. Hot. 😀

 

Anyway, so, all is well at DMGAudio; it’s full steam ahead here now! If I’ve been quiet it’s purely a result of being busy making things, which is usually good. I’ll try harder to post more on here, but we should try and change the conversation toward talking about chatting and working with audio more generally; when it all turns to feature requests (which is what my email address is for 😉 ) it gets harder to reply!

Dave.

The design is always the hardest part of producing a new product.

By which I mean both design of good DSP, and design of a productive user experience.
It’s the latter which I’m blogging about in this post.

As a software designer, you begin with a rather significant disadvantage.
Building hardware, the user’s first impression is tactile. It’s no secret
that the vast majority of well-regarded hardware designs use military-grade
potentiometers and switches. You touch it, it feels good. Then you hear what it’s
doing to your audio.

With software, the first bite is with the eye. A beautiful user interface goes
a long way to establishing a positive first impression. But the process is somewhat
deeper. The real issue is one of analogy.

Analogy is how we understand the world. We identify similarities between processes
with which we are familiar, in order to quickly acquaint ourselves with new things.
The ideal design is one that suggests comfortable analogies.

So why do we like interfaces that look like hardware? Because it’s familiar.
We understand hardware, and we associate certain properties with it. Most
hardware units have a simple, well-thought out set of controls that allow us
to adjust things to our tastes. Controls that meet our current analogies
regarding how audio processing works.

EQuality shamelessly matches its interface to high-end console EQs. Rows of knobs
covering all the important tasks that we undertake. Yet there’s a secondary analogy
we’re familiar with; the graph. It corresponds with our understanding of pitch;
it’s a keyboard, with low frequencies on the left and high frequencies on the right.
We understand that because it’s a very familiar analogy; everything from your parents’
hi-fi, your controller keyboard, and every graphical EQ you’ve ever used does this
the same way. Because it makes sense.

Watch someone interact with an iPhone/iPad for the first time. The gestures make
sense because they’re perfect analogies for the way in which we interact with real
physical devices; scrolling, twisting, stretching all behave the same on iOS
as real world items.

We (Krzysztof and I) spend a lot of time debating what exactly the common
underlying analogies for interacting with processors are. The last few weeks of
development work have been largely taken up by these discussions, and conversations
with other engineers to try and elicit deeper insight into the matter.

What’s really interesting is that people generally end up with the same internal
models of how things work; subject to their experience of course. But we generally
all imagine things the same way. So we try to design user experiences which
are as close as possible to how people expect things to work.

The perfect design is one where everything you try to do with the interface does
exactly what you hoped it would. And that’s what we’re working on.

Hey,

– Graph zoom.
– 64bit VST/VST3 mac support.
– Configurable CPU usage for Minimum/Analogue/Linear Phase modes
– CPU Optimises in Digital/Digital+ modes.
– Other misc tweaks (AU value display, ProTools controlsurface support enhanced, tweaks, fixes).

Out now. Grab it from dmgaudio.com 🙂

Dave.

Hi,

Some tweaking, some improvements, and v1.02 is out. Grab it from the Compassion page!

Changes:

Changelog v1.00->v1.01

– Fix: Crash in Mono mode when plugin Expired
– Fix: Misprocessing of Split-EQ in Mono mode

Changelog v1.01->v1.02

– Added: Detectors and Split Mix displayed in dB.
– Fix: Display of Expansion/Ratio values
– Fix: Textual improvements in manual
– Fix: Mousewheel for Advanced parameters
– Added: Threshold bars opacity preference
– Added: Save Zoom state in mods and presets
– Fix: bug with saving GUI states in mods
– Added: Preference for Wave Speed on main display
– Added: Improved preset naming handling
– Fix: Handling of LP-Split in MS mode
– Fix: Numerical ordering of Mods
– Fix: VST2 bypass
– Fix: A/B Bank/Listen display in some hosts
– Added: Split EQ “PL” (parallel) option for more efficient mastering workflow
– Fix: Reset to default for Advanced parameter sliders

Hey,

It’s out now.

:D:D:D

Dave.

Hi,

I’ve been working hard today to get Paypal integration up to spec, so now orders should process (near enough) immediately; so you’ll no longer be reliant on me being awake to get licenses through 😉

If anyone notices anything odd, let me know straight away, but so far it appears to be working great! 🙂

Dave.

Hi,

If you log in to your DMGAudio account, you’ll find a link on the Your Stuff page for the DMGAudio License Manager for Mac.

This is a little utility for jobbing engineers who want to be able to hop from studio to studio (remember, your license is for you as a person, not for a particular machine), and be able to install/uninstall EQuality licenses quickly and easily.

I’ve had a few people ask for such a thing… so here it is 🙂

Let me know what you think.

Dave.