Ardour's official statement is "you should not use Calf plugins"

[unfa]

Someone has pointed me to this bug report in Ardour Mantis, where Paul Davis has commented saying this:

Our official position is that you should not use the CALF plugins.

http://tracker.ardour.org/view.php?id=7629

I'd love to know more about this - and what can be done about this.

[unfa]

Comment from Paul Davis:

We get a steady stream of reports from people (mostly on IRC) whose sessions work great as long as they do not use a CALF plugin. They add the plugin and the session starts crashing. They remove the plugin or launch in safe mode, which disables all plugins, and the session works again.

There are no other families of plugins for which this happens. There are thousands of plugins. There are dozens which cause problems for Ardour users, on some platform. We do not have the resources to dig into each case, and the situation with CALF is so predictable that we prefer to just advise people to not use them at all. That doesn't mean they will always fail (and when they work, they are actually not bad at all). But it means that if they cause problems with a session, we are not going to investigate.

[falkTX]

A big reason for that is the damn calf-ladspa package from Debian, which breaks the official calf LV2 plugins. Also the previous/older calf version had some issues that lead to crashes, they are now fixed, but people using raw Ubuntu or even UbuntuStudio will have to wait a while to get it. Not even Debian experimental/Sid has 0.90 release yet... Since Ubuntu imports from Debian, pretty much all Debian and derivatives have an old calf version.

[trebmuh]

Debian bug re: LADSPA/LV2 version Debian bug re: 0.90

[lpirl]

For the record, I run the wonderful Calf plugins for years from Debian-ish repos (i.e., incl. Debian Multimedia) without stability issues. Currently, calf-ladspa version 1.1.3-7.1 for old sessions and calf-plugins version 0.0.60-5.

Thanks for the very handy set of plugins, folks!

[jebofponderworthy]

That explains a lot: I have been using Calf LV2 for several years now, have found them most excellent in many different ways, but have almost never used them in  Debian or variants unless I compiled them myself, and have never used Ardour more than a few minutes :-)

J.E.B.

On 06/28/2018 03:23 AM, Filipe Coelho wrote:

A big reason for that is the damn calf-ladspa package from Debian, which breaks the official calf LV2 plugins. Also the previous/older calf version had some issues that lead to crashes, they are now fixed, but people using raw Ubuntu or even UbuntuStudio will have to wait a while to get it. Not even Debian experimental/Sid has 0.90 release yet... Since Ubuntu imports from Debian, pretty much all Debian and derivatives have an old calf version.

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[jebofponderworthy]

Indeed, the Debian Multimedia folks do give good running Calf; haven't run Debian for 2-3 years on audio production boxes, had almost forgotten.

J.E.B.

On 06/28/2018 06:30 AM, Lukas Pirl wrote:

For the record, I run the wonderful Calf plugins for years from Debian-ish repos (i.e., incl. Debian Multimedia) without stability issues. Currently, |calf-ladspa| version 1.1.3-7.1 for old sessions and |calf-plugins| version 0.0.60-5.

Thanks for the very handy set of plugins, folks!

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[codecollider]

Hi all,

actually I'm the reason of this thread as I filed the bug report at the Ardour bug tracker. I'm running Debian stable and I have the KXStudio repos installed.

As far as I can see I don't have any LADSPA CALF Plugins installed. I even don't find the Debian Calf Package in Synaptic. Only the packages from the KX repos appear. Is it possible that Debian stable doesn't include the CALF packages?

Although I don't have the LADSPA package installed I can't use CALF plugins in Ardour or Qtractor as the DAW crashes either immediately (see below) I add the plugin or later out of the blue.

This is synaptic after searching for "calf": http://i.imgur.com/jRqTgHp.png

I can for example reproducibly crash Qtractor (= SEGFAULT) with loading the Calf Analyzer Plugin into the master channel.

Would be really great if someone can shed some light on this issue.

Thanks & cheers, Marco

[lpirl]

I don't know how KX modifies Debian repos but in Debian stable, there is calf-plugins version 0.0.60-4+b1 and calf-ladspa version 1.1.3-7, as reported when searching packages.debian.org.

[codecollider]

Strange... maybe falkTX can comment on this.

[falkTX]

this has to be a new issue then. the kxstudio repos have the latest calf-plugins release, and its calf-plugins[-git] package conflicts on calf-ladspa. even more, the calf-ladspa is an empty package there.

[eeickmeyer]

Hi all. I'm from the Ubuntu Studio team (current council chair). Since the release of 0.90.0, I have filed bug reports to get the official package upgraded. Unfortunately, it has been marked as a "wishlist" item. Due to this new information, I will be pushing harder to get 0.90.0 packaged and pushed upstream.

For myself, I have compiled 0.90.0 from source and removed calf-ladspa. On my system, where I use Ardour and Calf consistently, I have not seen any crashing as reported. Therefore, I'm going to link to this issue and push hard to get this upgraded. It seems as though I'm the only person on the team that has noticed a new major release happened.

[codecollider]

I definitely don't have the old Debian Calf plugins installed, only the calf-git package from KXStudio repos.

[IvanDSM]

I use Gentoo's package media-plugins/calf-9999 (which compiles the latest git commit) and don't have any issues with Calf+Ardour. My sessions work just fine.

On 28 June 2018 at 12:32, codecollider notifications@github.com wrote:

I definitely don't have the old Debian Calf plugins installed, only the calf-git package from KXStudio repos.

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[codecollider]

Update: I compiled Qtractor and now the Calf Plugins are loading. Nevertheless I got Qtractor crashing while loading in the Calf Analyzer plugin. Back Trace is here: https://pastebin.com/iLcgVHYT

[falkTX]

ah, that is helpful. There is a signal trap/exception going on the main thread. signo 8 is SIGFPE, which according to docs:

Issued if an illegal mathematical operation is attempted

Crash happens shortly after calf_plugins::analyzer::draw(int, float*, int, bool) is called. qtractor is catching these signals, and triggers a stacktrace when that happens. this is only in debug mode, so I guess on release/normal mode, the plugin just crashes right away.

[codecollider]

I'm pretty sure this happens also in Ardour.

[suedwestlicht]

I compile Qtractor and CALF on my machine (Xubuntu 14.04, 16.04).

I remember Crashes when ... 1.) Loading a song into Qtractor with CALF plugins 2.) NOT playing the song 3.) Opening a CALF GUI

So maybe some CALF plugins have a problem when opening their GUI before they get any audio input.

[boomshop]

@suedwestlicht @codecollider: thanks for the report. I was able to reproduce with Analyzer in QTractor, fixed in 6ec9e1a.

[suedwestlicht]

I recommend checking other plugins as well. IIRC I had this issue with CALF EQs.

[boomshop]

I already checked them. They rely on Analyzer, too.

[codecollider]

@boomshop : Thanks a lot! So, did the bug in the analyzer plugin also affect the other plugins?

[eeickmeyer]

I have just finished packaging 0.90.0 using the /debian directory from the older version combined with the updated rules file in the KXStudio repos (thanks @falkTX !). Hopefully we can get this pushed into Debian and backported into Ubuntu 18.04, but don't hold your breath. I will mention that, since the calf-ladspa plugins are pretty much depricated and broken (per @falkTX 's earlier comment, but correct me if I'm wrong), I added a "Breaks: calf-lladspa" to the control file.

[boomshop]

Hey Erich,

thanks a lot! Would you mind packing something like 0.90.0-1 from the latest git (6ec9e1a) just to make sure the latest fixes are included? Not sure if we're able to release something like 0.90.1 in time.

[eeickmeyer]

@boomshop That's exactly what I did, and I have my git set to pull from you as a merge to push to my ppa, which I can change to the Ubuntu Studio Autobuild PPA at any given time. It's hanging out in my ppa right now and I have yet to run it against lintian. https://code.launchpad.net/~eeickmeyer/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

[boomshop]

@codecollider sorry for the late reply, simply missed your post. Yes, seems that the analyzer drawing routine used in a couple of plugins (Analyzer, EQ, Vocoder, ...) caused the problem in QTractor.

[eeickmeyer]

I've got a sponsor ready to get 0.90.0 (with the latest patches) uploaded to the Ubuntu and Debian repos. I have changed the bug report to "In Progress": https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/calf/+bug/1769785

Appropriate gif here: https://media.giphy.com/media/rl0FOxdz7CcxO/giphy.gif

[boomshop]

https://media.giphy.com/media/26DMWoEcQiE5sA7EQ/source.gif https://media.giphy.com/media/l2R0eYcNq9rJUsVAA/giphy.gif

[lucianodato]

Great news!

[boomshop]

Sorry for being late. I just uploaded a new release 0.90.1 as commit d754e1dbb5309827be3fa844dd07cc912001846a (not the most recent one). It would be great if this one could be used as stable Debian package. Download can be found here:

http://calf-studio-gear.org/files/calf-0.90.1.tar.gz

[eeickmeyer]

Excellent, @boomshop ! I'll redo the package 0.90.1. Wasn't quite done anyhow since I needed to gracefully get systems to uninstall calf-ladspa if they accept this package. You might have to make an official statement about those old ladspa plugins being depricated to get them completely removed from Debian and Ubuntu in the future.

Are you going to make 0.90.1 an actual release (.tar.gz file and 0.90.1 tag)?

EDIT: Nevermind, just saw your comment. It's been a long day. :pensive:

[boomshop]

There already is a bug report about the situation:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=870473

Is this officially enough?

[eeickmeyer]

@boomshop Absolutely! I don't understand the maintainer's reluctance to remove the ladspa versions. It's your software to deprecate!

[mikhailnov]

I built calf-plugins in ppa:mikhailnov/pulseeffects https://launchpad.net/~mikhailnov/+archive/ubuntu/pulseeffects and fixed building on non-x86:

https://gitlab.com/nixtux-packaging/calf-ubuntu/blob/master/calf-0.90.1/debian/rules

[xbug42]

Just a quick note for those running "plain" Ubuntu 18.04 (with no other repositories). Ardour + Calf was working fine on my system before I installed LMMS (which depends on the broken calf-ladpsa) for testing purpose. After I removed calf-ladspa (which removed LMMS obviously), everything went back to normal.

[tuomosipola]

Another workaround on Ubuntu 18.04. Compile your own calf-plugins from tarball. Install Ardour 5.12 from normal repositories. Run LMMS from the beta AppImage. This way you get the newest Calf plugins so you can use them in Ardour and also can run LMMS without the problematic calf-ladpsa package. Not ideal, but works for the time being.

[Teteros]

To anyone on Arch Linux using my calf-ladspa AUR package: I've updated it to use LMMS's veal.so fork which resolves this.

[unfa]

I personally use Calf plug-ins from the package calf-plugins-git (KX Studio repositories) - I didn't have any issues with Ardour crashing because of that. I've used them with Ardour for recording and mixing podcasts, mixed two documentary feature films with them, and I produce electronic music with them all the time.

[TcaManager]

Ubuntu Studio 18.04 TS here, tried everything, removed Calf-ladspa, installed Calf-plugins-git, still crashing every GUI lv2 plugin un Qtractor, is it related? Do I have to compile? Is there a way not to compile to fix that? Calf-plugins runs perfectly in Calf Host, but not in Qtractor. I use the KXStudio Repositories but before that it did not work either.

[eeickmeyer]

I'm pleased to report, after all this time, calf 0.90.1 has been released to Debian Unstable (or should be shortly) and Ubuntu Disco Dingo. Per @boomshop 's request, calf-ladspa was added as a conflict in order to assist with the deprecation and to mitigate the conflicts. Hopefully this will start to make the Ardour people happy.

[nettings]

time to close this bug?

[falkTX]

btw, ardour6 is in beta now, and it no longer supports gtk2 uis.

[0-afflatus]

I'm using calf-plugins on Debian with Ardour 6 I haven't experienced any problems apart from not having found the documentation yet. Surely this can be closed?

[limitedAtonement]

I'm using calf-plugins with Ardour and have been for a couple years (though I don't mix a bunch). But I use arch linux, so maybe the stability here is better since we live at HEAD? (Sounds strange, dunnit?)