FabFilter

Hi FabFilter team,

I'm continuing to test Sonar 8.5.1 x64 in Win 7 x64 and I've
hit a pretty big snag with FabFilter plugins and BitBridge 2.0. I also experienced a problem with JBridge 1.14 with extreme sluggishness and dropouts, so it appears there is no completely solid solution to the bridging of my favorite FabFilter plugins right now. I'm a long-term customer and have purchased most of your products. I hope you can help me resolve this issue soon.

I've already contacted Cakewalk about it, as well as the developer of the JBridge wrapper.

First, for BitBridge 2.0, which is part of Sonar 8.5.1 x64. I've done a lot of testing, and it appears FabFilter plugins and BitBridge 2.0 don't currently work well together. That's a critical set of plugins for me.

Basically what happens is that when two or more plugins of different
types from FabFilter are loaded up on to one BitBridge 2.0 instance,
the second or third one is rejected with the following error: "The
following VST plugin failed to load..."

I've been able to force a conflict by forcing plugins to be loaded
onto one BitBridge server.

I've also been able to get many more plugins loaded by forcing just
one type of FabFilter plugin to load on one specific BitBridge server.

For example,

Try loading FabFilter Timeless 2, Simplon and Volcano 2 on one
BitBridge instance... it will fail.

However, if I manually designate BitBridge server 1 for just Simplon,
then I can load several Simplons without a problem. Then I designate
BitBridge server 2 for Volcano 2 and can load many instances of
Volcano 2 just fine, and so forth.

This is obviously tricky to keep track of (this workaround is needed
for all the FabFilter plugins I tested -- Twin 2, Volcano 2, Timeless
2, One, and Simplon).

If I designate 5 BitBridge servers -- one for each -- this seems to be
the kludgey workaround.

So, obviously, something strange is going on when two or more
different FabFilter plugins are loaded into one BitBridge instance.

The problem is not immediately noticeable when you are using the
round-robin auto-assignment of BitBridge since it automatically
spreads out the instances to different BitBridge servers, however,
even in that mode, after 5-6 different plugins, you'll hit the
conflict, so the only way to manage it is to force one plugin type per
BitBridge server.

I use these plugins quite often in many of my projects, so this is a
pressing issue to resolve for me. I've been in touch with Cakewalk and also with the
JBridge developer, and he's working on a possible solution as we
speak, from his end.

The problem with the current version of JBridge is that the interface is incredibly sluggish and almost immediately causes a dropout in Sonar x64, which stops the session. The developer of JBridge is working on this, so hopefully there is a solution there as well, but ideally, the entire x64 community would love to see an x64 native version of your awesome FabFilter plugins. If not that, I ask you to PLEASE test your plugins again with the latest version of BitBridge. It seems you are very close to having it work there perfectly, and possibly with JBridge as well.

Your attention to this matter would be most appreciated.

Best Regards,
James