Calf plugins does not work well with Carla.

[MaciejMalczyk]

I discovered that some parameters are not well controllable in Carla plugin host via Carla's parameters tab. Problem is in very non linear (mostly logarythmic) way of controlling plugin parameters even if knob has linear behavior in plugin GUI.

I think this short video will clarify everything about problem:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mfj0_AU1eFmwse8R1ZmIgKFpxYCRunB7/view?usp=sharing

[falkTX]

This is likely an issue with Carla and not Calf.

[MaciejMalczyk]

Maybe but the same happens in Ardour when i try to change value with "Ardour slider". Does Carla/Ardour read raw values from plugins?
I have one idea to overcome this - custom progression of sliders values. In LMMS for example you can choose knob behavior between logarithmic and linear. LMMS way in this case is of course not a grate solution because of low customization of values progression.

Anyway, I think it will be better to move Carla specific discussion to Carla's github.

[falkTX]

If Ardour also has the issue, it is likely that then it is on Calf side after all.
LV2 plugins should expose a logarithmic property on the ports that behave that way, so the host knows to give it a log scale.
I do not recall if Carla generic editor supports this, but Ardour is very likely to.

[JohannesLorenz]

This seems to only affect gain ports, right? Those should be fixed in PR #342 . Would be nice if you could test.

[JohannesLorenz]

@wujekbrezniew Friendly reminder: Can you please check if your problem has been fixed in #342 ?

[MaciejMalczyk]

Hi,
Sorry for not responding for so long.
I tested this PR (branch #320) and nothing changed.
Video

@JohannesLorenz

[JohannesLorenz]

@wujekbrezniew Thanks for replying. Which parameter (in which plugin) behaves wrong with the #320 branch?

[MaciejMalczyk]

@JohannesLorenz I tested Calf Compressor. Attack, release, input, makeup gain. I put a link to video i today's response that shows a problem.

[JohannesLorenz]

Thanks again, @wujekbrezniew . Sorry, I oversaw the video link. What I see is that in the video, all these sliders move linear in the GUI, however, all have

@prefix epp: <http://lv2plug.in/ns/ext/port-props#>
lv2:portProperty epp:logarithmic ;

This is strange. I can only see 3 possible reasons for this:

• Did you forget one of the pull/configure/make/make install steps?
• Did you accidentally still use an old version of calf? Maybe there are concurrent CALF versions? Can you first make sure there is aboslutely no CALF compressor visible in Carla, and only then set the LV2_PATH to your PR's install directory and restart Carla?
• Your version of Carla does not detect lv2:portProperty epp:logarithmic. That sounds really strange though. Can you try it with at least one other daw?

[MaciejMalczyk]

@JohannesLorenz
My Carla is built from this commit:
falkTX/Carla@68bbca2
I will try to build latest one and find out if there is a problem.

I build calf by doing ./configure.sh, make -16, sudo make install. I removed calf-plugins packages from apt so i'm sure that i use compiled ones in Carla. I checked if your changes are in my local repo and they are.
My lv2-dev package is 1.18.10 from kxstudio so i changed lv2 headers to: #include "lv2/core/lv2.h" from #include "lv2/lv2plug.in/ns/lv2core/lv2.h" and so on in other files to compile it against newest version on lib.

I checked also Ardour that i built from commit:
Ardour/ardour@ad51c7c
And it works properly. Video below.
link

[MaciejMalczyk]

Tested Carla built from latest commit. Still the same problem.

[JohannesLorenz]

@wujekbrezniew Thanks! IIRC the problem occurs with Carla, but not with Ardour. That sounds like a bug in Carla, still strange, because Carla is very old software.

Can you please test if the CALF from our master works with Ardour? If the mentioned issue occurs there, too, then #342 fixed an issue here.

[MaciejMalczyk]

@JohannesLorenz
Can confirm that in Ardour Calf compressor from master has an issue and from #320 branch works well.
I was checking also Ratio knob - for me it is still hard to control but i dont know exactly what is responsible for that. Video below how it works:
video