AudioSuite Double Initialization and Crash

Audio Plugins
1

We’re having an issue where our plugins occasionally crash while initializing in ProTools, specifically in AudioSuite. They don’t crash in other DAWs or while running in non-AudioSuite PT situations.

While trying to debug this issue, we’ve stumbled upon the fact that JUCE AAX plugins seem to be initializing twice when they are opened in AudioSuite. If we add a logger to the default JUCE plugin, we see that any time an AudioSuite instance is created, a “ghost” instance of the plugin is created and destroyed a split second before the real one pops up.

Maybe this is expected AAX behavior in order to validate the plugin before showing it or something, but we wanted to point it out in case it’s not expected and could be contributing to our crash more generally. Also, if anyone has seen this type of AudioSuite-only bug in the past, please let me know. We’ve been pulling our hair out trying to find anything that should actually cause a crash to no avail. Thanks.

2

Can’t you get a stack trace of the crash?

It’s entirely possible that plugins could get created more than once, perhaps using a temporary instance to find out about its properties. This kind of behaviour by hosts isn’t something you can expect to be “fixed”, you just need to make your plugins deal elegantly with however the host chooses to treat them. Always assume the worst case in terms of what the host may do!

3

Right, right, DAWs are known to abuse plugins so the only proper way to work is to make it bulletproof. We’re still working on getting it to crash on a machine where we have developer ProTools running (in order to get a non-encrypted crash log), but thanks for the sage advice. I’ll post an update when we find the issue, assuming it’s anything interesting/relevant to others in the future.

4

Hi Amusesmile,

any luck with this?