Pre-roll issues on host (negative time)

Audio Plugins
1

Hi host developers,

in your host, how do you deal with pre-roll time when recording from measure zero (metronome count-in)?

I seem to have issues with passing negative playhead time to some plugins. That is, some plugins have issues with that (NI Maschine, for instance, plays way off the beat). Is negative time allowed at all? Or am I completely missing something?

Thanks in advance!

2

Hey ans, I had a look at Logic running the Juce Demo Plugin and it does appear to send a negative time value to the plugin. You might be able to find the answer more definitively by using the Juce Demo Plugin with a number of hosts to inspect/log the values on the playhead.

3

Good idea. Thanks. I’ve built my own “Debug” plugin based on the Juce demo, so I will use that.

I really can’t imagine any host would be working correctly without supporting at least a small amount of negative time on the transport. To be 100% sure, I will certainly also have to look at the AU and VST underpinnings.