Odd visual glitch when opening plugins

[dmitch57]

 

Since upgrading to an M2 Mac Mini, I've been seeing odd behavior when opening 3rd party plugins (i.e. opening for editing, after they have been inserted into a mixer channel). The first thing that comes up is a small window with almost nothing in it, like this:

Then after a short time (a fraction of a second, up to longer than a second, depending on the plugin) the "real" plugin window comes up:

The "bigger", more complicated the plugin is, the longer it takes to open up to the "real" window. An extreme case looks like this:

I see this for every 3rd party plugin, and for no built-in plugins. I never saw this when running on an Intel Mac; I saw it as soon as I switched to an M2. 

Has anyone else seen this? Is there something I can do to avoid this visual glitchiness?
 

 

[des99]

This is not a glitch, it's normal behaviour and well covered here.

On Apple Silicon, plugins are passed to  macOS to run and run isolated from Logic - they run either in AUHostingService, or for Intel-only plugins they run in AUHostingCompatibilityService (which runs under Rosetta). This has a bunch of benefits.

When the small window opens, the plugin has *loaded*, and then when the plugin has done it's initialisation process and displays it's GUI, that's when the small window is expanded into the full GUI. The time this takes varies between plugins.

On Intel machines, plugins are run directly in Logic just as previously.

Logic's own instruments/FX are not plugins and are part of Logic, so are always run inside Logic and don't need this process.

Edited July 26, 2023 by des99

[fisherking]

Just now, des99 said:

This is not a glitch, it's normal behaviour and well covered here.

On Apple Silicon, plugins are passed to  macOS and run isolated from Logic - they run either in AUHostingService, or for Intel-only plugins they run in AUHostingCompatibilityService (which runs under Rosetta). This has a bunch of benefits.

On Intel machines, plugins are run directly in Logic just as previously.

@des99 hopefully you're cutting-&-pasting this response! as you've answered a number of people with the same question... 🙏

[des99]

I do need to find a better solution - I find it difficult to find previous threads, it would be nice to have a "Favourite" feature for posts, so we could easily save responses for reuse, or linking to.

I'll find a better solution at some point... @David Nahmani what do you do to store/bookmark/retrieve posts on a particular topic you need to link someone to? Having to search for that stuff seems a bit long-winded, sometimes...

Edited July 26, 2023 by des99

[David Nahmani]

16 minutes ago, des99 said:

I do need to find a better solution - I find it difficult to find previous threads, it would be nice to have a "Favourite" feature for posts, so we could easily save responses for reuse, or linking to.

I'll find a better solution at some point... @David Nahmani what do you do to store/bookmark/retrieve posts on a particular topic you need to link someone to? Having to search for that stuff seems a bit long-winded, sometimes...

Unfortunately there's no built-in bookmark feature so I just copy/past some threads' URLs in a "Note" on my Mac, in order to past them when needed. Or I try to search as best as I can but I don't always find what I'm looking for either. 

I'll try to think if I can think of a better way to handle it. 

[des99]

11 minutes ago, David Nahmani said:

Unfortunately there's no built-in bookmark feature so I just copy/past some threads' URLs in a "Note" on my Mac, in order to past them when needed

That was kind of what I was thinking of doing... but I haven't really applied much thought to it just yet. But it has been something I've been meaning to do, as often I find it quicker just to retype, than to try and find something I posted sometime ago and can't quickly locate...

[dmitch57]

I've searched every post that contains the word "AUHostingService" and I don't see any that reference this particular problem (i.e. the mini-window on initial plugin open). I'm trying to gather data to give to IKMultimedia, because the problem I'm reporting is particularly egregious on Amplitube. They - the folks at IKM - claim to have never seen this problem, and they can't reproduce it. (Yeah, uh huh. 🙂 )

I understand the AUHostingService mechanism; I'm just looking for more corroborating evidence on the particular "temporary miniature plugin window" phenomenon. While this may be well-known behavior, I believe it's still undesirable and something that Apple and/or 3rd party developers should fix eventually. The visual behavior is very...ilLogical, if you will. 

So, if anyone can point me at other threads that discuss this particular problem - not the AUHostingService issue in general -  I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

[fisherking]

3 minutes ago, dmitch57 said:

I've searched every post that contains the word "AUHostingService" and I don't see any that reference this particular problem (i.e. the mini-window on initial plugin open). I'm trying to gather data to give to IKMultimedia, because the problem I'm reporting is particularly egregious on Amplitube. They - the folks at IKM - claim to have never seen this problem, and they can't reproduce it. (Yeah, uh huh. 🙂 )

I understand the AUHostingService mechanism; I'm just looking for more corroborating evidence on the particular "temporary miniature plugin window" phenomenon. While this may be well-known behavior, I believe it's still undesirable and something that Apple and/or 3rd party developers should fix eventually. The visual behavior is very...ilLogical, if you will. 

So, if anyone can point me at other threads that discuss this particular problem - not the AUHostingService issue in general -  I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

your question was answered

[dmitch57]

2 minutes ago, fisherking said:

your question was answered

I do not understand why you say this. My latest post has a new, but related, question which nobody has responded to. I'm actually trying to help the community by getting a problem solved. Can you help, or not?

[fisherking]

Just now, dmitch57 said:

I do not understand why you say this. My latest post has a new, but related, question which nobody has responded to. I'm actually trying to help the community by getting a problem solved. Can you help, or not?

this

[des99]

30 minutes ago, dmitch57 said:

I've searched every post that contains the word "AUHostingService" and I don't see any that reference this particular problem (i.e. the mini-window on initial plugin open).

Well I've certainly written this explanation out here multiple times before, and I've let you know why and when it happens above.

When the plugin is loaded outside Logic, Logic can't open a window at the size of the plugin because it has no idea what the plugin's GUI will be when it runs it - so it creates a temporary holder window at a small, standard size, which the OS (not Logic) then initialises the plugin in, at which point the plugin is run, and sets up it's GUI size, so the window is resized to it's destination size.

When the plugin runs inside of Logic, Logic doesn't have to create a new window to pass to the OS to use, it loads the plugin, and then lets the plugin initialise it's GUI, at which point the window is opened.

It's not a "problem", it's a behaviour, and it's for presumably technical reasons due to the hosting outside of Logic and the way the separate services need to work together. It's probably not likely to change for this reason, but really the only "problem" with this implementation is that you don't like the behaviour - you'll need to get used to it, I'm afraid.

(Or run Logic under Rosetta or on an Intel machine, where the plugins aren't isolated, and the plugin opening behaviour is as it's always been before this Apple silicon feature).

The only thing you can practically do is send a feedback to Apple, saying "I'd prefer to not see a small window before the third-party plugin is initialised please" and hope Apple find a way to change the behaviour.

(Or possibly macOS Sonoma brings some changes to the way the hosting service works...)

Edited July 27, 2023 by des99

[dmitch57]

Again, I understand the AUHostingService mechanism. And as I said, I am looking for any other reports of the specific behavior I'm describing. The first response to my post said "This is not a glitch, it's normal behaviour and well covered here". Cool! So, I figured there would be other posts that describe the behavior I'm describing. I looked. I could not find any. I'd like to have other reports, so that when I contact IKM and/or Apple, there is corroboration to my observation. The more people that describe the undesirable behavior, the more chance there is that it will be fixed.

That's the way these things work. If I'm the only one to remark on some weird behavior, that's one thing. But if 10 people make the same observation, there is a much greater chance that the situation will be addressed.

So far this thread is the only one I can find that describes this window behavior. I'd like to find other descriptions and reports of this window behavior....other than this thread. Are there any? I honestly think that that is a reasonable question, and I don't know why I'm getting flak for asking it.

Thanks.

 

[fisherking]

it happens here as well on my M2 mac (and @des99, this is on sonoma). so, all silicon mac logic users are experiencing it.

not sure what you're not getting about this.

[des99]

5 minutes ago, dmitch57 said:

And as I said, I am looking for any other reports of the specific behavior I'm describing.

This happens with all third party plugins for everyone running Logic natively on Apple silicon.

It's how Logic works running third-party plugins on Apple silicon. It's normal for Logic running natively now, and is by design. 

When Logic runs Intel code, it doesn't use the new "running plugins isolated" feature, and the windows open as before.

I'm not sure what more you're looking for? Someone running Logic natively on Apple silicon where this *doesn't* happen?

Edited July 27, 2023 by des99

[des99]

11 minutes ago, dmitch57 said:

I figured there would be other posts that describe the behavior I'm describing. I looked. I could not find any.

That's weird, because In the first ten seconds or so of doing a search, I found by way of example:

...and I stopped looking, but there's plenty of reports of this "opening a small window for third-party plugins on Apple silicon".

There's not really anything else I can add to this, so I hope what I could do helps somewhat in your troubleshooting procedure.

Edited July 27, 2023 by des99

[dmitch57]

5 minutes ago, des99 said:

I'm not sure what more you're looking for?

I'm looking for other reports of this specific window phenomenon. Not discussion of AUHostingService. You said this was "well covered here". Really? This window behavior?  This specific thing I'm trying to get IKM to look at ? Where? If it's well covered here, show me some other posts. Not discussion of AUHostingService. IKM needs more data on this specific window phenomenon. I'm trying to collect that data it so the problem gets addressed. 

[amnestic]

33 minutes ago, dmitch57 said:

I'm looking for other reports of this specific window phenomenon. Not discussion of AUHostingService. You said this was "well covered here". Really? This window behavior?  This specific thing I'm trying to get IKM to look at ? Where? If it's well covered here, show me some other posts. Not discussion of AUHostingService. IKM needs more data on this specific window phenomenon. I'm trying to collect that data it so the problem gets addressed. 

Did you look at the links @des99 posted above? The first one (that I posted) literally is talking about your window issue from back in Nov 2022. The second link, same thing. We weren't asking about AUHostingService. In my post, I even uploaded a screenshot to show the exact same thing you're talking about.

And it's been asked several times here since then.

One thing I wanted to mention: when I first posted in Nov 2022, this window occurrence was a mild nuisance. Now, I don't even notice it. I find it a fantastic trade off for how well Logic is running, how little crashes I have, and how many instances of CPU-heavy plugins I can use without the dreaded "system overload" error.

I think you'll go through the same thing, and slowly just find "acceptance." Like the 5 steps of grief or something. 😂

Edited July 27, 2023 by amnestic

[dmitch57]

31 minutes ago, amnestic said:

Did you look at the links @des99 posted above?

Yep, that post and my most recent post went up at pretty much the same time. Crossed in the ether, so to speak. 

 

32 minutes ago, amnestic said:

I find it a fantastic trade off for how well Logic is running, how little crashes I have, and how many instances of CPU-heavy plugins I can use without the dreaded "system overload" error.

Totally agree. Running on M2 is just great. I'm so much more productive now.