I've written a VST3 plug-in using Camomile+Pd to output groups of control change messages in response to OSC commands. The CC messages are used to turn channels of a Yamaha 01V96i mixer on and off.

On Windows, everything works fine, but on my M2 Mac I'm having strange issues. The plugin receives OSC fine but the MIDI CC it generates is zeroed-out, e.g. when I ask it to send B0 48 7F, the mixer receives B0 00 00. I can run the Pd patch standalone on the Mac and it works fine.

The AU version of my plugin doesn't output MIDI at all and I get an OSC error message in the Camomile console. I tested a different CC generating Pd/Camomile/VST3 plugin on my Mac and its CC messages are also being zeroed out. In contrast, I've written two other plugins that work fine on the Mac: one is a side-chained envelope follower with adjustable release time and the other generates 5 channels of audio in response to OSC messages.

I saw a somewhat old discussion on the Camomile Github site referring to some issues with MIDI CC under VST3 (https://github.com/pierreguillot/Camomile/discussions/260), but I don't recall having issues like this on my old Mac with my CC-generating plugins hosted in REAPER circa late 2020, and I don't see any similar complaints in discussions about PlugData, which I believe uses Camomile under the hood. In case the issue was REAPER, I tried to load the plug-in to Audacity, but Audacity complains that the plugin is incompatible.

I think there's probably a better way to achieve my end goal but wanted to check in with Pd brain trust because I'm sad to think that I've lost this capability. What would you try next?

I'm using REAPER 6.81 as the VST host, Camomile 1.0.7, Pd 0.54.0, and MacOS 12.6.7 on last year's M2 MacBook Pro.

@jameslo I did a lot of midi research (windows and Mac) for all Yamaha desks many years ago. It has dissapeared from the forum I posted on but I still have it on a NAS and I will trawl it this evening if I have time.
The desks will take NRPN for all controls..... but maybe only through the editor.... I can't remember....
David.

@jameslo So my memory fades..... sysex will not pass through "Studio Manager"...... it reads it but will not send it on to the desk.
The desk will not send NRPN when it receives SYSEX.

OK..... the parameter change sysex messages are 01v96 specific...... see "01V96 Parameter Change List.xls".... inside the folder "01v96_midiptcl100".
Other desks respond to the same messages if the header is changed.... see the begining of my first ever post on a forum for details..... "Totally Remote 01v96 - REV1.5.doc"

The complete midi spec is also inside the "01v96_midiptcl100" folder.

The NRPN folder contains all the NRPN addresses for the desk, in Decimal.
I remember that you have to select NRPN in the 01v96 midi setup to use it.
NRPN is faster than 14-bit sysex...... most of the desk faders use values in 10-bit.... 0-1023.
but some controls are 14-bit and some 16-bit.

The sysex (.syx) file contains a mix of messages for a BCF2000 to control parts of channels 1-8 on the 01v96...... including NRPN for on/off....... explanation of my choices for format in "Remote any Yamaha Digital desk"

01v96.zip
David.

P.S. I went from analogue mixers on-stage for the musicians, to a Midi setup as above...... nearly having a stroke when I looked at "Mackie HUI"....
... and then I found Pd.
Best day ever,

Here is the sysex format again just in case......

@whale-av I'm using the default MIDI control mapping documented in the 01V96i reference manual and decided to continue using it but to send each channel's CC message directly from Qlab instead of trying to have Camomile/Pd map OSC messages to groups of CC messages. But what I was wondering, probably unclearly, is why I've appeared to lose the ability to output CC from a Camomile/Pd VST3 plug-in on my new Mac, something I did routinely on my old Mac, the last time in 2020. Is it a VST3 issue? an M2 issue? A Camomile 1.0.7 + Pd 0.54.0 issue (1.0.7 looks to be 3 years old)? REAPER running under MacOS? You get the idea.

@jameslo I understood, but with so many variables I thought that you might not solve the cc problem.... and maybe an NRPN would punch through.
Diving down through your link they are saying that VST2 cannot be used for Camomile (licence) and Steinberg have dropped CC for VST3 completely..... so maybe the question is why does it work for you on windows? The OP with the issue was using windows!
David.

@whale-av said:

.... so maybe the question is why does it work for you on windows?

Dang yo, I think you might be right. No doubt Pierre Guillot is clever. Googling "vst3 midi cc" turns up lots of platform-agnostic brow-furrowing and teeth-gnashing. I just now remembered that REAPER includes the ReaControlMIDI plug-in that generates ad-hoc MIDI messages, but that's a VST, not a VST3! So I went back to see if Camomile included a plain VST component, but it didn't

I'm honestly happy to have been forced to learn a little about Mac, but it's only been Qlab and its omnipresence in the performance world that's been doing the forcing.

One of the search results (that I didn't read) seemed to be about handling this limitation in JUCE, so maybe @timothyschoen is exploiting something like that? I'd love to hear from PlugData users if they've been successfully sending CC messages from their patches running as plug-ins on an M2 Mac.

@jameslo I have finally found the most useful info for midi to/from Yamaha desks...... I don't usually lose things so I didn't give up....
It was the result of a lot of testing.
Yamaha desk input + output midi messages.pdf
David.

Unable to let it go

This Camomile+Pd VST3 also works on Windows but not on my Mac M2 (it outputs nothing as far as I can tell) so it's not just CC messages that are messed up.

Next up (but the order will probably be mood-dependent):

• Dig old 2012 Mac out of closet and test on it
• Try Camomile 1.0.8 beta
• Try PlugData

@jameslo Yes... it seems you need a pre M1 Mac to use VST or VST2..... and VST3 has no midi support...... https://forums.steinberg.net/t/vst2-dropped-in-macs-cubase-12-the-end-of-midi-vst-plugins/749798
So digging for the 2012 Mac is the only option... or Windows virtualization (paid) as Bootcamp disappeared with the M1...
David.

don't feel like you need to let it go -- but think about how to prove this - m2, m1 whatever is aarch64 - everything was recompiled nothing was the same - latency in coreaudio is not low anymore like it was with intel macs helping a lot of people in pd vanilla cant get audio working and fix it to up their delay msec. It's not an intel mac anymore and for example a lot of compiled externals dont work because they need to be compiled for OS+arch. (mac is d-arwin, windows is ms-icrosoft, linux is l)

its not a mac like you think it is, intel mac was a combination of x64_86 processor that said any 32 bit (86) was banned and couldnt run after mojave even tho it can - and openDarwin at the lowest level.

camomile uses libpd and is frozen in an older version of PD right now - the dev for it, going to college, life is too busy to poke this bear - personally I get it - puttin somthing out for free - honestly I dont understand how it even works without being recompiled for darwin aarch64 (even then it would be for like PD 0.50 because the dev is busy with a normal life) -

your best bet is to try and switch to plugdata because it started with camomile but is super up to date - runs as a VST, you can complain and it gets fixed and you can redownload the nightly (which is the most current stable/dev version with all the new fixes) and does all sorts of magic tricks imo

ARRGH! Using a round-trip latency test I wrote, I just measured 39mS with the M2+01V96i!

So help me understand:

• I finally get shamed into buying a new MacBook after several theater techs comment on it.
• Plus my hand is forced by Qlab 5, which needs a more recent OS than my old MacBook can support, and I only needed Qlab 5 to support a show I was unhappy working on.
• So I upgrade and get better performance in some areas but get almost 4X worse performance in others
• Plus I lose the ability to script little problem solving MIDI widgets

Does that about summarize things, and is this the new normal?

@jameslo I don't think it's new..... but it's normal for sure.
I am sticking with un-updated Windows 7 machines for now, but it's more and more difficult.
Still, there is a good second hand market for pro audio gear..... so if I am lucky I will die before I have to upgrade.

I helped a friend get rid of a virus on a windows 11 machine yesterday..... and booting to Linux on a usb key was the only solution.... administrator rights no longer sufficient and we needed system rights to have a chance..... and I didn't have time to work out how to proceed.

Apple are particularly unhelpful...... dropping useful ports and useful tools...... as you have just found ...... it's not your laptop.... it's theirs...

Sorry to hear about your unhappy show..... and the unacceptable latency.
David.

/mac rant time - got a 2010 13" macbook pro about 5 years ago because it was an incredible value - (the 13" didn't have the graphics card problems) - I hate it now - its such a brick - but it will never die so I could justify getting a better laptop. the battery life is about 2 hours at best but you can open it up and change it but it still feels like a broken battery

my mom tho decided to go to art school a while ago so I bought her a decked out 2015 15" macbook pro one christmas so she could edit video and look like a cool person (she switched to interior design and ended up working at an SBC but that thing was always a champ at anything) - so jealous of that screen - the 13" is like 30hz 1280x700 - that 2015 mbp is really the best value right now - except the battery is legit glued onto the frame- they replace the whole bottom shell when they fix it at the genius shop - you can buy a repair kit that comes with glue dissolver. Well she was using crappy chargers and it quit charging so either the power part or SMC or the whole thing is broken and it's not worth it to try and fix it - fortunately the newish 16" is finally a decent replacement for it - so merry christmas - she uses it to watch TV when she travels - the audio on that sounds so good, and the over a day long battery life, its just the best laptop because its such a huge amount of tradeoffs to get a laptop right - I kind of wonder if people complain enough about the latency theyll focus in on fixing it. Theyre really deep into their own lore at this point - its annoying - even rosetta 2 - if they follow it then things will smooth out around version 6 and version 12 will be the high point

in summation: dongles

I'm curious tho - pretty sure opening the pd doc for the camomile VST3 with plugdata would fix the midi problem (because theyre both libpd under the hood the midi problem might be with the helper code or the JUCE backend besides the older version of PD/libpd camomile is at) and you can just run plugdata and patch live in reaper as a VST3 - has some extra DAW objects too.

it looks like focusright and motu are in a usb3 dac latency war as well .. I dont own anything with a usb-c port - I got dongles tho

@fishcrystals said:

I'm curious tho - pretty sure opening the pd doc for the camomile VST3 with plugdata would fix the midi problem....

YESSSS! PlugData solved the issue. Thanks for bubbling that option to the top of my list.

@whale-av But I used PlugData as a VST3 in REAPER, so VST3 doesn't support MIDI except when it does?

Hi, I just wanted to report a related discovery. When REAPER loads a Camomile VST3 on an M2 Mac, it runs it via an x86 bridge process because they are compiled for Intel processors (so says the internet). With my plugins, this bridge process almost doubles their CPU overhead and causes REAPER to load quite slowly. Rewriting my plugins for PlugData addressed both issues--PlugData is apparently ARM processor-compatible.

edit: that said, I've seen REAPER crash twice now as I've edited patches in PlugData when it's hosted as a VST3. So be careful.