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Arturia Software Center (ASC) => Technical Issues => Topic started by: vmusic on September 21, 2015, 07:57:09 pm

Title: Arturia Issues: SoftwareCenterAgent Stealing Focus, Patches reverting to Default
Post by: vmusic on September 21, 2015, 07:57:09 pm

Hi,

Let me start by saying I think your plugins are hands down some of the best sounding soft synths money can buy. They are the closet synths I have found to the real thing and I love them. As of late, I have been plagued by software issues and glitches that is making it more difficult for me to enjoy using these plugins.

I have been having some major issues and annoyances since maybe around 2 Software Center updates ago.

Logic Pro X 10.0.7 / 10.2.0, Mavericks 10.9.5

• A few months ago I opened a session and was working away. I eventually needed to use an Arturia synth, in this case, Analog Lab. I opened the plugin and some sort of warning said that my Demo had expired or something to that extent. I saved, quit Logic and restarted the session. I then realized that all Arturia patches were set back to their defaults or some standard sound. So that session had been completely ‘corrupted’ essentially and I had to transplant the region data into a previous session that had the correct Arturia sounds.
  
  
• Also a few months back I started realizing that while I was working ‘something’ kept “stealing focus” from Logic (or whatever app was active) for a second. It was extremely aggravating - especially when I was in the middle of typing a track name, or an IM, email etc. I then did some investigating and realized that it only happened in sessions with Arturia synths, and only happened when Logic was opened. So then I found a python script that would run and tell me what app was stealing focus. Turns out it’s this “ArturiaSoftwareCenterAgent.app”. Unfortunately disabling / removing this .app rendered my Arturia products disabled, as I expected.
  
  This is obviously an update to your proprietary license syncing now that you’ve moved away from iLok. It doesn’t seem to be a Software Update checker, because I disabled software update checks, as well as sending system info, that is unless there is a bug and even though I’ve disabled these things, it’s still checking for updates or sending system info.
  
  Is there a reason why this is running multiple times throughout a session? Why can’t this run once at the beginning of a session? Or once a day? Or more importantly, why can’t this be written so that it runs completely in the background? Stealing focus is really not cool, and I can see this causing major problems if the right variables are in place.
  
  
• Two weekends back I was working at my home studio on a session with lots of Arturia synths, we’ll call this Session A. I finished Session A, bounced it and copied it to my jump drive to take to my other duplicate studio elsewhere. I then did a Save As and began work on Session B. I didn’t finish Session B, but brought it with me to my other studio on Monday. On Monday, I opened Session B and the Analog Lab patches were all messed up, like before - with some default patch. I believe I then opened the Arturia Software Center and noticed that it wasn’t auto logging into. So I put the user name and pass in and logged in, just a spark update was available (and note that I was NOT using Spark in Session A or B). I closed Software Center. I opened Session B again, mind you that I did NOT save the session since I brought it from home and opened it at my 2nd studio - the problem was still there, Analog Lab patches were still set to a default state. Again, this session worked just fine at home. I then tried opening Session A (again saved at home), and Session A worked just fine, all patches were fine.
  
  This is simply unacceptable and scary. The fact that these Arturia synths are this volatile means that I don’t want to use them for fear that my sessions will get ‘corrupted’.
  
  
• This is a problem that I have been asking you guys to fix for some time. Pretty much every other plugin manufacture has fixed it. I’m talking about clearing the Audio Buffer when Logic Playback starts. I first emailed support regarding this, 3 years ago. I was even told directly from the Logic Pro developers what necessary code was needed for Audio unit plugins to fix this issue. When playback starts, all previous sounds should be silent. I shouldn’t have to run out the clock on an Arturia pad that has an extremely long decay. Here is the code once again:
  
  
  Quote

  Ask your favorite plug-in manufacturer to implement this in their derived classes:
  
  OSStatus         AUEffectBase::Reset(      AudioUnitScope    inScope,
  
                                 AudioUnitElement    inElement)