32 bit to 64 bit bridge
Anyone have any luck with JBridge? I have tried twice to use it and both times I have had bad results. wound up deleting it. Any other alternatives? Maybe something on the horizon built into N? I would love to still use my 32 bit plugins.
Thanks,
“If you're a host developer and you're interested in implementing direct support for jBridge, click here for a code example, the integration is very simple.” Source
So maybe this is something the Flav could look at.
That would be nice, I am sure that there are pleanty of people out there with their favorite plugins that are 32 bit. I think that I will give JBridge one more try before I give up. I will let you know how it works out.
OK, I tried once more with the 1.2 version of the demo and it wound up crashing the VST scan so I contacted them and the response time was less then 24 hours. So I then tried the 1.3 version and I still got the pop up “this is a demo version…etc” for each plugin that it created the bridge for but once I cancelled out of all 36 I was soooooo pleasently surprised to see my tried and true 32 bit plugins. I was so extatic that I rushed to buy the full version.
Quick hint to any one that wants to try the demo first_ create a folder to put your 32 bit plugins in and only put in ONE dll in it. I called mine VST 32 bit. Then create the destination folder, I called this one VST 32 bit bridged. Install the demo as explained having JBridge scan the 32 bit folder then putting the bridged dlls in the bridged folder. This way when you go to test you will only have to close the one pop up. Also they recomend that N only scan the bridged folder not the original 32 bit folder.
It is such a relief to stay 64 bit and still be able to use all of the 32 bit plugins that I have become so fond of using. 
I was considering moving this thread to the tips and tricks section but I will hold off doing that until we get a little more feed back on the use of the plug-in. It’s sounds wonderful, I too would like to able to use all my 32 bit plugs on my 64 bit n-track install. As with any conversion type process, my main concern would the extra lag associated with the process, perhaps you could explore it, put it through it’s paces, run it through the ringer so to speak and let us know how well it actually works.
PACO
Sure thing, I just recieved the full version; I’ll update the thread in a few days with my findings.
Cheers, LowB. Good info.
ok folks, took alittle longer then expected but I did not want to come back with info with out diving into it and have to come back and correct myself. Mind any who reads this that I am only a hobbiest and I am sure that there are more qualified people to comment on the performance of Jbridge and N. Looking through posts, it does seem that some plugins will interact differently with the Jbridge. So on ward,
My first try (after a restart of N)with adding in new 32bit plugins I needed to manualy tell N to scan for N to recognize them. Second try and all after N scanned the folder correctly. GUIs are the same except they are displayed in a “shell”. I beleive that you can remove the shell though it does have a Jbridge settings button where there are different options. These options are for performance not for sound tweaking. I was able to save and load presets of my plugins with no issues. I was able to open multiple instances of plugins without any issues.
Ok, now comes to the part of performance. This is where I was having an issue and did not want to post anything bad if it wasn’t caused by Jbridge. In fact it wasn’t, and I believe it will be the question on my next post,LOL. Anyway, it has worked fine. I was able to record(live proceesing)and add the effects to my tracks as normal and I experianced no latencey issues at all. My issue was/is that there are times when both the outside playback meters pin and the sound freezes, the time line contiues but no sound. I was sitting here at my laptop running N in 32bit. I opened a song and halfway through I got the same thing.
The other issue that I did come across is that the CPU% display from Ntrack becomes inaccurate. It is hard for me to give a good comparison given going from 32bit to 64 bit N. I am not sure where the conflict is coming from, its beyond my understanding. There have been times when I load the bridged effect(s) and the whole CPU% display goes away, other times it has to be wrong. I mean even if I am running 64bit N on a i7 with 8MB ram I would see some sugnificant raise with 16 tracks playing, 2 with at least 2 effects plus 3 groups with 2 effects each. It will show say 1.2%.
So I have found JBridge works well, pretty dam good if you consider it is the only thing out there. Customer support seems to be great as well, Just like NTrack. 
I will post if I found any issues moving forward.
Quote: (LowB @ Aug. 30 2011, 12:24 AM)
The other issue that I did come across is that the CPU% display from Ntrack becomes inaccurate. It is hard for me to give a good comparison given going from 32bit to 64 bit N. I am not sure where the conflict is coming from, its beyond my understanding. There have been times when I load the bridged effect(s) and the whole CPU% display goes away, other times it has to be wrong. I mean even if I am running 64bit N on a i7 with 8MB ram I would see some sugnificant raise with 16 tracks playing, 2 with at least 2 effects plus 3 groups with 2 effects each. It will show say 1.2%.
I sure hope you mean 8GB of RAM... any way... my guess here is that JBridge spawns a VST host process outside of N and then pipes between that process in a Rewire sort of way. Reaper has this same functionality built in and this is their method. With Reaper though the CPU is accurate because they wrote their own bridge thus they can control the CPU display... but on an i7, if you are running low on CPU, you have other major issues.