Been using Soothe for ages, and today it's stopped working for me. I noticed because I'm getting harsh audio glitches. Figured out it was coming from Soothe, and when I have the plugin UI open, every few seconds (when the glitch occurs), a warning flashes on the UI very briefly (too briefly for me to read, but I saw the word 'invalid' so I'm assuming it's a license issue).

I've uninstalled via the uninstaller and reinstalled, but I'm still getting the issue unfortunately. Has anybody got an idea?

 

Use Revo to uninstall it. Then firewall it or edit your hosts file to deny it internet connectivity, after reinstalling. if you had not already done it per the original install instructions. they wouldn't let their own uninstaller help you out like that.

 

Thanks clone. I've uninstalled with Revo but I'm unable to figure out how to block a .dll file. Been looking at guides for using Windows Defender to block internet access but it only works for .exe and haven't been able to find a guide specific to .dll files. Do you know how?

 

I'm not on Windows. I think in your firewall settings, you can also block the entire DAW application and you might be able to just block the entire directory/ folder you have your plugins located in. If you want to do it with the Windows firewall: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2483660-restrict-dll-internet-access-with-windows-10-firewall

this should either help or get you close. If you want to do it with Tinywall or another application firewall, someone can give you more detailed instructions.

Did you get the plugin working again? If internet connectivity causes the plugin to immediately "phone home", you can always do the installation with the machine offline temporarily. I don't know what caused Soothe to timebomb on you.

 

Hmm I'm not sure what's going on either. I found a script online to block .dll and .vst3 files, so I blocked them, but it hasn't helped. It seems like the issue is only ocurring in the project I'm currently working on (In bitwig). When I start a new projet and add soothe on a track, I'm not getting the glitching/license issue, so maybe somehow the issue is stuck in that particular project?? That seems strange to me.

Edit: If I even delete the majority of tracks in the project then copy the Soothe plugin onto one of the remaining tracks, the issue doesn't occur anymore. Trying to narrow it down to a track and maybe re-create it or something... so weird.

Edit2: So I have Soothe in two places. One on a kick drum, one on a bassline. If I delete either one of them, the issue stops. But if I leave them both on, and open the UI of the kickdrum Soothe, the problem also stops. That doesn't occur with the bassline instance. I also can't delete either one, add a new instance and copy the settings. Seems to be some bug. I read online that the newer versions of Soothe fix some Bitwig specific bugs, maybe it's related to this? Just extremely weird. I guess for now I can just delete one of the instances and deal without it, and hopefully I don't run into the problem again :/

 

Last edited: Sep 13, 2023

ok, well. first, you have done a completely clean installation. You may need to get Bitwig to re-scan for plugins so that it uses the correctly authorized one.

this rules out scrap objects and remnants being left, and then new install finding them. You have also ruled out it calling home as your problem. If I had another DAW or Wave Editor, I would next move on to testing it in those. Audacity, Soundforge, Wavelab, etc. If there is no problem in another daw/program, the problem is restricted to something related to Bitwig. Now, you have ruled out the problem in new Bigwig project? So you know the problem is specific to Bitwig with multiple channels with Soothe on them, or just this isolated project.
I would make a test project from scratch, no template or anything. Put enough stuff to recreate more than one channel and instances of Soothe on each, and see what that results in. I would also make sure you do not have these channels gain so far up that you are clipping the audio being sent into your Soothe instances.

I might even try to load 2 instances of Soothe as a channel insert effect, onto the same audio channel. Just to see what it does. There is a post from one other user asking about multi-channel issue, but no real details.

:edit: One other thing I would try, would be to open the problematic project in Bitwig. Create 2 new Duplicate tracks inside that project and put duplicated data into the tracks. move the audio or midi data into them too. So you have 2 problem tracks and 2 brand new identical tracks. This will also let you see if the problem is actually this one individual project. Maybe corruption, who knows? test this too, it's probably the fastest.

 

Last edited: Sep 13, 2023