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Improved RnZ... VST adapters for Buzz 1.2b

  • Published: 2023-03-28 23:34
  • Updated: 2023-03-28 23:34

This is an attempt at ensuring Buzz 1.2b's stability at start, whilst using the many old VST adapters. To allow for opening old projects. They caused a lot of crashes when installed at the same time, cause they try indexing the same folder, and write the same index files at the same time.

💾 Download the .zip

How does this work?

With a dirty hex-editor hack: I replaced a single letter in each .dll, from 'vst' to its corresponding last developer intitial. As follows:

These are hardwired to index vsf and vfr instead of vst now:

RnZnAnF VST effect & instrument adapters

  • Changed Buzz/Gear/vst to Buzz/Gear/vsf

RnZnAnFnR VST Instrument Adapter

  • Changed Buzz/Gear/vst to Buzz/Gear/vfr

Whereas these five check for plugins according to their now own .ini files:

RnZnAnFnC instrument adapters

  • Changed vstsettings.ini to vscsettings.ini
  • suggestion: use Gear/vsc

RnZnAnFnCnR effect & instrument adapters

  • Changed vstsettings.ini to vsrsettings.ini
  • suggestion: use Gear/vsr

RnZnAnFnCnRnL effect & instrument adapters

  • Changed vstsettings.ini to vslsettings.ini
  • suggestion: use Gear/vsl

Replace ‘insert full path here’ in each respective .ini with the full path to the new VST plugin folders c:\…

ROUT VST loader

  • Its folder can be defined within the Buzz machine itself
  • For compatibilities sake: give it its own folder

Good practices

  • Keep the amount of plugins per folder to a bare minimum
  • Use VST plugin versions from when you created the project (.bmx timestamp)
  • Load a .bmx/bmw in your text editor
    • Search for VST
    • Locate the VST plugin/dll name it tries to load
    • Copy to the respective new vsf/vsl/vsr/vst folder
    • Give Polac's loaders its own separate directory
  • On Windows XP, Buzz works more stable for me in 'Windows 2000'-compatibility mode

Does this really work?

You tell me! So far, I was able to load about 50 old projects from 2000-2003. Of course: step by step. When a VST plugin was missing, I first had to install it. Once in the correct folder for the adapter in use, it loaded fine.

Sanity warning

  • BEWARE OF NOISE BURSTS!
  • MUTE YOUR MONITORS WHEN LOADING AN OLD PROJECT!
  • DON'T USE HEADPHONES!

The noise bursts I've got were due to high feedback delays and long reverb times. So far, I was able to redeem every one of them by dialing down the respective settings. Then wait till the buffers ran empty.