Title: UAD Native Plugins Appear Blurry / Unusable in Spectralayers 12 Pro (12.0.30 Build 431, Windows 10)
Hello,
I would like to report a visual rendering issue affecting UAD Native plugins in Spectralayers 12 Pro. When opening any UAD plugin, the plugin window becomes blurry and unreadable, making it impossible to use. The plugin technically loads, but the GUI does not display correctly.
Important details:
Spectralayers version: 12.0.30 (Build 431) – Pro version
Operating System: Windows 10 Home x64
Plugin format: UAD Native (iLok activation, no UAD hardware connected)
Other plugins: All other VST plugins display correctly in Spectralayers
In other DAWs: UAD plugins work normally in REAPER and show no graphical issues
Expected behavior:
The UAD plugin interface should display clearly and be fully usable within Spectralayers, just like in REAPER or other hosts.
Actual behavior:
Plugin window appears blurred / low resolution
Interface becomes unreadable and cannot be interacted with properly
Purpose of this post:
To confirm if this is a known issue
To check if there is any workaround or fix
To provide documentation for the developers so this can be addressed in a future update
I have been able to confirm this here (screenshot below with UAD Dream 65 as an example). I think however that the rendering of graphics is something the plug-in must to itself, so not sure whether this is an issue for Steinberg to resolve.
Thank you very much for the quick confirmation!
It’s not a major issue for me personally, I was just surprised to see this behavior and wasn’t sure whether it was caused by Spectralayers or the plugin itself.
I appreciate the clarification!
I confirmed it, also – on Windows 11 25H2 in my case. However, the same plugins I tried display (and otherwise work) just fine in Cubase Pro (currently on 14.0.40). I also just tried in the latest Cakewalk SONAR and WaveLab Pro 12.0.51, and they all display the same plugins okay, so the issue appears to be unique to SpectraLayers (at least among the mentioned hosts). Thus, there is at least something unique in SpectraLayers’ behavior here.
One thing I did notice that may (or may not) be relevant: I hadn’t used plugins in SpectraLayers before, and I’m also on a newly built PC. When I first tried inserting UAD’s API channel strip, I got a pop-up from Windows Security similar to the following (from WaveLab – I didn’t think to get the screenshot when I got it from SpectraLayers):
Since I don’t know why SpectraLayers should be requesting network access, I hit Cancel instead of accepting the access. I know most of the UADx plugins I have are from their SPARK collection, and they use iLok Cloud, so I wondered if this might somehow come into play. However, I got the same popups in SONAR and WaveLab, and I also hit Cancel for those, and the displays of the UADx plugins were fine. Also, I tried using one of my permanent (non-subscription) UADx plugins, which use local iLok for authorization, and that also had the same issue with the blurry UI as the ones added by SPARK.
I tried a number of other vendors’ plugins, too, including one from PSP Audioware, who also use iLok (local on my system in this case) for authorization, and the only ones that had the problem were the UADx plugins.
One thing that may be different about their plugins from others is their use of WebView2 (an Microsoft Edge-based library for embedding web content in native applications) for their UIs. That said, I tried all the steps on this page prior to the “make sure Windows is up to date” step (I’m pretty sure both my Windows and Edge are up to date, and I did not want to go as far as uninstalling the UAD stuff), and it made no difference in SpectraLayers (12.0.31 build 432 in my case as I tried that patch to resolve the unmix songs issue when using my graphics card for the AI).
I might note that this is likely not a big issue for me in that I doubt I’ll be using SpectraLayers in a context that uses plugins, at least in the foreseeable future, and, even if I do, I’ve got loads of alternatives from other vendors.
But, the blurring disappears, when I enable the preview function. So, is there missing a initialization/reset?
The same applies to the GUI of the new GRM Tools Atelier. The plugin graphic is incomplete until I enable the preview function in SpectraLayers 12.0.30.
In general (i.e. for other VST3 hosts), UADx plugins initially display blurry but then quickly paint the interface, to the degree it may not even be noticed that they’re initially blurry. So there must be something related to making the audio connection to the plugin, and maybe other hosts do it automatically, whereas SpectraLayers only does if you enable the preview?
Important details:
Expected behavior:
Actual behavior:
Purpose of this post:
