When I started making music some years ago, I had zero issues with plugins, because I have very a few or none
But now that I have plenty of them, I have multiple crashes every day, and looking at the crash logs of e.g. Cantabile, I realized that the culprits are plugins I cannot kill because they are exactly what I need to make music, YUK
Well, the day I’ll have about 1 thousand euros to waste, I’ll buy a hardware arranger
Or, I’ll just stop making music: it is too much a nuisance, and an expensive nuisance as well, for my tastes; Way more expensive and troublesome compared to the other hobby I have, i.e. nature photography
A nice Taylor acoustic guitar might be a direction to go in . Our keyboard player has the Korg PA1. I much prefer my Cantabile setup but am impressed by the PA1. It has some pretty good organ, piano and synth patches. It has color tablet screen built in that includes a media player that works well.
There are several folks in here (and lots of threads) who are masters at finding combinations of low resource VSTs that sound great. U-he, G-Force, and Synapse Audio have always been super stable and reliable for me.
Unfortunately, it seems I love unreliable plugins only
Anyway, I am removing all rogue plugins (all sample-based), and I’ll try to see if I can keep a Cantabile-based workflow, and still have fun with the remaining ones
If not, the Uninstall button is my choice
Now I have Jamstix, AAS Strum GS 2, VB-3 and AAS electric pianos, but a reliable bass is lacking
UJAM basses are among the unreliable tools in my system
Modo bass requires ilok that I strongly dislike, and it’s not automatic
EZbass (again) maybe an option: not automatic but fast to set
I don’t think there are other automatic basses available, but maybe I am wrong
Other than that, why do you hate iLok? OK, it’s a bit annoying “don’t forget the dongle in the rehearsal room”, but what’s wrong with it? Maybe has it bitten you?
Well, I noticed that some crash freeze the audio driver, apparently
And when it happens, I cannot see any trouble in CPU, RAM, disk writing etc, so I am starting to think that my audio card is faulty
For example, in my system the WASAPI driver works better than the Komplete Audio 1 driver, and this is strange
Wait!
Komplete has a K inside!
Damn K, I am sure it is the pest making troubles
According to Korg the latest arrangers have Kronos (or Nautilus) sound generation. For hobbyists I think it’s the best way to play without struggling with Windows, latency, buffers, audio boards, etc.
Speakers are built-in, all you need is a110V socket (220V here)… piece of cake.
I think there is a little misunderstanding. A screwdriver or a chisel is a tool.
I think you mean instrument. There are different names in English.
Sorry non-Italian forum people, the following phrases are for Italians.
A machine translation would send everything into an endless loop.
---- start .it ----
Tool → Utensile.
Instrument → Strumento (strumento musicale ad esempio).
Purtroppo se traduci in automatico quello che ho scritto succederà che ci capiremo ancora meno. Insomma, tool non è lo strumento musicale, è una pinza o un’aspirapolvere o una roba così. Mentre instrument può voler dire entrambe le cose. E’ un po’ complicato, ho già mal di testa.
---- end .it ----
It’s not being picky, it’s really two different words. I doubt that Merula or Sweetwater sell tweezers…
OK, OK, stop. My head hurts and it’s bedtime.
For “tool” I clearly meant a hardware arranger that can be demoed in presence only
Anyway, I think to have got that one of the 2 kinds of crashes I have is linked to my old and unsupported audio card, and the suspect raised when I found that WASAPI works better than the ASIO dedicated driver that is quite unusual
So now I have removed the audio card and de-installed its drivers
The first pros I found is that I can use a lower sample-rate, 16 bits instead of 24 bits, so I can set a smaller buffer having a lower latency, or I can keep a big buffer increasing the stability
The second kind of crash is linked to deleting/swapping sample-based plugins, and it is easier to fix: when I audit my various plugins, instead of deleting and swapping them, I can put all them in a project, then muting/demuting them at taste
OR
I can create multiple projects where the only difference is the kind of plugins inside
This is not a workflow I am accustomed to, but maybe I can live with it
It is a case of what you want in terms of something that just works (a commercial workstation or arranger), or something that is infinitely flexible (something like a live host and VSTs)
Personally I am a fence sitter and would not be without hardware or software, so I ensure I have the best of both worlds both in my studio and when I am on stage.
I have no arranger experience and little interest with them, but if I were you, if I wanted something in a box, I would seriously look at the Kronos (2nd hand) or Nautilus. Their multiple sound engines (nine off) cover pretty much every sonic ground you can think of and you can record/sequence in the box via a reasonable touch screen interface. Personally I think the Nautilus is a step backwards as it has a much reduced control surface (so more interaction with the touch screen) and no KARMA (but if you have never used KARMA you will not know what you are missing); the Nautilus has dual arpeggiators instead.
The Kronos and Nautilus are often criticised for having a slow boot time (in the order of 2-3 minutes) because they sample stream from SSD, so need to preload of the start of all samples on boot so they are ready to play. So long as you know about it, it is not an issue (or never has been to me), but if you consider gigging one on stage then a UPS is a must to avoid a power glitch causing a reboot and an embarrassing delay. But I would never be on stage without a UPS anyway for the protection it gives from ropey power .
And with a USB to Ethernet adapter you can access all of the Kronos/Nautilus contents via FTP.
I joked in another post that you have been unlucky. For whatever reason you seem to have a really unstable system that has put you off the VST route.
I would suggest not giving up, because it does give amazing flexibility. So I would suggest getting your computer right back to a clean OS install and start again with Cantabile and a good workhorse VST (like Omnisphere) or a suite like Arturia V collection. Install, and hopefully it all works without a hitch. Run for a period of time to gain confidence and when you are ready for more, do a disk image before incrementally adding other selected VSTs, and do a disc image before every time you make a big change. If all is well and good then happy days, but if a certain plugin gives you a problem, then it is easy to restore back to a known good from the disk images with no hassle.
Thanks for your tips
A dedicated PC is certainly a sound (pun intended ) option, but I don’t have now the time to do it because I use it in my work mainly
Later this year I’ll do that
At the moment, I found that one of the culprits is the faulty audio interface, and just removing it improved the situation a lot
. Our keyboard player has the Korg PA1. I much prefer my Cantabile setup but am impressed by the PA1. It has some pretty good organ, piano and synth patches. It has color tablet screen built in that includes a media player that works well.
