Crashing with Fireface UFX II

Finally built my new rack system and renewed my C3 license to play with all those lovely new toys you all have been talking abouy. Unfortunately Cantabile is crashing pretty regularly.

Specs:

CPU: I9-9900K
RAM: 64GB DDR4-3200
HD: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB NVMe
MB: Gigabyte Z390 M Gaming
Audio: RME Fireface UFX II

It seems to be crashing when I’m editing stuff, so I’m hoping once I get everything settled it will be more stable. Still, I need to get this fixed. @brad, could you take a peek at the crash logs I’ve been uploading?

That system is so powerful/fast I wonder if raw speed is causing things to trip up.

I made some bad experiences with RME too in conjunction with Cantabile. C3 is crashing quite regularly if I change something in the settings. Sometimes after a few minutes. Sometimes 30min later.

Since then if I have a gig and need something to change in the settings during soundcheck, I close down C3 completely and start it again. No crashes anymore which are related to RME.

What kind of crash report do you get? What does it say?

I can corroborate Christians experience. If I make changes to the Cantabile audio engine BabyFace Pro settings (for me it is usually an audio port, edit or addition/subtraction. C3 will crash either upon exiting the options to song level or wait a random time and then crash pointing to the RME driver each time. @brad went through it with me, I wrote RME, offered our and Brad’s help and got the “our stuff is not the problem” treatment, so that is where it stands, I always re-boot Cantabile after settings changes and have played scores of successful gigs with it no surprises. I do wish that little buggy-bear wasn’t there though …

Dave

Hello folks!
Rme UC here, but for testing purpose only …
Working on behringer UMC204HD most of a time.
Can check whatever you need to :slight_smile:

kind regards

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I ran into this problem with my Babyface Pro as well. I also ended up restarting Cantabile every time I made changes to the RME stuff. Never had a crash at a gig. I guess I’m just seeing it more often right now as I’m trying to move into the new system, setting up Cantabile all over again to take advantage of all my new I/O with the Fireface.

I gotta say, outside the crashing, I’m loving the new rack! Can’t wait to show it off in Show me your Cantabile Rig!

Yep. With Babyface Pro every time I change an Audio setting, I get a crash in a minute or so. If I cancel out of the changes, no crash.

Hi @BigTwisty,

Yep I saw those crash reports come through this morning and they all indicate a crash in madiface_usb_asio_64.dll.

Seems like there’s some stability issues with some of their drivers and I’ve heard of these crashes after changing settings before. Best bet would be to report the it to RME, include the crash dump (you can find them in Tools -> Open Settings Folder). Feel free to include my contact details in case they want to discuss it further.

Does the same problem happen in other hosts when you change the settings?

Brad

Good luck… they are resistant if you try to complain about their drivers. I, as company who was interested in using their interfaces in my products, called them and told them about the problems. “We never had any problems like this… also it doesn’t happen in any other host… so please contact the support of the software you are using.”…

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I also experience the same problems (described by dave_dore) with RME Fireface UFX and C3 , but not with any other audio-software.

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@BigTwisty - do you get similar problems in other hosts?

I get the same problems with a Babyface Pro, if I change an audio routing, Cantabile will crash, then when restarted is solid as…

Not a huge issue, I know it happens, so I don’t make changes unless I’ve got time to restart…

P

@brad: I do not, but I use C3 almost exclusively.

Do you mean an audio route in a Cantabile song file, or settings in the RME ASIO control panel?

If I change the routing in the audio preferences, that’s what causes the crashes…

Programming with audio and midi routes etc causes no problems at all…

P

Same here, in the Audio ports section of Options with the RME Asio driver selected for the engine if I change say a metronome route from stereo to mono or alter any audio port in any way then a crash will occur and sometimes not right away but inevitably it will. Restarting Cantabile removes the threat but is a pain and leaves a mystery unsolved which nics me too … still it hasn’t stopped me from working on.

Dave

Same here. Any change to Audio Ports will cause a crash in a few minutes (maybe less than a minute) . I sent a few crash reports, but didn’t document them well. BTW, if I cancel out of the Audio Ports dialog box, no crash. Like others, I didn’t spend any time troubleshooting.

Thanks everyone for the info. Here’s what I think might be going on…

Just before a host starts an ASIO driver, it has the opportunity to enable/disable the audio channels that it wants to use. In Cantabile, say a driver has 8 stereo ports, but you’ve only mapped the first one, Cantabile will only enable those first two channels. If you stop/restart the audio engine, everything is redone and the same set of ports will be enabled.

If you then go into Options, and change the port assignments and create or remove assignments that cause a different set of ports on the actual device to be enabled, then next time the driver is started a different set of channels will be active.

This seems to be where the RME driver has problems - when the device has been started with one set of channels enabled, stopped and then restarted with a different set of channels.

Some more questions/tests:

  1. What happens if you go to Options and change some of the port assignements, but make sure the same set of channels on the device are active. eg: start with Main Speakers -> ch 1 + 2 and Metronome -> ch 1. Run like that, then go back and map Metronome to ch 1 + 2. That won’t change the active channels on the driver (still just ch 1 + 2) and I suspect it won’t crash.

  2. What happens if in another host you do something that causes the active channels to change? That’d help isolate this to being a Cantabile or RME problem.

Brad

Indeed it crashed after adding or removing the Analog 3 and 4 outputs of the Babyface Pro for use as monitor channels and when moving the Metronome to 3 and/or 4 from 1 and 2 when there were no assignments for 3 and 4 at the time. It would explain why the restart corrected it. I opened a session earlier and did step 1 of the test and will be playing it off and through the evening. Will update. I’m setting up the 2nd host test so it may be a while on that.

Dave

Thanks Dave,

Will be very interested to hear if anyone can repro this in another host.