Crashing with Fireface UFX II

Cantabile
9

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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10

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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11

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

12

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

13

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

14

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

15

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

16

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

17

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.

18

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

19

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

20

Thanks Dave,

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

21

Hm, I’d guess that if this would be an issue in other hosts too one would find it in other communities too and maybe RME would have recognized this bug already and don’t blame other people and companies for the crash. :frowning:

22

@brad

Brads test step one on my laptop worked, there was no crash from moving the metronome from one already assigned channel to another already assigned channel (in this chan 1 and 2 were used) after the changes I played it for the evening off and on (about 6 or 7 hrs) and no crashes. Still getting the 2nd host test together hopefully soon!

Dave

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23

Hey @brad and other interested folks,

I finished test number 2 using Studio One version 3.5.2 and it did not show any of the crashing when setting the Audio or MIDI routing with the RME Babyface Pro over a period of 3 sessions of 5 or more hours up and numerous changes to test the routing functions of it.

I don’t know how Studio One and RME roll when they first fire up the driver program but it’s possible that the ports are all loaded as “on” but the routing matrix allows muting instead of shutting the port down. Just a thought. For sure this driver doesn’t get along with C3 on the port creation and routing in some way, just as you suggest.

Thanks for looking at it. :grinning:

Dave

24

OK interesting. Let me think about it a bit.

25

Hi,

while reading this I remember having very similar issues with both of my laptops (RME fireface ufxII and babyface).

This all was mixed with the the engine restart issue which is fixed meanwhile. So I thought all of the crashes were related to this.

After reading and rethinking I‘d say quite some of my crashes might have been related to driver issues. As I didn‘t touch audio routings since months everything is rock solid atm.

Regards, humphrey

26

I confirm that even the most recent C3 build 3589 crashes when making changes in the Audio Ports panel.

27

I think I may have finally resolved this with a workaround for the RME drivers. See here:

5 Likes
28

Thanks Brad. You really did resolve the issue.