I’ll have a fairly complex song that works fine for quite some time. Then I’ll go to make a change, even something as simple as a Show Note edit, and that state will hang and takes around 5 seconds or so to load. Undoing the change makes no difference, it will still hang. I can then open my previous backup (not a previous file but the actual *.cantabileSong) and it will not hang as long as I don’t change a thing.
I’ve checked everything, verified, etc and can’t seem to find anything broken or missing, no bindings incorrect, etc. It’s definitely not sample banks changing, the sample banks and rack presets don’t change at all between these states. Some of these songs don’t use samples at all. Even if I just duplicate the state so nothing changes at all, it still hangs. Does anyone have insights into why this occurs? Typically these songs are running at about 25% time load. And I’m still on C3 performer. I should finally get a break of a few weeks to move to C4 shortly. Maybe that will solve it.
I have a few guesses, but none that really make sense to me or are definitive. One is that perhaps I used a flash drive to copy songs and racks over and the song got corrupted. I’ve heard that SSD’s are “safer” and have started to use that instead. Another is that I perhaps used an older song or template as a starting point but it’s been saved and modified so many times it’s corrupted somehow. But then, I have one older song that’s working great on the Primary PC but hangs on the Backup PC. Or vice-versa. Both PC’s are exact same models, exact duplicates of software etc. Regardless, going forward I’m creating new templates and hope that will solve the issue.
IDK, the songs that do this don’t seem to have anything in common. There’s one that’s not even very complex. I just rebuilt it from scratch with exactly the same parameters and it works fine. So maybe older songs/templates are the cause.
Luckily, I have been religious in backing up so it’s not a show stopper, but it is problematic. Any insights are appreciated!
Tom
I guess I may be the only one with these issues, but anyway I may have finally found a solution. In this particular song I had one state with a 4 sec delay which was way too slow for what I needed. I have a rack for The Sax Brothers on Kontakt 6 player, I also have sforzando rack, and a synth 1 rack that’s only used on one state. I always thought it was the sforzando plugin since that is somewhat buggy on occasion and of course it’s sample based. But in diving deeper I think it’s the Sax Bros plugin. It only has 1 rack state that I ever use in the rack, any articulations or adjustments are handled through cc messages or bindings. After trying several unsuccessful possible fixes, when I unchecked all the Rack State behaviors for the rack, except output gain, the problem was fixed and no delays on any state changes. Kind of odd, I don’t understand why since the only changes to that rack throughout the song were rack gain and the route off/on. But it worked on this song. (Unfortunately I’ve had a couple other songs with the same problem, but they don’t use that rack. But maybe the same solution will work on those.)
Hope this helps someone else!
Tom
Thanks, twaw. I have only just seen this conversation. I occasionally have this happen, usually when I have a set list of between 6 and 8 songs, with up to 28 plug-ins involved. I am in an ongoing situation whereby my system devolves into a crackling sound, and although the majority of times it was the Wavestate Native vst at fault, other vsts “have their say” from time to time, including NI’s Icon Bass. I am currently running an old version of Cantabile (4171) so i can stop and start the engine as I require, but I have developed a work around.
In every song now I set the song up with an extra state at the beginning and at the end where everything is turned off. It does mean that changing songs now requires two extra pedal presses (I us a Behringer FCB1010), but mostly avoids the crackles. However I get the same delay situation you have described, and the only way round it is once Cantabile is up and running, and the set list is loaded, I have a dry, or dummy run through the set, working my way through every song and every state one at a time, allowing a pause before moving to the next state or song.
That seems to “prime the pumps” so that every vst loads and sounds as it should during the actual set. It is a very laborious process to both set it all up, and then to do the dry run, but it seems to work.
Interesting approach, glad that works for you. On my issue, none of that works. Sometimes rebooting Cantabile or cycling the audio engine worked, but only temporarily. And if I wanted to edit something, it came back. One theory is that the rack is somehow corrupted and the Sax Bros rack is quite old. Or maybe it’s a conflict with Sax Bros and sforzando, since most of these issues seem to include those. But if so, why would many other songs using the same plugs have no issues?
I’m thinking of just rebuilding the rack, but I want to test first to make sure a new rack, named the same as the old, will automatically replace it.
Tom
Another issue that I had was to do with Kontakt Player 7. Apparently it has a habit of grabbing RAM whenever it needs to, but not always letting go, so gradually the pc runs out of RAM. Brad suggested that I contact Native Instruments, but it is easier to get an appointment with a GP in the UK than to get NI to respond.
What I have done tends to work most of the time, and as I am not playing prog with super long songs (yet!) I can get by!
That’s interesting about Kontakt. I’m running Kontakt 6 free player. I wonder if testing a problematic song immediately after booting Cantabile will eliminate the problem. I’m sure I’ve done that before but I will try a dedicated test. My thinking is, if the RAM is the issue, been trying it right away should have plenty of RAM available. Also check my RAM usage when the problem occurs. Good point, thanks!
Tom