HELP! Cantabile crashing A LOT

Hi @brad and gang.

I’ve got a major problem!

Cantabile has been solid as a rock since I’ve been using it for more than a year.

Yesterday, I started programming for a new show, using a few more Kontakt racks than I usually do and a synth (Structure) and a Kontakt library (Angelic Harp) that I’ve not used before. About 3 hours into the programming Cantabile started to hang every couple of minutes, seemingly at random. Because of the hanging, it obviously took an age to program…

I’ve come to the band call for the show today and it’s hanging again, just going through the set list. At random, not in the same places, it can happen anywhere.

Last night, I tried re-installing the soundcard drivers (RME BabyFace Pro), rolling back windows updates, uninstalling and reinstalling Cantabile (and older versions). I’ve also tried disabling the new synths and libraries in the racks, all to no avail!

The show starts on friday so I need to get this sorted asap!

Anyone have any ideas what I can try, or how to troubleshoot this?

Thanks in advance as always for any help.

Pierce

My suspicion would be the new Structure synth you’re using. I doubt a Kontakt library could cause a crash, but you never know. Do you get crashes when you have a setlist loaded that doesn’t use Structure?

If you sent crash reports, @brad should be able to identify the source of it, to at least tell you what to suspect.

Neil

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Hey Pierce,

First check your system for latency with this tool. It will often point to what is causing the hanging. The test is run with no other apps running except background type services. I had my Win 10 system hang that way when it wanted to update itself so any number of things could end up explaining it.

http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Also check the Kontakt Standalone to see if the Cantabile program is the only problem program. That’s where I’d start.

Dave

Hey Pierce,

how is your RAM setup and utilization? If your configuration is becoming unstable with the addition of Kontakt instruments, it could be that you’ve exhausted your physical RAM and now your system is constantly busy swapping sample data from RAM to hard disk and back - that could be the “hanging” you are experiencing.

Take a look at RAM utilization in Windows task manager and see if your RAM is all used up after loading your set list.

If this is the case, the only options are

  • get more RAM for your machine
  • clean out your instruments so your setup uses less memory

You can also change the caching / streaming settings within Kontakt to influence how much of a sample Kontakt loads into RAM vs. streaming directly from disk, but that will come at the expense of disk drive and processor load.

There is a reason why I don’t use any Kontakt instruments live - too much that can go wrong with live sample streaming and large sample sets…

Cheers,

Torsten

Hi guys, thanks for the prompt replies!

Hi @dave_dore, I did the latencymon thing before and it was all good, I’ll run it again and see if anything pops up.

@Neil_Durant, I’ve taken the Structure synth out of the rack it was in and it seemed to work for a little while but then it crashed again!

I’ve tried making a test song with all the racks loaded in it and it hasn’t crashed yet…

The weird thing is, is that when it hangs, it’s not generating a crash log…

Sorry @Torsten, just seen your reply too!

Thanks for chipping in. According to the monitor, I’m using 5.5GB or so of RAM and I’ve got 32GB in the machine…

I thought that too…

@Torsten, just checked on Task Manager and with the whole set list pre-loaded, I’m using 24% of the RAM in the machine…

If Cantabile has frozen, rather than crashed, there’s a way to break in and generate a dump of what the program is doing. I don’t remember the details, but hopefully @brad can pop in and explain, when daylight reaches him…

Neil

I had the same behavior a while ago. In my case Cantabile even destroyed whole linked racks… I was not sure why Cantabile did that.
Anyway: After trying a few things I discovered it was the VB3, that was causing all those crashes… from one day to another… without changing anything (and I think without updating windows). So… I guess it’s a plugin… but it’s hard to tell which. In my case Cantabile also didn’t create any crashlogs…

Nowadays VB3 is well known for not working anymore fluently on Win10 x64.

//edit: Neil is right! If Cantabile hangs, open up your task manager, right-click Cantabile.exe and choose “Create dump” or similar…

I think the VB3 problem crashes Cantabile though, rather than causes hangs.

I was getting the VB3 crashes suddenly after a Windows update. For me, replacing VB3 x64 with the x86 version (running with jBridge) solved it.

Neil

Not in my case at least. :wink:

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@Neil_Durant and @FantomXR do have VB3 but I’m not using it at all in this current show!

Once again guys thanks for all the suggestions, I know it’s something that I’ve done rather than cantabile coz it’s been so rock solid up to now… (even after the Creator’s Update!)

P

Well if FantomXR’s VB3 crashes were hangs, then maybe you should investigate that. I got the VB3 problems after the Creator’s Update. Do you use VB3? If so, try not using it, or using the x86 version.

Neil

Ok,

Now I’m truly perplexed.

I tried a new song with all the racks I’ve got for this show in it, and it hung.

So I tried loading the show again (I’ve got two set lists - one for each act and I’ve tried them both), to see if I could generate a dump and for the life of me, in the last hour or so, i can’t get the F*&^ing thing to crash for the life of me! It only seems to crash when there are other people in the room! Maybe it’s shy? Which would be a problem, coz I need the show to work in front of 900 people, 2 shows a day for 5 weeks!

Hmmm. I’m not sure whether or not to be happy, coz I haven’t changed anything and it seems to have sorted itself out!

I’ll report back with any news over the next couple of days when we’re teching the show and I’ve got the time for it to fall over…

@brad, if you can think of anything else I could check (I’m not using VB3 by the way guys, ironically, when I have in the past it’s been fine, even since the Creator’s update…)

Cheers as always for all your help guys, still head scratching here…

P

Ok, scratch that!

you’re not going to believe this, but while I was typing that last post, someone walked in the room and it hung!

Which is kind of good, because now I can generate the dump. Where do I need to post the dumps and logs?

Cheers,

Pierce

Cantabile
Software
brad@cantabilesoftware.com

Post an email to @brad with a description of the crash and the crash dump file zip file or other dump files attached.

Dave

On what kind of machine do you run cantabile on? Maybe it has something to do with the power supply?
Just an idea…

Hi @FantomXR, it’s a modern music laptop from Scan. It’s an i7 6600k with 32GB ram, lots of M2 ssds with all the samples on…

Thanks @dave_dore, I’ll get that off to him…

@Toaster - I replied to your email, but just fyi, I’m keen to see the dmp file but looks like it’s still uploading to dropbox. Once it’s there I’ll check it out. Hopefully it will give some clues.

In the meantime… when it hangs does TaskManager show high CPU usage or zero CPU Usage? I’m wondering if this is some kind of synchronization deadlock in one of the plugins. As an experiment, try disabling Cantabile’s multi-core support (Options -> Audio Engine -> Number of Audio Threads -> “1 - disabled” and let me know if that makes any difference.

Brad