I have recently come across a problem whereby certain songs when they are first in the set list cause crackling. The common library is Session Musician - Icon Bass, which is a Native Instruments product. I bought it last August and it is a brilliant library, and until recently it has been fault free, but now instead of music, all I get is crackling sounds from anywhere on the keyboard, no matter what vst is playing, but Icon Bass is always part of the song. I have re-installed the library, but that hasn’t cured it. It doesn’t seem to happen further into the set list, and the last incident has a peculiarity. This time it was on a keyboard split with Korg’s Wavestate Native using its Performance Strings voice. By playing a few notes of strings the crackling would stop, and I could play the song as normal, but pausing for a couple of minutes and the crackling was back again!
This time the set list had 29 vsts (a record for me!), but still occurred when I chopped the list in half, leaving just the 17 vsts, but the issue remained. On my previous laptop the USB Audio interface (Yamaha Steinberg, which is built into my MX61 keyboard) the buffer size was 256 samples, which is in line with the “Glitch Free” guide’s recommendations. But when I upgraded it automatically set itself to 512 samples, which I presumed was because of the higher spec laptop, but putting it back down to 256 samples made no difference. The problem doesn’t occur outside of Cantabile, eg in the Kontakt Player standalone.
The urge for buying vsts is starting to make me twitch, with Shreddage 3 P Bass looking good, but it is more likely to do with an update, either the latest Cantabile one, or maybe one to either Windows or Kontakt Player.
Thanks, Corky and Ade. I will have a look. The puzzle is why it has only started in the last couple of weeks or so, after not occurring for the previous year.
Do you have anything running out of Cantabile causing a spike? Just an automatic update of windows or other sneaky programs could possibly grab a share of resources.
You could check Task Mgr and see if some greedy thing has inserted itself.
That is what I was wondering. I haven’t managed to re-create the spiking since Sunday, after numerous attempts. So I got the set list up just now, with the Performance Monitor up and running as per the jpeg picture. The processor demand neve got above 40 - 50% in any of the songs, but then played nothing for a few minutes, and the performance monitor was showing all CPUs running at near maximum, yet without spiking. This would suggest stuff running in the background, making off with loads of processor capacity. I will have to read to No Glitch guide to see if there are somethings to switch off that I haven’t done yet.
Tons of services and processes start up after a little idle time. This drives me mad, especially every time a major Windows update is released.
So I disabled automatic updates and still use a 2022 version of Windows 10. The latest Win 10 (and Win 11) are hard to tame, for example the antimalware service is no longer stoppable, etc.
Well I managed to get the crackle again, but Task Manager didn’t show anything hogging the processor.
I might try the Cantabile “power off and on” next time. An alternative is to find put what orocesses might suddenly decide “now is the time to run!” and see if I actually need them. Or I could buy Shreddage 3 P Bass as previously mentioned. It is a bit older than Icon Bass and likely to be less hungry.
I recently installed 4191 and have the impression that it generates more crashes and also some hiccups randomly in a song. As I normally have many instruments in a song it is difficult to pinpoint to a specific vst.
I very clear and simple crash I got with sforzando, concert harp, from the Versilion Studios,VCSL-1.2.2-RC, played via the media player and a midi file. Crash harp.zip (1.6 KB)
This will crash with the version 4191 but not with version 4159.
The crash will also disappear if the end marker is moved beyond the end.
Hi Brad,
I am using the sforzando v1.977 vst3, I added the vst and song to the zip.
There is no crash report, Cantabile crashes with producing loud noise and hanging completely. I have to stop with the task manager. Crash harp.zip (589.1 KB)
regards,
Joop
Thanks for that advice - I have just made that binding, and in addition I have made another one, this time linking a spare pedal on my Behringer FCB1010 to simply restart the engine should crackling re-occur. This is a work around until we can find a fix, but for a momentary pause in proceedings it seems to work. The alternative is to go back to an earlier build to see if the cause is in an update, as intimated by Joop. Hopefully I am on top of the situation, but will keep you updated.
Thanks to all for your help so far! What a brilliant community!!!
Good news! I had a practice session and a live set at church this morning and everything flew beautifully! My only problem was with Billy Sockinears on the PA - why is it only keyboard players who PA guys mess about with? I had very little through foldback and couldn’t be sure whether I was getting the crackle, so I hit the pedal and did a live engine restart, which took just a second or so and everything was fine.
Only now i am not. Restarting the engine is just a workaround, but the crackle remains, and now involves the Wavestate Native vst, which sets it off after pausing for only a few moments.
So I have re-installed version 4191, and so far everything is fine. But who knows what tomorrow will bring?
Could you please try build 4199 and let me know if it performs better.
You didn’t mention which build you were having issues with but build 4197 included a fix for a performance issue with some plugins. That fix, plus others are included in 4199.
