New Problem: VB3 Racks are causing cantabile to crash

Thanks @Neil_Durant @FredProgGH @Ade @brad!
The community here is strong, really helpful to be able to troubleshoot problems with you all.
I have purchased Jbridge and will give it a shot tomorrow with VB3.

Todd

Brad, this just clicked for me, as soon as I read this I realized that I tried out the preload setlist for the first time. This sent the ram usage above 4GB for sure. I had also just installed the experimental build and assumed this is was set off VB3. I need to remember that correlation does not imply causation.

Just to complicate this a little moreā€¦ using > 4GB isnā€™t necessarily the cause of going above the 4gb address mark. eg: windows often randomizes load addresses of dlls and will put them in a high memory address even if using very little memory.

Cantabile has a flag set to prevent load address randomization (because it seems to confuse the hell out of iLok) but the principle is the same - Windows can and will give memory addresses anywhere in the address space but for most memory allocations it does tend to use lower address space. Maybe.

And @Neil_Durant is right - if this is a 64 to 32-bit point truncation issue, that wouldnā€™t happen when running 32-bit plugin bridged which is why this seems to be a reliable (but less than ideal) fix for the VB3.

Yup, Jbridge worked like a charm! Had to remove the 64bit version of VB3 from my plugins folder because my organ rack kept reverting back to the 64bit version whenever the rack reloaded. Everything works again! Thanks for everyoneā€™s help!

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@hitektodd @Ade @Neil_Durant @Corky @Roland_Robertson @FredProgGH

Please see here.

I donā€™t know if this has been discussed, or tried, but this weekend, I somehow landed on a discussion site by mistake where VB3 was also crashing on 64 bit DAWs, and jbridge was not correcting the problem. But, someone had success when changing compatibility mode to XP on the VB3 dll. Just my $.002.

Hey guys,
Has anyone experienced VB3 not properly saving settings in jbridge mode? I find myself having to go back and reprogram all the midi learn functions everytime I reload cantabile. Also, this seems crazy but how do you save patches in VB3. I canā€™t for the life of my figure this outā€¦

Todd

Hi Todd

Are you using Windows, or Mac? Also are you using x64 or x86 version of VB3?

Edit:

Nevermindā€¦I read comments from above. VB3 is solid for me, but I do not use jbridge. VB3 does not play well with jbridge, as I found out with x86. I had to run Cantabile x86 to get it to work properly, but after judging the discussion above, it is quite a booger to deal with in jbridge.

Huh- I want to say Iā€™ve not had any issues with VB3 and J-bridge (because I havenā€™t) but I donā€™t want to jinx it 2 days before a show.

I did before VB3 x64 was released, and I was using x64 DAW to run it on. GSI even comments to try VB3 demo before buying because of x64 host issues.

Reawakening this old threadā€¦after a big Windows 10 update, Iā€™m now finding that VB3 x64 is crashing all over the place, and the Cantabile crash reporter doesnā€™t get chance to come up. It seems to happen fairly reliably when closing the VB3 GUI.

Time to go back to the 32-bit one with jBridge I guessā€¦

Neil

Sorry Neilā€¦Thatā€™s your bread and butter plug. :confounded:

( quietly smiling at my Win 7 laptop)

Wish Guido would do an update on VB3 before we are all upgraded away from it. I was on XP the last time he was doing regular upgrades.

Corky

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Same here!

I had to remove the VB3 from my setup. It causes crashs all the time. Also some other linked racks got broken when the VB3-rack crashed which was annoying. Iā€™m not with the Blue-organ. Much better out of the box in my ears anyway.

I just removed the 64-bit version of VB3, and Cantabile picks up the 32-bit version and runs it with jBridge, and itā€™s now rock solid again, and all my racks/settings work exactly as before - no need to reprogram anything.

Itā€™s interesting that actually I was running the 64-bit version fine for months, and relied on it for quite a few gigs, and now with a Windows update, VB3ā€™s stability has suddenly gone downhill.

Neil

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My suspicion with the x64 version is a pointer truncation issue. ie: somewhere his code is dropping the top 32-bits of a 64-bit address pointer. Itā€™s a fairly common problem when code is ported from 32 to 64 bit code.

If this is the problem, then upgrading Windows could well explain why it starts crashing. eg: if Windows module loader suddently decided to load the plugin into above 4gb address mark, or if memory allocations are being made in higher memory then itā€™s pretty easy for the whole thing to collapse.

Unfortunately nothing I can do about it.

Quick suggestion @Neil_Durant -
Download the demo of Metaplugin if you donā€™t have it.
See if the 64 bit VB3 is happy inside that.
Also, the latest version has a built in bit bridge which might run the 32 bit plugin more efficiently than jbrdige. Not needed to check it myself yet coz, like @Corky Iā€™m still wedded to Win7 :slight_smile:

Thanks Ade, I have Metaplugin, so Iā€™ll give it a go. However, @bradā€™s analysis of the crash suggests itā€™s really down to where in memory the VB3 plugin is loaded, due to badly-ported code in the plugin itself. Perhaps loading it in Metaplugin will affect where in memory the plugin is loaded, but even if it appears to solve the problem, it still feels unsafe!

Neil

I am having another issue with 64 bit VB3 (Cantabile build 3257, Windows 8.1): nothing happens when I try to Export Program or Export Bank i.e. the dialog for selecting the file to save to does not pop up. (Import does work.)

This is with VB3 in a linked rack. If I load another VB3 plugin instance directly into the song, the Export functions work for that.

The VB3 presets themselves are correctly saved and loaded within the rack, so this really just causes some inconvenience having to set them up manually if I want to re-use them in a DAW or other plugin host.

@brad, I assume this is more likely to be a VB3 than a Cantabile bug?

Hi Danny,

What build of Cantabile are you running. There was a bug a few builds back where the export popup wouldnā€™t appear for some kinds of plugins. Please try in the latest version and let me know if the problem still happens.

Brad

Yes, very cool that Cantabile automatically replaces all references to the removed 64-bit version.

The only thing I would add for anyone else who decides to revert to 32-bit is that it appears both versions need to be registered with Cantabile to start off with. (In other words, both ā€œVB3ā€ and ā€œVB3_64ā€ appearing in the plugin list.)

For my first attempt at this, I only had the 64-bit version registered. I deleted VB3_64.dll from and added VB3.dll to my plugins folder, but despite Cantabile being configured to rescan when starting, VB3 failed to load. But all worked perfectly when I had both in my plugins folder, let Cantabile rescan, then stopped Cantabile, deleted VB3_64.dll, and restarted Cantabile.

I have actually had no crashes with 64-bit VB3 in Cantabile on Windows 8.1, but just realised my backup live laptop is running Windows 10ā€¦