Live system: (midi only, no plug-ins)
Cantabile 3.0
RME Fireface UC
Nord Stage 2 (LOCAL=OFF)
Roland Fantom X6 (LOCAL=OFF)
Yamaha Motif ES Rack
Midi Local Control is off - all midi is routed through Cantabile then back to the proper instrument(s).
Played a gig on May 20, three hours no problems using build 3158.
3 weeks ago I had a rehearsal with the same gear using build 3220. At quite a few random times while playing, all sound stopped. RME Interface shows midi note info getting to it, but none coming back to it from Cantabile. Switching Songs in Cantabile seemed to take quite a few seconds after that, but still did not correct the problem. At times, restarting Cantabile fixed the problem, and at other times it did not, and a full reboot of the Windows 8.1 laptop was needed. One of the times it happened, not even a computer reboot fixed the problem, and I had to power-cycle the entire keyboard rig.
This past Saturday, at another rehearsal, the same issue started happening. This time I rolled Cantabile back to 3158 and loaded an older backed up setlist that had the original PC bank/prog numbers format. It worked for a while but started the same issue. This time, after restarting Cantabile, it seemed to fix the problem, but now every time I switched songs the dialogue asked me if I want to save the changes to [previousSongName] as if I had edited the Song, which I hadn’t. Suffering through the rehearsal with that dialogue popup, but there were no further sound cutouts.
What may I do to help diagnose this weird behaviour?
Sorry to hear you’ve having this trouble. Given that this used to be stable and now even going back to previous stable build still seems to show problem I’m wondering if this could be a hardware issue - eg: loose or faulty USB cable perhaps.
It’s a bit hard to guess from here what the problem might be but a debug log would probably help. Next time this happens, check the settings folder for log.txt and log-previous.txt and send me a copy and I’ll check it out.
You can find the settings folder via Tools -> Open Settings Folder. (but don’t restart Cantabile too many times - it only keeps logs for the last two runs). You can also manually locate those files, they’re typically her:
Thanks for the reply Brad. That makes sense to me about the cables, since between May 20 and now I have a different USB hub, and all different USB cables. I will replace the cables and hub and if it drops out again I will save off the log and log-previous to another location. Should I take the log copy before, or after I restart Cantabile (if it stops moving midi that is)?
When it mucks up, if you can close Cantabile cleanly then do so, then grab the logs. You can restart Cantabile once which will move the troublesome log to log-previous.txt (or to be safe just manually navigate to the file at the above location)
That should suffice, but depending on the kind of problem it might not capture the problem. While testing your could also turn on “Log file write through”.
Longer version:
If Cantabile is crashing or hanging because of a driver level problem, it may not get the appropriate user mode exceptions to be able to capture a crash log. In these cases it will almost certainly be a driver/hardware level issue and not much I can do about it anyway.
The Log file write through options causes Cantabile to ensure that the log file is fully written after each line so that if the system is crash/hanging unwritten log file entries won’t be lost and the log will be fully up-to-date to when the problem occurs. The downside is this option is bad for performance so only use when testing.
It never actually froze up, just went silent. The system is MIDI only and no plug-ins so something in the midi pipeline broke. After an “event” it still allows me to select a different song but it seems to take a long time to switch songs, it does not change the banks/programs on my instruments, and still no sound from the keyboards or motif rack. It always allows me to shut down Cantabile normally and re-start. So I wouldn’t think “Log file write through” is needed.
I will get a chance to stress it again at rehearsal next Thursday with a new USB hub and cables. I’ll leave a directory window open to the log location just in case so I can peel off the files to my thumb drive.
I replaced the USB hub I was using as well as all of the USB cables. I’ve had 2 full rehearsals since then and zero problems, so likely it was a connection issue all along.
