Weird engine bug

Cantabile
1

Hi all,

I’ve been haunted by a bug that’s been following me around for about 8 years now. I didn’t report it so far as it happens so infrequently. However, last weekend this bug actually caused a big disruption to our set. That’s why I figured it’s time to actually document it properly and see if anyone else has experienced it.

What happened:
Everything runs perfectly for the first half of a set (song state switches are instant, loading the next pre-loaded song takes the usual 1–3 seconds). Then, out of nowhere, something changes:

  • State switches start taking ~3 seconds
  • Triggering bindings blocks the engine (not sure about audio, but definitely midi is blocked) for 2–3 seconds
  • Loading new songs takes up to 20 seconds
  • The Windows cursor shows the “wait symbol” during state switches or bindings

Once it hits, it stays. The only remedy I’ve found is a full restart of Cantabile (which is rather unfortunate considering that reloading the set list takes 1-2 minutes). An engine restart alone doesn’t fix it.

I’ve noticed this bug in the past but it more disrupting now as my song files grew more complex over time. My rough estimation is that it happens once in about 30 hours of playing time.

Has anyone else experienced this patten before?

Best,
Jonas

2

Sorry to hear about this. Off hand I’m not sure what might cause this. Did you happen to save the log file for that session?

If not that would be worth doing next time this happens: From tthe Tools menu choose Open Settings Folder, close Cantabile (important) and send me the log.txt, log-previous.txt and settings.json file.

The log file still may not show anything but definitely worth checking.

3

I’ll try to remember saving the logs next time it happens. Now that I think about this, I don’t think it ever happened at home or during rehearsals. Would it be possible that a brief power outage or something similar could mess with Windows’ power saving settings?

4

Possible but without knowing the actual root issue it’s hard to say.

5

I forgot to ask: Is there any disruption to audio when this happens? Either during the stalls or afterwards?