For those working with lots of virtual instruments - is your system stable?

Dear all,

My productivity has been severely cut due to constant crashes in X1a. I know it's my own fault for jumping into X1 without considering that it might be terribly unstable, but... it's too late to go back now. I work with the following Virtual Instruments: RMX, Omnisphere, Kontakt 4, Trillian, and a few others.

Lately my machine is worse than ever. Sonar will crash every 10-15 minutes, sometimes even more often. Lately what happens is that I'm in the middle of listening, and audio stops, Sonar freezes, and a Windows dialog box promptly pops up telling me that Sonar has frozen. And since X1 is no longer released by the task manager after a crash, I either reboot immediately or wait 3-5 minutes for it to disappear by itself. I can't figure out what is causing this erratic behavior, but I'm at the end of trying to make X1 work.

For those of you working in X1 with lots of virtual instruments (>5GB of samples) - are you able to achieve stability? If so, what are your system specs? what audio interface are you using? Are you working to picture? I'm desperate! Either I find a solution soon, or abandon Sonar. I hope that X1b will solve these issues, because I'd much prefer to stay with Cakewalk, but I'm losing so much time lately due to crashes, I have to consider making a change.

My specs = 2.66 8 Core i7 with 32GB RAM, Windows 7 64-bit running X1a. Audio Interface = Roland Octa-Capture

Thanks,

Alex

I had the same problem.  after updating my motherboard drivers and bios it seemed to be better, but when I talked to cake tech support, he was pretty sure it was kontakt that caused the crashes.  make sure you are running kontakt 4.2.2.

Dupe

X1 is pretty stable here - it hasn't been worse than 8.53.  I work with René's synths, , Alchemy, Komplexer.  I've got the free Kontack and it seems to work.  I'll take another look and see it that one is problematic.

@

I run 100% virtual instruments, amp sims and Dynamics/Effects (UAD2 - Quad and Duo) with a few non UAD2 plugins thrown in...

Running on WIN 7 x64, Sonar x64 (8GB Ram).  I have had only 2 issues with stability:

     1) Audioease Altiverb 6 won't behave under the bit bridge

     2) Soundtoys ECHOBOY's automation is lost



Trying to run both these as 32 bit plugs with either Sonar Bitbridge or J-Bridge to no avail.


But, for the most part, my system work's reliably.


Jim

Playback freezes on my system with Dimension Pro or Rapture. Haven't tried any others.
Projects with pure audio work fine.
 
Sometimes just freezes or popup states Sonar is halting.
 
Very simple project, couple of  tracks.
 
Everything is up to data, AFAIK. I eliminated all plugins excepting Dimension and Rapture. Doesn't seem to matter.
 
High hopes for X1B.

amdrecording


Dear all,

My productivity has been severely cut due to constant crashes in X1a. I know it's my own fault for jumping into X1 without considering that it might be terribly unstable, but... it's too late to go back now. I work with the following Virtual Instruments: RMX, Omnisphere, Kontakt 4, Trillian, and a few others.

Lately my machine is worse than ever. Sonar will crash every 10-15 minutes, sometimes even more often. Lately what happens is that I'm in the middle of listening, and audio stops, Sonar freezes, and a Windows dialog box promptly pops up telling me that Sonar has frozen. And since X1 is no longer released by the task manager after a crash, I either reboot immediately or wait 3-5 minutes for it to disappear by itself. I can't figure out what is causing this erratic behavior, but I'm at the end of trying to make X1 work.

For those of you working in X1 with lots of virtual instruments (>5GB of samples) - are you able to achieve stability? If so, what are your system specs? what audio interface are you using? Are you working to picture? I'm desperate! Either I find a solution soon, or abandon Sonar. I hope that X1b will solve these issues, because I'd much prefer to stay with Cakewalk, but I'm losing so much time lately due to crashes, I have to consider making a change.

My specs = 2.66 8 Core i7 with 32GB RAM, Windows 7 64-bit running X1a. Audio Interface = Roland Octa-Capture

Thanks,

Alex
--------------------

Alex,
When I first upgraded from 8.53, I had all sorts of problems. This only lasted a day. I then started in safe mode and found out a couple plugins were now problems in X1. Every time I upgrade, Konkakt is an issue. I stopped using it. I also found out that Rapture x64 crashes my x64 system, so I use the 32 bit version without issue.

I am running a total latency time of 13.2 milliseconds. My present project has me running BFD 2, 4 instances of Guitar Rig 4, 8 instances of Dim Pro (whatever is the current version), and 3 other plugins that were free. When I score charts (movies, orchestral music) I tend to use endless amounts of Dim Pro. I have to tell you, I am surprised that none of this has caused X1a to crash.

I would try to see if Kontakt is your problem. If you are running X1, update to X1a. It is much more stable. Looking forward to X1b.
M.

My productivity has been severely cut due to constant crashes in X1a. I know it's my own fault for jumping into X1 without considering that it might be terribly unstable, but... it's too late to go back now.

I'm not sure why it's to late to go back.  Did you delete 8.53?  If so resinstall it.

If X1 isn't stable, go back and wait for the X1b, and hope that it fixes stuff (that's what I did).

There's no point in putting up with the frustration of frequent crashes.

"My productivity has been severely cut due to constant crashes in X1a. I know it's my own fault for jumping into X1 without considering that it might be terribly unstable, but... it's too late to go back now..."

~Too late to go back to exactly what? 8.5.3? If you are a creative entity with serious work to do then  Dude..you may wanna do like I did: I fled right back to 8.5.3!!!!  I put creativity over being Cakewalks test dummy as soon as I took a look at the list of fixes in X1b and said there is no way in on earth I'm going to use X1 until the bakers fix the cake! For me and a bunch of other X1 users...X1...X1a...reminded us  of a Hollywood set: Pretty in the front ..and half-a**ed  in from the rear. X1b will hopefully fill the house with the  real furniture which  should have been there in the first place~

space_cowboy


AT - you have Komplexer working ?  I don't.  I own an old copy of it.  What did you have to do?  

I think I had a problem with making it work with Win 7 or something.  

While I think Largo is a re-incarnation of the Komplexer interface, I preferred the Komplexer interface a lot more.  Plus there were a few sounds in the presets that were amazing.  

What did you have to do?

I'm still on 32 bit.  Is that the problem?  Bummer.  I'll have to keep this "family computer" I'm writing on as a secondary music computer when I upgrade, then (hell, it used to be my main one).  Komplexer, Kantos, who knows what else won't work?
@

amdrecording


Maybe I'd get a better response if I named this thread

"WTF why is Sonar not working? OMG I hate when X1 crashes every 10 minutes!!"

That cracked me up!   Too true perhaps ;)
 
 

Thanks all for the responses. YES, "too late to go back" does seem very dramatic, but I'm deep in the trenches on a number of projects that were started in X1 when I was a naive fool, and thought that X1 would be more stable. Now I'm up the creek, and extremely unhappy with the stability I'm getting. I'm hoping that X1b will solve some of these problems, but have a feeling that many of them won't be.

It's interesting though. Some sessions are bulletproof, almost impossible to get them to crash. But some are unstable from the very beginning. And I can't seem to figure out what is causing this havoc - because I largely use the same plugins in all of these projects. If I figure it out I'll definitely share with the forum.

As for Kontakt - I have the most recent version, and must say that at this point I simply couldn't live without it. Too many of my libraries are in Kontakt format.

Anyway - I really appreciate the thoughtful responses. It sounds like many are having a better time with X1, and that is encouraging! Thanks all-

-Alex

I'm running x1a on 64bit laptop, lots o vst komplete 6, soundcenter, dimension, rapture, session drummer win764 really no problems at all, I do save often still, I have the occasional quick mouse click crash but very rare...

One of the very reasons for me running a pc was Jamstix.

I think Im headed back to 32 bit 8.53 waters until the storm is over...

Well if going back isn't possible, and you said you have non-crashing projects with the same synths, so that may rule out the tried and true method of loading them one-by-one to see. THough I would give it a try. Safe mode the project and choose only one synth and see what happens, then close and re-open and rotate through and see if you find one that smashes it.

Otherwise, I've had a few "haunted" projects, ones where data wouldn't play or crashes would occur. In the most severe case I created a duplicate project (tempo, synths, buses) and just copied the MIDI and audio over and it was fine. Ultimately there may have been an ID'able problem deep in there, but screw lookin' for it.