Hi,
 
following on from a previous post that appeared to be solved by re-installing the Saffire Pro drivers - I can report that my audio only projects are rock solid. However, I'm still getting regular crashes and hangs when working with VSTi projects for electronic music experiments!  
 
Last night I had a midi loop setup - 16 bars, and I was live tweaking Alchemy 1.55 VST Modulation parameters whilst building the bassline of the century - well not really but it was getting there. Tweaking was going well then hang - crash dump submitted to Cakewalk. My project file is fairly small - a couple of Dimension Pro's, 2 z3ta 2+ , 2 rapture, Alchemy and Session drummer. A few Pro-Q plugins and then Pro channel stuff.
 
My question is this: Are these crashes likely to be caused by the Saffire Pro drivers (of which are the latest and has the latest firmware) ?
 
Latency is set at 256ms.
 
I've been reading about RME interfaces and how their drivers are exclusively used by the DAW and that Windows does not interfere. Would I be better off with an RME Interface for heavy, and I mean more than 6 or 7 softsynths with the ability to live tweak them, than my current interface?
 
Hope someone can shed some light on this?
 
Many thanks,
 
Mike
 
Windows 7 SP1 x64, 16 gb RAM, AMD FX 6core, 1TB Disk, Saffire Pro 24 DSP Firewire interface NON Legacy drivers in Windows, Gigabyte motherboard, dual screen setup with latest AMD FX 5450 catalyst drivers, Sonar X3e, Sonar X2 still installed. Novation Nocturn 25 keyboard and Automap 2.8 installed. Purchased legal 3rd party VST plugins are: Fabfilter, Sausage fattener, Stillwell Rocket/Major Tom, Alchemy synth.

I wouldn't count out the possibility (I'm speculating, I'm no expert) that "a couple of Dim Pros" and those other VSTs could be too much for the HDD or CPU, because you only have one hard drive (how fast?), which has to do a lot of reading and writing handling all those.
Try freezing something and see if the problem persists.

I would say zero possibility with the focusrite drivers now after troubleshooting on the other thread. I would make sure you are on the latest versions of the plugins.

What speed is your hard drive btw? Run chkdsk and give it a defrag. Unlikely to be hard drive BTW as you say audio is working well and that is more intensive.

Did you do a VST reset? That is reset THEN rescan VST plugins? Anything in the windows event viewer?

You need to rule about perhaps that a particular plugin is crashing your system.

BTW I have a project with my Saffire that has so many softsynths I lost count. You have one of the best audio interfaces out there.

On another thing to do is to run Intel autoupdate (Intel chip set?) as well as windows update.

Great advice again - thanks so much, I will go on a massive update/reset/scan session this evening.
 
Will report back - also will check event logs etc.

I forgot to paste this:
http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013315/SONAR-X3-Full-VST-Rescan-Recommended-for-Upgraders
 
http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect
 
Thanks...

Are you using the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the Alchemy VST, in the project that is failing?  And, are you running 32-bit or 64-bit Sonar, as well?
 
Bob Bone
 

64 bit Alchemy in this project. 64 bit SONAR X3e

Thanks - I am just trying to figure out how to whittle down the list of suspects.
 
Does the project crash at a particular point every time?
 
Does it only occasionally crash?
 
If you open it in Safe Mode, does it still crash?
 
Edited - any error message of any sort?
 
Etc....
 
Try to see if it relates to a single plugin, or some set of mouse clicks or other actions - that sort of thing. I would suggest making a backup copy of the project folder prior to tweaking things for debugging purposes.
 
Bob Bone
 

Hi, have performed all the steps mentioned by Alex apart from disk defrag - will set that up now.
 
Windows App Logs reported Alchemy as the faulting module so I've sent the info off to Camel Audio to see if they can explain it.
 
Will report back soon and hopefully mark this post as solved.

All I can suggest here is an Alchemy uninstall, delete any related residue files left behind in the plugin folder (back up first), followed by an install only installing the specific 64 bit plugin (if 32 bit plugin gets installed for instance remove), and a Sonar rescan. Hopefully Alchemy allows a custom install.
 
Camel forums here:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=32
 
Cheers...