RESOLVED: Strange behaviour and crashes with X3, Kontakt 5 related

I'm getting very strange behaviour / crashes with X3b in the final stages of a project, which are potentially related to Kontakt 5 (yet I'm not 100% certain).
 
History:

• project created, tracked and roughly mixed in X2a
• about 50 tracks, including 2 instances of K5 (ARD + various synths), project size in RAM: 3.6 GB
• when migrated to X3b there were a number of problems/crashes due to 32/64bit plugs and VST2/VST3 plugs, which were sorted out; VST2 were manually replaced by VST3 were available, all 32 bit plugs were eliminated
• no further problems when editing and completing mix i.e. 10+ hours of continuous work without problems

 
When fine tuning of the mix in presence of the artist, the project was perfectly OK to work with for 2 hours. However, after coming back from a break, the project no longer opens but crashes as soon as loading is completed (according to RAM use). Countless embarassing attempts, but everytime it either crashes or if opened successfully suffers from the silent master bus problem (meters indicating playback but no audio arriving at audio interface). Rebooting system doesn't help ...
 
What makes it really weird: This morning we could open the project and finalize the mix, but we had just one go at it. After saving, bouncing and closing the project it's now back to same crashing situation everytime you open the project ...
 
Further info:

• it opens fine in SAFE mode when leaving K5 out (but unfortunately we need K5!)
• it somehow seems like there is some weird (potentially troublesome) caching going on in the background (as it takes long to load K5 samples 1st time, but is much quicker afterwards (even after a crash) ... yet loading is not successful
• every crash leaves about 7 GB somewhere in the crash reporting system directory that fills up the HD, which you have to track and removed with a disk cleaning utility
• 2 other projects created at same time with very similar set-up don't show any of these problems (same plugs, same K5, also started in X2a)

 
I have a total of 26 mini-dumps, which I will donate to Cakewalk's fault reporter ... yet I'm afraid they'll just get back to me saying the reason is inside K5 ...
 
So, anybody seen anything similar? Could it be an HD problem? Or caching settings? ...
 
Your help is much appreaciated!
 

I'm researching NI / Kontakt forum posts (as this is my best guess for the source of the problem) ...
 
There seems to be consensus on disabling multi-processor support in Kontakt 5 and just enabling it in the host DAW. (Then you go into Kontakt (load it up in your  DAW ) – and then go to Options / Engine, and change Multiprocessor support to ‘Off’.)
 
Is this the way to go for Sonar? Could multi-processor support in Kontakt 5 be causing problems even before playback starts?

I run Kontakt 5 all the time - it is my go to soft synth almost all the time, and I have never had to disable anything to work with it just fine.  I have had 5-6 instances of Kontakt up and running with multiple loaded instruments per instance, and close to 100 tracks, along with other synths, and have not had such problems.
 
What happens if you delete the Kontakt instances (without deleting the associated tracks), and insert them again?
 
The other thing that comes to mind is some possible project corruption, which perhaps if you cut/pasted tracks and audio clips and all of that to a new project, would the problems still be there?
 
Bob Bone
 

Thanks for your replies.
 
There's a lot of information in that thread and the situation is strikingly similar (well, the symptoms at least) ... so I just tested all these options but without luck:

• Open a different project first, close it (not exit Sonar), then try opening your 'Problem Project' (see post #55) => leads to same crash when "problem" project is loaded
• Octa-Capture is apparently not the problem, either. I run Octa-Capture in EXP mode with a VS-700, so I can leave the OC off and just run with the VS-700 (at least for mixing), but when I do this, I get the same crashing results (the only difference being that it first detects the "silent" headphone busses which are routed to the OC and when you confirm that msg box => BOOM)
• Turning off multi-processor support in K5 does not help in the crashing project, either, but seems to have adverse effects in the projects that work (so I'll keep that active until someone tells me better) ...

 
So unfortunately still same situation - I'm curious what/when Cakewalk replies after having a look at the 26 minim dumps ...
 
Rob

This is one of the weird ones.
 
I'll try to do some digging - I know this would not be easy for you, being as you are in skiing country, but at this point it might well be worth getting up either really early or really late, and calling back to technical support.
 
From what I have seen thus far, particularly now with the new release, that the Cakewalk support staff have been QUITE eager to jump in and try to solve some of these weirder problems.  I would think that with them having your dumps that they could delve deeper into what's going on with this for you.
 
What happens if you load the project without any effects plugins, or if you temporarily bypass all effects by hitting 'E' on your computer keyboard?  I am just wondering if perhaps some bizarre plugin problem is contributing to your trauma.
 
 
Bob Bone
 

If it's driver-related, does the problem go away if you use WDM instead of ASIO or vice-versa?

I use Kontakt EVERY day, ALL day, and it never crashes on me - and this has been the case for forever.
 
There MUST be something else going on ( I hope), 
 
Bob Bone
 

I use 5.2.0.6361, and have done NOTHING to change any default of Kontakt.  It just works, and causes no trouble at all.
 
Bob Bone
 

Also using kontakt5 here on win8 with a quadcapture never had a hint of a problem.

I would start by doing a disk integrity check.

UPDATE:
 
Since that last post above I had that problem (which was really the only one with Sonar X3) a few times and somehow I noticed that (a) it only happens when Kontakt 5 is being used in the project and (b) Kontakt 5 tracks are not frozen ... so I developed the habit of freezing whenever possible ..
 
About a year later I could successfully track that problem down to only happening with the Roland Octa-Capture interface (no crashes with the VS-700) ... so this was clearly a NI / Roland issue and I reported it to both  ... not expecting anything from Roland (from past experience) ... but I got the reply from NI saying this is a known issue (but no mention whether this will be fixed or not) ...
 
So I kept the Octa-Capture off when doing Kontakt work ... and voila no more crashes ...
 
Anyway, today I was surprised to find a Kontakt 5.4.3 update which actually lists "a fixed crash with the "Roland Quad Capture Driver" audio interface ... so maybe this resolves the last issue I had on my studio system :-)
 
<<yet I won't be able to test until next week ... need to finish a client project first>>
 
 

I have installed all the latest updates (including the mentioned Kontakt 5.4.3) and the first tests seem promising - could not get it to crash with several instances of K5, doing all the things that were dangerous before ... fingers crossed that it's fixed - long term performance will tell ...

Hi Fabio,
 
I downloaded (possibly) all updates to K5 in the past 2 years and kept the installers to be able to roll back in case the situation gets worse - so in case you can't rollback, PM me and I go dig out these installers from my backups and make them available to you ...
 
Anyway, none of them made any difference in terms of that particular stability issue, and I need to give the latest one a few more hours of testing to see whether NI really addressed my problem ... but I'm on an Octa-Capture, so it's a (somewhat) different animal ...
 
Rob

FreeFlyBertl
Hi Fabio,
 
I downloaded (possibly) all updates to K5 in the past 2 years and kept the installers to be able to roll back in case the situation gets worse - so in case you can't rollback, PM me and I go dig out these installers from my backups and make them available to you ...
 
Anyway, none of them made any difference in terms of that particular stability issue, and I need to give the latest one a few more hours of testing to see whether NI really addressed my problem ... but I'm on an Octa-Capture, so it's a (somewhat) different animal ...
 
Rob

This (quad capture) update never worked for me. However, NI say it's a known issue with the octa capture and are addressing it in an update. (KT5-2120)