V-Vocal broken in latest Plat 2016.08

Hi Gerry . . . I'm running the latest Sonar Platinum as well, I opened a project from 2013 that had many V-Vocal clips and they open and play as expected, then I opened an older project from 2007, it also works properly, region editor opens the V-Vocal editor window and it all seems to work.
 
HOWEVER, If I try to create a new V-Vocal clip it does throw an application error message (taskhostw.exe - Application Error) the error references that is a memory related error. It also says to click OK to close the program, but when I click OK . . . the V-Vocal clip is created, and Sonar does not close or restart, and appears to work normally. The new V-Vocal clip appears to work fine. Granted, my system is different than yours (especially you're still 32 bit), so I can't confirm they've actually broken V-Vocal in 2016.08 version . . . but it is breaking down, perhaps suffering from old age, it's just a matter of time.
 
Also, I should add that I never noticed a problem since I don't use V-Vocal anymore, and haven't for a few years, since I've been using Melodyne, so not sure if it's just the most recent Sonar version that does this or not ?

Gerry, (please update your system specs) I do recall a problem I used to have with V-Vocal when there were slightly overlapping clips, and also if ever tried to cut and paste V-Vocal clips there was eventually some problem until I just froze or bounced the track . . . not saying this is your problem, but I hope it can be helpful as something to quickly check ?
A while back I noticed that V-Vocal automatically started to open in my multi-dock for editing . . . It used to open in it's own separate floating editing window, have you noticed that in your set up as well ? Perhaps there something there.
While I don't think we can expect V-Vocal to just keep working as Windows OS keeps updating with preference towards the latest hardware available . . . I've always found Cakewalk's backwards compatibility to be amazing, probably best in the DAW worlds, so there may just be a configuration setting (or soundcard) to adjust somewhere to remedy this.

gmp

noynekker
Gerry, (please update your system specs) I do recall a problem I used to have with V-Vocal when there were slightly overlapping clips, and also if ever tried to cut and paste V-Vocal clips there was eventually some problem until I just froze or bounced the track . . . not saying this is your problem, but I hope it can be helpful as something to quickly check ?
A while back I noticed that V-Vocal automatically started to open in my multi-dock for editing . . . It used to open in it's own separate floating editing window, have you noticed that in your set up as well ? Perhaps there something there.
While I don't think we can expect V-Vocal to just keep working as Windows OS keeps updating with preference towards the latest hardware available . . . I've always found Cakewalk's backwards compatibility to be amazing, probably best in the DAW worlds, so there may just be a configuration setting (or soundcard) to adjust somewhere to remedy this.

I've updated my specs in my signature to reflect 64 bit Platinum, although it still shows 32 bit. Maybe I need to log out and back in. I assume that's what you meant about updating my system specs. In my 2nd test today with V-vocal as I freshly rebooted. I opened a project with 3 audio tracks. The lead vocal is one long clip, so I split it, into a 2 bar clip and opened V-vocal, the fact that it froze in this situation indicates a pretty serious problem on such a basic song file.
 
 This is a year old Jim Roseberry fast computer, Win 10, all updates current. I've used V-vocal for more than 10 years and have always tuned only small 1 or 2 bar clips and immediately choose "bounce to clip". Since V-vocal sometimes can be squirrelly, like you said, This method has made V-vocal very stable and predictable until today.
 
For me, V-vocal is opening in the multi-dock for editing, not a separate window. It seems I made it that way in my template, so it never opens in a free window anymore. Although when I tried to open it today, when it froze I could see the clip with the V-vocal name in it, but it didn't appear in the multi-dock, it just froze with the hourglass. So is V-vocal working ok for you? Are you using the most current Plat 2016.08? Every other version of Plat worked fine.

Hi again Gerry . . . yes I have the most recent version Sonar Platinum 2016.08 on my system, and mostly V-Vocal seems to be working OK. I say mostly because it is a bit buggy in some instances, though I can't pin down a repeatable reason why weirdness does occur, though it's certainly not crashing my system like on yours.
"Jim Roseberry" . . . certainly sounds like your system is rock solid, As a further test, I created a brand new project, inserted some audio, made it into a V-Vocal clip, and all worked as expected.
 
 

Bristol_Jonesey
V-Vocal has always been a bit flaky, on even the best of systems.
 
But you can mitigate a lot of problems by following a few simple rules:
 

1. Only EVER work in short clips of a couple of bars.
2. Before working on a single clip, bounce it to itself (bounce to clip)
3. Make sure the signal is at a healthy level
4. Make sure the signal is free from noise
5. "Top & Tail" both ends of the clip

VV is of course no longer shipped with SONAR and hasn't been for several versions, so naturally there's no support for it either.

 
I realize there's no support for it and I don't need that, because I know all the quirky things and know all the workarounds and use your methods above also. Yet I do expect Cakewalk to make sure it works with all the newest versions as it has until this version.
 
I just reverted back to an old image file that has been the most stable Plat of all so far, which is 2016.03  I've had problems with all the versions after that. Mostly just little things. I've opened the same project and found that V-Vocal works perfectly with 2016.03  So this is clearly a bug in 2016.08
 
I did a little more testing last night and found that it appears that when I import too many audio files it triggers the problem. For instance I opened my template and dragged in the 6 stereo vocal files that I originally had trouble with. V-vocal worked fine. Then I dragged in a stereo file into the song and when I tried to use V-vocal on one of the vocal tracks it crashed. I then tried the same experiment dragging in instead 2 mono wav files and got the same result  - V-Vocal crashed trying to tune a vocal.
 
So the cause is dragging in more than 6 stereo tracks or maybe it’s different bits. The 6 vocal files were originally imported by Plat from a CD, so they’re 16 bit, 44.1 and the additional files I dragged in were 8 bit and the mono files were 16 bit. Whatever the reason this is clearly a bug that’s not present in earlier Plat versions.
 
I hope someone else can verify this problem

You can pry V-Vocal from my cold, dead fingers.
 
And in my opinion, there is no more reason for it to become "flakey" over time than there is for the Sonitus:fx DXi to do so. And they still work fine.

stickman393
You can pry V-Vocal from my cold, dead fingers.
 
And in my opinion, there is no more reason for it to become "flakey" over time than there is for the Sonitus:fx DXi to do so. And they still work fine.

Cakewalk owns the code to the Sonitus:fx, and I think they've been tweaked from time to time to maintain compatibility. Also remember that V-Vocal has three DLLs: Cronus.dll, VpEnc.dll, and VpSoloDec.dll. DLL stands for "dynamic link libraries" and although I don't know the specifics about these, if there are dependencies with other DLLs, conflicts can arise. For example if a dependent DLL is overwritten, fixed, removed, or upgraded, all bets are off.
 
If you want to know more, here's the Wikipedia entry for dependency hell. I'm not sure if that's the issue with V-Vocal, but it seems likely...IOW how V-Vocal performs at this point depends on what else is going on with your machine.
 
I was told one of the reasons Cakewalk found Melodyne so attractive as a replacement was because support calls about V-Vocal had gone through the roof, and given that Cakewalk didn't own the code, it wasn't going to be maintained by Roland, and DLL issues are so system-specific, there really wasn't much they could offer as a solution.

Anderton
Cakewalk owns the code to the Sonitus:fx, and I think they've been tweaked from time to time to maintain compatibility. Also remember that V-Vocal has three DLLs: Cronus.dll, VpEnc.dll, and VpSoloDec.dll. DLL stands for "dynamic link libraries" and although I don't know the specifics about these, if there are dependencies with other DLLs, conflicts can arise. For example if a dependent DLL is overwritten, fixed, removed, or upgraded, all bets are off.
 
If you want to know more, here's the Wikipedia entry for dependency hell. I'm not sure if that's the issue with V-Vocal, but it seems likely...IOW how V-Vocal performs at this point depends on what else is going on with your machine.
 
I was told one of the reasons Cakewalk found Melodyne so attractive as a replacement was because support calls about V-Vocal had gone through the roof, and given that Cakewalk didn't own the code, it wasn't going to be maintained by Roland, and DLL issues are so system-specific, there really wasn't much they could offer as a solution.

Thanks for the explanation. I remember Cronus.dll as being something that we'd disable in plugin manager. Can that affect V-Vocal?
 
Craig do you know how much the upgrade is to Melodyne Editor? At Sweetwater it's $400. Yet I thought we'd go through Cakewalk and get a break.

The current price to upgrade from all versions of Melodyne Essential (the one bundled with SONAR) is $399 on the Celemony site.

The update (essential > editor 4) price on celemonys store is 299,00 EUR, which should $336,00 today.

Celemony released Melodyne 4 this year, it is a paid upgrade for all versions other than Essential. Updates between versions are free. IIRC, they occasionally have sales which reduce the upgrade price around 50%.

Larry Jones

HarryC

The current price to upgrade from all versions of Melodyne Essential (the one bundled with SONAR) is $399 on the Celemony site.

The update (essential > editor 4) price on celemonys store is 299,00 EUR, which should $336,00 today.

Still USD 399 here (Southern California, logged in as Essential owner). I was too broke to get the good upgrade price when this was first bundled with SONAR, and I know there have been "sales" since then, but I have missed all of them somehow.

I'm with you all the way on this Larry! Always seem to miss the sales

What's the lowest price upgrade that will do polyphonic?

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Gerry I looked at the hang dump you provided and replied to your CWBRN-54500 case. The hang occurs when VVocal tries to open its UI. Something is running out of resources and causing the hang. I expect that this is some kind of low resources issue or memory corruption. The problem itself isn't inside SONAR so there isn't much we can do to address it unfortunately since Cakewalk doesn't own the code for VVocal.

Hi Noel, sorry to jump on this old thread but I noticed you know your stuff and have experience with v-vocal corruption? I have a thread that I would love for you to check if/when you have time. Just wondering if you have seen this issue before and could possibly know a fix...Regards, Steve :)