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Project reliably crashing, please assist in diagnosing issue


Steve Katsikas

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I have a LONG project (2.5 hours), designed to be a few backing tracks (mostly sound fx), a click to a tempo map, and a few midi tracks for a theater show.  The midi out tracks are connected to MidiLoop, which connects to a video program I am using to trigger video clips.

I have removed ALL audio plug-ins (including those in the prochannel).  This is not a challenging project for the very spec'd out computer to manage.  

The project crashes consistently when moving around the timeline and playing certain sections, but works just fine if I play from the beginning and don't stop it.  When playing a few certain places in the timeline, the program halts, makes a motorboat-type sound, then just goes away.

The crashes seem to halt when I remove the 4 midi tracks.  So, in thinking that it is midi-related, I've messed with the buffers and midi settings in preferences, but that hasn't helped.

I could post the dump file (though I don't know how to read one).

Anyone ever have something like this occur?

 

Steve

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Nothing to go on in the crash dump.  The thread that crashes is all Cakewalk (so only someone at Cakewalk could tell what it was doing).  It does look like your using behringer_xuf_1394_asio_x64.dll for an Audio driver.  I'm guessing this is the Firewire version of Behringer's XUF?.  Not sure how well a driver last updated in 2013 using a Firewire is going to work in modern Win 10.    Your Win 10 is behind,  crash dump says you are running 10.0.18362 which is the May 2019 build of Windows.  There is a newer version 1909, November 2019 release.  But honestly there really isn't anything in the crash dump to help narrow it down.  A Cakewalk developer with the PDB symbols for Cakewalk might be able to tell more.  About the only thing I'd recommend  is updating everything you can.

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  • 2 weeks later...

No luck here.  Crash happens on different computer, with different sound interfaces.  If I mute the midi, no crash.  No plug ins running, so softsynths.  Regardless of midi output choice, it will crash.  ONLY crashes when stopped and then press "play".  Windows 10 is fully updated.  If I delete all audio, so the project is just midi, crashes.  If I archive midi, no crash.  So, it is something about the midi tracks.  I'm out of troublshooting ideas.

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This really looks like memory corruption. What plugins or synths are you using in the project?
I see that TTS1 is loaded. Also there are a ton of different ASIO drivers on your system.
If its basic can you share the project so we can try and repro?

What happens if you remove TTS1 and instead use a different synth does it still crash? What sample rate are you running at?

 

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I've attached the file with just the midi tracks, which still crashes.  I don't think the issue involves the TTS, which is only being used to manage the click.  Running at 48khz sample rate.  The midi tracks simply trigger videos in a separate program, but this crashes even when Cakewalk is the only open app.  Really appreciate you all checking it out.  It works ok, but try advancing around to various markers while stopping and starting.  That's what causes the crash here.

 

I have had the same issues on 2 computers using 2 different interfaces.

2020 show tem[late for debugging.cwp

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I have the IDENTICAL problem, but with much less MIDI and more audio tracks, and short project (5-6min).
If I move the cursor in the timeline too fast and press PLAY, Cakewalk crashes, 
it happens so frequently that I have fear everytime to stop and play again.
It I start playing from the beginning, no problems.
After the crash, Cakewalk remains in the Windows Processes, so it's not possible to reload it immediately,
and if I try to terminate it, Windows takes 5-6 minutes to stop it !
==> Frequent crashes, 5-6 minutes to wait to reload CW or need to reboot everything. Terrible.
Windows 10 pro updated. Cakewalk updated, it seems last update increased the problem.
CPU and HD load is very low, memory usage is about 30%, so they are not likely the cause.

My System:
Windows 10 PRO
CPU INTEL i7-4790K @ 4GHz
RAM 16GB 800MHz
MOBO ASUS Z-97A  FW: 2801
HD (Windows and Apps) SSD NVME (80% free) 2500 MB/s
HD (Data) SSD SATA (60% free)  500 MB/s
MOTU 828 (ASIO only)
SCOPE PCI CORE AUDIO CARD w SCOPE 15 CPU expansion
BEHRINGER BCF2000 MIDI controller

Edited by Bob4u
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@Steve Katsikas its the strangest thing. I tried for 30 mins today to reproduce this issue and it is no longer happening. I went back to 2020.01 and even SONAR and the project plays fine at 48K and I even the your markers while playing extensively. Both myself and a colleague were able to reproduce it earlier but the issue seems to have gone away. 

Can you please retest this after updating windows since its not impossible that there was some external update that fixed itself. If you can still reproduce it please see if you can get a sequence of steps that makes it more likely to happen. 

@Bob4u I think your issue may be something else based on the crash. Please ensure that your VC redists are up to date by downloading and updating the latest 64 bit VC redist from microsoft.
 

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After several hours of troubleshooting and a tip from @Steve Katsikas I managed to reproduce the issue again. 

Its a bizarre preexisting problem that happens when you seek on the timeline to a late measure. In my testing the app would appear hang for about 5-10 seconds and then vanish silently.

I was able to find the root cause and fix it last night. The engine was incorrectly responding to a seek on the timeline and computing a bogus delay compensation value. In Steve's case this could compute a delay of up to 3 hours 😛 This value would then be used to send a HUGE MIDI buffer the next time playback started causing an overflow and crash. While most users wouldn't necessarily see a crash (since its dependent on the amount of MIDI data) this issue results in way more MIDI data being processed when playback starts at a high measure number.

I've sent Steve a build to verify the fix and if all is well we'll be releasing a hotfix with this and a few other issues soon. I'm happy that this issue is fixed since it could have been the cause of many unknown random crashes in the field over the years - the problem has been latent at least since 2006 :) Fortunately his project was reliably able to reproduce this and allow us to fix it. 

Thanks for working with us to repro the issue.

 

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