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Cakewalk has begun crashing on playback


GCizza

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Dear Cakewalk community,

My cakewalk has started crashing when I play my project files. The music will play for approx. 2 seconds before crashing and exiting the software with no error message. 

Just to give some background: I was having issue with exporting WAVs of my project which was also crashing the software (exporting mp3 files seemed fine though). Anyway I think the exporting issue is fixed. I suspected this was due to workload or memory on the computer, so I went through my files and deleted unused files especially from my downloads folder. This was to free up space. All the VSTs that I use are also in a Cakewalk plug-ins folder. 

I have opened up crashlogs and it seems that Sitala VST is the issue. Here are some examples from the crashlog:

EXCEPTION_RECORD: (.exr -1) ExceptionAddress: 00007ffa840e3973 (Sitala!VSTPluginMain+0x00000000003d6d33) ExceptionCode: c0000005 (Access violation) ExceptionFlags: 00000000 NumberParameters: 2 Parameter[0]: 0000000000000000 Parameter[1]: 00000000000000f4 Attempt to read from address 00000000000000f4

STACK_COMMAND: ~0s; .ecxr ; kb SYMBOL_NAME: Sitala+3d6d33 MODULE_NAME: Sitala IMAGE_NAME: Sitala.dll FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: NULL_CLASS_PTR_READ_c0000005_Sitala.dll!Unknown

I have re-installed Sitala several times and it makes no difference. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on what to do?

Other plug-ins I use are Surge, Molotok, TAL dub delay, and CamelCrusher. Interestingly my smaller project files seem to play ok even though these also involve Sitala, so maybe it is a performance issue? I never had issues before today/before I started exporting large projects as WAVs.

Many thanks in advance,  

 

PS It has also just crashed when trying to freeze a track. The track used Sitala. 

Edited by CGizza
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Free VST’s are a double edged sword. I always test them on my office computer first. I’ve deleted way more than I’ve kept.  
There’s all sorts of weirdness you might not even realize or think possible when it comes to all plug ins free or even very expensive.  
I can’t use some Izotope products. TTS-1 can’t be added to a half finished project .  If I use the free CollaB3 organ my export takes 2x longer.  List goes on and on. Seems it’s great technology that suffers from randomly variable coding with no real standards of quality.  
It becomes outdated as operating systems and DAW software are always being updated and not all plug ins, especially the free ones are re tested and updated as well.  

Cakewalk can’t do anything about TTS-1 because they apparently don’t own the code but someday it will not be included and I hope they can find a better replacement for it. 

Edited by Cactus Music
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It's an access violation, meaning the plugin committed a no-no internally when it attempted to read from protected memory that's only available to the O/S. It's a pretty common type of bug, especially in hobbyist-made programs. You'd be doing the developer a favor by passing along your crash dump to him, as it'd help him to identify the problem and fix it.

In the meantime, it's probably best to just avoid this instrument for now. I gather it's a drum synth. There are alternatives, including Studio Instruments and the TTS-1 that you already have. Yes, the TTS-1 is a decent drum synth with a little creativity.

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There's a lot more wiggle room in the VST spec than one might think, and one thing we do frequently is work with other developers over issues with plugins. Freeware VSTs can be that much trickier as well depending on who is working on them and what their focus is on, so they might be great, or they might have some issues. It just depends on who is making them and what they're testing. 

If you're seeing a consistent crash with a plugin, your best bet is to try and contact the vendor/developer for that particular plugin and provide a dump file if possible which will allow them to find where the issue is.

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21 hours ago, John Nelson said:

Camel Crusher is 32 bit only afaik so...are you running a 32 bit Windows or using a bit bridge or...?

Many thanks for this spot. Drawing on this point I did have both Sitala 32bit and 64bit downloaded.  Apologies I am not tech savvy so it is possible that I had been using the 32bit version. I have now removed this. Will update thread on any further crashes.. It is possible I will get rid of Sitala all together depending how I get on.

 

Edit: I have also removed CamelCrusher and will use newer distortion plug-ins from now on. 

Edited by George Collett
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1 hour ago, Jonathan Sasor said:

There's a lot more wiggle room in the VST spec than one might think, and one thing we do frequently is work with other developers over issues with plugins. Freeware VSTs can be that much trickier as well depending on who is working on them and what their focus is on, so they might be great, or they might have some issues. It just depends on who is making them and what they're testing. 

If you're seeing a consistent crash with a plugin, your best bet is to try and contact the vendor/developer for that particular plugin and provide a dump file if possible which will allow them to find where the issue is.

Many thanks. I've sent the developer the dump file. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 9/26/2022 at 10:50 PM, GCizza said:

Many thanks. I've sent the developer the dump file. 

One of the Sitala developers here:  unfortunately the crash log didn't contain enough information to be useful; we sent @GCizza a debug build a couple weeks ago to see if we could help diagnose what was happening here, but haven't heard back, so there's unfortunately not much more we can do.

On 9/26/2022 at 1:41 PM, Michael Vogel said:

Still a new and possibly immature plug-in at V1.09

Sitala's actually been around for 5 years and has had 7 public releases in that time (and more than 150,000 downloads).  On KVR it's the most popular drum sampler after the Native Instruments ones, and MT Power Drum Kit:

https://www.kvraudio.com/plugins/drum-sampler/most-popular

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5 hours ago, Scott Wheeler said:

Sitala's actually been around for 5 years

And I have been using it for 4 years. Great to see you here again Scott. How did the last meeting go with the CbB team? Hope its positive news. 

Dont give too much away. ☺

Edited by Will.
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On 9/26/2022 at 4:50 PM, GCizza said:

Many thanks. I've sent the developer the dump file. 

Good. Hopefully the developer knows how to debug using dump files. It's always surprising to me but many plugin developers don't even know how.

Edit: I see that @Scott Wheeler is the developer 😛
Scott if you need any information from our end or find that it's an issue related to Cakewalk don't hesitate to contact me.

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1 hour ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Good. Hopefully the developer knows how to debug using dump files. It's always surprising to me but many plugin developers don't even know how.

We do, but the symbols file for the VST managed to not get checked into our repo for build artefacts (just the standalone symbols got checked in, which isn't useful here), so don't have function names.  We sent the user a debug build from the same tag, but didn't hear back.

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6 minutes ago, Scott Wheeler said:

We do, but the symbols file for the VST managed to not get checked into our repo for build artefacts (just the standalone symbols got checked in, which isn't useful here), so don't have function names.  We sent the user a debug build from the same tag, but didn't hear back.

Ah yes without symbols you can't find much. Hopefully he replies. Let me know what operation caused the crash in case you find out.

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On 10/20/2022 at 3:21 AM, Scott Wheeler said:

One of the Sitala developers here:  

Sitala's actually been around for 5 years and has had 7 public releases in that time (and more than 150,000 downloads).  On KVR it's the most popular drum sampler after the Native Instruments ones, and MT Power Drum Kit:

https://www.kvraudio.com/plugins/drum-sampler/most-popular

Thanks for the updated info regarding the length of development and other interesting history. 

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  • 1 month later...

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