Cakewalk Crashed? - It's Probably a Plugin

[Bill Phillips]

Read this before posting here for assistance when Cakewalk crashes. It might save you and the people trying to assist you some time.

However, the troubleshooting method proposed seems hard to implement, for me at least. I have a couple of thousand plugins and plucking (then replacing) half of the 10-20 I'm using in a project from their folders in the plugin 10 +/- Plugin folders can take a while. Maybe renaming them by adding character to the .dll or .vst3 suffix (.dllx or .vst3x) might work and be easier.

[Max Arwood]

I wonder if the programmers have a list of non compatible plugins, or even questionable plugin list. 
That would be nice!

[John Vere]

It’s really been a matter of paying attention here on the forum. 
Mostly people seem to have issues with funky freebies. 
But then there’s Waves which seems to have ongoing issues that might have been resolved. 
Isotope doesn’t crash Cakewalk but it can bring some under powered systems to there knees.

Then there’s been some issues with transition to VST3 keeping some people away from using them. 

[Byron Dickens]

1 hour ago, Max Arwood said:

I wonder if the programmers have a list of non compatible plugins, or even questionable plugin list. 
That would be nice!

Stay away from any 32 bit stuff, hobbyist plugins unless they have a following* and abandonware and you will avoid many issues.

 

* Full Bucket  makes some awesome instruments (mostly Korg emulations) that surpass some paid stuff. There are two threads elsewhere filled with good stuff.

[mettelus]

This has come up from time to time as a feature request. Exception handling within programs requires extra coding, but will identify and prevent crashes. It also can give detailed feedback via the program itself rather than make it guess work or put it on the user. I forget which plugin it was now (or even the host... I think it was doing video), but I actually got a pop-up from that host years ago that said "[X plugin] tried to perform an illegal operation and has been blacklisted." It didn't give more detail than that unfortunately (would need more detail than that to make it useful), but the host didn't crash or scan that plugin again.

[Bill Phillips]

36 minutes ago, mettelus said:

This has come up from time to time as a feature request. Exception handling within programs requires extra coding, but will identify and prevent crashes. It also can give detailed feedback via the program itself rather than make it guess work or put it on the user. I forget which plugin it was now (or even the host... I think it was doing video), but I actually got a pop-up from that host years ago that said "[X plugin] tried to perform an illegal operation and has been blacklisted." It didn't give more detail than that unfortunately (would need more detail than that to make it useful), but the host didn't crash or scan that plugin again.

Exception handling to prevent plugins from crashing DAWs must be difficult or plugins wouldn't be listed as causing 99.9% of all DAW crashes by Production Experts. There are probably a number of plugin failure modes that can and are anticipated by DAW developers. But there are also probably an incalculable number of ways plugins can crash that nobody can anticipate until it happens. 

[sjoens]

99% of the time it isn't a plugin - for me.  CbB can "crash" (if "crash" means any kind of upset) at will... new empty project, no plugins, no nuthin', CbB will either close on it's own or refuse to reopen when manually closed.  It absolutely loves hanging out in Background Processes (where it doesn't belong) when closed improperly, requiring one to either log out of Windows or reboot the system.  In this case it seems like a breakdown in communication with host hardware/software.... or something USB related.

 

[John Vere]

1 hour ago, sjoens said:

99% of the time it isn't a plugin - for me.  CbB can "crash" (if "crash" means any kind of upset) at will... new empty project, no plugins, no nuthin', CbB will either close on it's own or refuse to reopen when manually closed.  It absolutely loves hanging out in Background Processes (where it doesn't belong) when closed improperly, requiring one to either log out of Windows or reboot the system.  In this case it seems like a breakdown in communication with host hardware/software.... or something USB related.

 

I’m afraid you might have an issue that 99% of Cakewalk users don’t have. 
We get many threads started here with the heading “Cakewalk is Crashing Help!”   And it is most always a plug in. If it isn’t it is computer or audio interfaces issues. Cakewalk on its own is not something that will crash. At least not for a long time now. You need to figure out what it is about your computer that is not the same as everyone else.
 I have Cakewalk on 5 computers some are as old as 2008 and it doesn’t crash on any of those unless I inset TTS-1. Which is a plug in. 

[Starship Krupa]

13 hours ago, Bill Phillips said:

Exception handling to prevent plugins from crashing DAWs must be difficult or plugins wouldn't be listed as causing 99.9% of all DAW crashes by Production Experts. There are probably a number of plugin failure modes that can and are anticipated by DAW developers. But there are also probably an incalculable number of ways plugins can crash that nobody can anticipate until it happens. 

It's been discussed by the Cakewalk devs, and believe me, they would love to be able to trap errors before they take down the whole DAW.

According to them, the issue isn't that it's "difficult," it's that it adds overhead. To "sandbox" (keep their operations contained) plug-ins enough to trap errors before the errors can crash or corrupt the host requires so much overhead that it would increase latency and of course resource usage.

Think of how long it took Microsoft and Apple to get their OSes to be able to trap application errors and recover  from them without the whole OS crashing or becoming corrupted. Windows had its Blue Screen of Death and I forget what the Mac equivalent was. Part of this was because it was, yes, hard to do, but another was that processors had to get fast enough and RAM had to get cheap enough for the overhead to be acceptable. And those conditions haven't been 100% eliminated.

Remember when if one program crashed, best practice was to restart the computer entirely, even if it didn't take the whole thing down?

Anything that happens between a program asking a CPU to do something and the CPU doing it (such as considering whether what it's just been asked to do will mess something up), takes time (latency). And as far as computer applications go, DAW stuff is some of the most critical as far as latency.

Whatever it is that REAPER is supposedly doing, where I see so many people claiming that "I tried it in REAPER and it didn't crash," coupled with REAPER's reputation for being able to run at low latency, I'm sure the other DAW companies would love to know what it is.

One of the things I dislike about the situation is the perception of finger-pointing it leads to in situations where you're trying to help someone. While it's true that "99% of the time it's a plug-in," it isn't true that it's the plug-in's "fault." The VST spec is loosely enough written that it's quite possible for both a VST host and a VST plug-in to be completely compliant with the spec, yet still not work together.

[sjoens]

On 7/28/2023 at 3:49 PM, JohnnyV said:

I’m afraid you might have an issue that 99% of Cakewalk users don’t have. 

Welcome to the 1%ers club.  Membership is free.  
I'm also constantly faced with CbB not Tx-ing MIDI to my outboard devices.

It's an odd Stack Flow issue: odds are all stacked against me. 
1. Flaky Windows 11 laptop - probably dropped in the warehouse before I bought it.
2. Bad internal USB connectivity
3. Working with old .wrk and X1 projects in CbB
4.Using old outboard synths
5. I'm a low level Slider - one who affects electronics negatively

I did find a post from the old forum describing my issues, tho.
http://forum.cakewalk.com/MIDI-Activity-icon-on-Windows-Taskbar-m3532498.aspx
His remedy to shut off the MIDI monitor wasn't 100% for me but may help.

[User 905133]

2 hours ago, sjoens said:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/MIDI-Activity-icon-on-Windows-Taskbar-m3532498.aspx
His remedy to shut off the MIDI monitor wasn't 100% for me but may help.

Quote

MIDI Activity icon on Windows Taskbar

Although I am one of the group of no crashes with Sonar, since X1, track heavy (with a lot of midi) projects would sometimes hang while loading forcing me to do a reboot because the midi activity icon will not release or close.

I could never find a consistent recipe to cause the projects to hang (all soft synth/midi tracks are frozen) so I never filed a problem report.
On a lark, I decided to turn off Prefs>Customization>Display>"Show MIDI Activity on Windows Taskbar".

Six days later, I have not had a project hang on load (highly unusual for me) and the projects are possibly opening a little faster.
Just wanted to pass this tip on and I have posted in the Problem Reports forum that there may be an issue with the activity icon enabled.

 post edited by gustabo - December 19, 16 1:50 PM

 

[Tricky]

On 7/31/2023 at 8:13 PM, User 905133 said:

 

Hello,

 

***Worked for me on a lark***

 

Upon adding another midi VST to a track I was unable to freeze any midi tracks without craching CbB...  Was going down the Rabbit hole on it and found this.  Gave it a shot.... Problem gone.... Also noticed a random poping issue is gone.... Beats me, worked.... if you having this crash issue give it a go...

 

 

 

 

[David Baay]

On 7/28/2023 at 11:50 AM, Bill Phillips said:

Read this before posting here for assistance when Cakewalk crashes. It might save you and the people trying to assist you some time.

However, the troubleshooting method proposed seems hard to implement, for me at least. I have a couple of thousand plugins and plucking (then replacing) half of the 10-20 I'm using in a project from their folders in the plugin 10 +/- Plugin folders can take a while.

@Bill Phillips I realize this is an old thread, but found it interesting because I have long recommended taking a binary approach to isolating a problematic plugin as the page you linked describes. But with CbB, you can launch the project in "Safe mode" by holding Shift as you click it from File > Open, and then choose to enable only half the plugins as you are prompted for each. This can still take some time, but at least you only have to worry about the ones that are actually used in the project.

[Starship Krupa]

I've also recommended to the devs that the MIDI monitoring function be moved from the system tray to the main UI. These days, it's so tiny as to be useless on my systems, and of course keeping the function inside the program is probably better for not having the Cakewalk.exe process hanging around after the program closes.

[sjoens]

Just had my 1st CbB crash into Background Processes yesterday after a fresh Win10, harddrive reformatted, install using one (1) included, long standing Cakewalk plugin.  This was happening almost daily before the new install.

It then occurred to me that CbB, and maybe SPlat, are the only versions of Sonar that I've had crash into Background Processes forcing at least a Windows logoff - if not a reboot - to correct.  I don't remember Sonar 7 thru X3 ever doing that, at least not as often, but they were also on different OS's.  It makes one wonder if there's something inherently wrong going on under the hood with Windows 10/11 or CbB or both.

Curious if they're still collecting minidumps on a nearly defunct program.  I have 4 since 1/9/24.

Edited February 13 by sjoens

[John Vere]

As I’ve said the few times Cakewalk over the last long while has ever crashed was inserting the TTS-1 into a half finished project. 
This was random and  I sent in the crash dumps. They always seem to reply with off the shelf answers like open the project in safe mode?  The project opens just fine you just can’t insert the TTS-1. 
I have had other crashes. 
I have an extra computer for testing plug ins that I managed to crash with certain freebies… a lot. I didn’t bother with the crash dumps because those freebie’s are in the trash can now. 
A real weird one was when you drag a plug in from one track to another. This normally is something I do a lot. But there were certain freebies that froze Cakewalk when you did this. I seem to remember these were by all by Analog Obsession who have a lot of very cool looking plugins that are half baked and don’t have manuals. 
My most recent crash was Soundpaint while just previewing patches. Once  again submitted dump and got reply’s right away telling me to open in safe mode?? 
 

Edited February 13 by John Vere

[sjoens]

6 minutes ago, John Vere said:

open in safe mode

Was doing this almost daily as well.  Especially when older projects contained the older BREVERB.  It went thru a series of authorization changes when Gibson "crashed", but it shouldn't crash the entire DAW...  Turns out it's in a lot of older projects, so I was constantly using Safe Mode AFTER CbB crashed.  Kind of a messy hassle when a more friendly way of handling the issue is possible.

So far the current install is an improvement from the last 8 years, so I'm hopeful it will continue to be.