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If you're up for some deeper diving, and want to take a look at the threads, handles, DLLs, stacks, etc. involved with Cakewalk or any other executing program, check out Process Explorer by Microsoft Sysinternals. Maybe a clue to a misbehaving process lurking somewhere? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

You were using CbB 2020.09 when this first occurred. The error experienced by DimPro, "Exception code: 0xc0000005" is a memory access violation, one of the most common errors on Windows. Dimension Pro is no longer sold or supported. It was replaced by Cakewalk under Gibson with Rapture Pro in 2015. Support for both definitely ended when Gibson shut Cakewalk down in 2017. There is no guarantee that plugins that have reached end-of-life will be supported on any current DAWs. That's probably the reason your attempts at getting support for it are reaching silence. I'm sorry to hear of the troubles, because I like DimPro too. Fortunately it hasn't crashed on me yet.

Nope. Stated in my previous post that I was running 2020.11. Always stay one version behind the curve. No change with memory in use or commit charge with Swatches in Player or Chromaphone 3. The latest hotfix was released for 2021.01.

Gotcha! Amadeus is a very good value. And it's even fun to just open the full orchestra patch and play it with your keyboard. A full orchestra layered under your fingers! I also have Overture 5, and this library was created to provide an upgrade from the General MIDI factory sounds it contains. If you open a new score using an Amadeus template, it loads all of the instruments from Amadeus with Kontakt plugins running in the background. No Kontakt UI at startup unless you wish to open it. If you open the Overture 5 template for a "Full Orchestra" you get a score preloaded with 21 Amadeus instruments. Now that's intimidating for me...a blank score with that many empty staves! ?

But you can't buy them for $99 either. Some folks only need a library for sketching ideas, not for a final production. So a quality, inexpensive library with a light footprint is sometimes all you need. Hobbyists and amateurs often don't need to, or can't afford to, spend money on "the better libraries" to make music.

That's why I picked up IK MixBox, so I could use those effects anywhere! ? And I am finding ST4 is a main a go-to for sampled instruments.

Amadeus has a good range of instruments for a sample library with a light footprint of 12 GB.

I have only very humble needs in the orchestral library arena. I'm a noob in that respect, just getting my feet wet. For example the built-in PreSonus Notion 6 instruments are mostly good enough for what I need, but they are locked into Notion. So if you use them in Notion and then move your song MIDI from there to a DAW for example, you lose your sounds (and yes I'm aware of Rewire, but don't like it). My efforts to find a one-stop solution to that ended up with why I am using Kontakt Player. Notion allows you to add 3rd party libraries via VST, so if you assign those in instruments in Notion and then send the project over to Studio One 5, you will have the same plugin sounds all set up automatically in S1 using the same library. The library I'm using for that is a budget sized one called Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra, produced by the Sonic Scores - Overture developer in partnership with Indiginus. The library runs in Kontakt Player and is $99 for Overture customers, otherwise $149. I got it for $99. https://indiginus.com/amadeus.html https://sonicscores.com/amadeus/

What do you mean by "next level Orchestra"? Spitfire or something like that?

I got TS Max ridiculously cheap, and it filled out my T-Racks 5 and Amplitube 4 collection. Plus upgraded me from Miroslav 2 CE to the full version.

I tried your test with that patch in Chromaphone 3 in CbB, and the memory never changed during the loop.

I got in on ST4 Max at the pre-release price, upgraded from ST3. Now with Total Studio Max crossgrade, the group buy with the MODO's and Hammond B-3X, I have pretty much everything IK now. Even added Mixbox and Sunset Studio just for grins! ST4 Max certainly has the sounds! Still only using NI Kontakt Player for a couple of paid for libraries that only run in Kontakt. Don't really see the need for the full Kontakt at this point, however I might grab it on the next sale just in case NI decides to go to subscription only.

Yup, because everyone knows that we really need another money pit!!! ?

I am running Chromaphone 3 successfully on CbB 2020.11, Windows 10 Pro 2004, 16 GB Ram, i5-9600K. I have the full collection of sound banks installed for that instrument as well. Using the NKI preview versions, as I occasionally use Komplete Kontrol. I have no suggestion on how to resolve the issue, but am just adding this info to mention that it does work for me, and so I suspect it's probably not a widespread problem. My normal procedure if I suspect a conflict with a plugin is first to try it with another DAW. There are some free ones you can test with. And if it was a widespread issue, AAS support would probably be all over it. If it's a "bug", it's most likely what is usually referred to in computer science as a "corner case", which only occurs under specific conditions. And those conditions were probably overlooked during testing.

I imagine that NI has too big of an "economic moat" for most competitors to cross in a cost effective way. I wonder which earns them the most revenue, their hardware, or software? Since NI Kontakt is essentially "the standard" for most commercial sample libraries, I suspect that even if NI were to fold (not likely), somebody would buy up that product line.

Probably a device problem for the dropouts, as they are often driver related, but you won't be sure until you rule everything out. That headphone thing sure is weird, but if you eliminate everything you may figure that one out as well. It almost sounds like a faulty electrical ground somewhere. I run a Z-390 board myself, and it is rock solid on Windows 10 2004. It also ran well with just the Intel graphics before I added an NVIDIA GPU. I get very low numbers on LatencyMon, and never any dropouts or static, assuming I am running with a reasonable ASIO buffer size. I also use a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. But if you have been at it for weeks, it's time to start breaking it down. Process of elimination and good old troubleshooting 101.

Session Drummer is not included with CbB. It's definitely part of an old Sonar bundle. The SI instruments are a separate download available in BandLab Assistant.

Pull the GPU cards and test with Intel graphics only. Post your LatencyMon reports. If that doesn't help, then your best bet would be to temporarily disconnect everything that you don't absolutely need to boot the computer and test, for example bare bones with just a monitor, PC keyboard, mouse, and audio interface. If good, then start adding one thing back at a time, testing each time, until the problem returns. If it does, there's your culprit.

But I am curious about what changed in the AAS Player, as he was reporting audible changes in the Chromaphone sound banks. I would think that would only be possible if the Player was using the Chromaphone 3 sound engine now. And would you have had to update the Player to enable that change?

That makes sense because the Chromaphone engine was just updated to v3 with two synth layers and new features, so they remastered and included all v2 sounds for it.

That's weird! I downloaded it from the forum to test and it plays back ok on both Windows Music, and on Android.

I grabbed John's .mid file and opened it in Cakewalk with TTS-1. I left the MIDI as is, and replaced all of the TTS-1 instruments with other instrument selections. For piano, bass, and drums, I used Addictive Keys Grand, Ample P-Bass Lite, and MT Power Kit. I cheated a bit and used SampleTank 4 for the guitar and combo organ, and threw Amplitube 5 on the guitar and bass. Then ran it though a mastering console plugin on the master bus to level it up before exporting directly to MP3. Quick and dirty result: Believer.mp3

I've also noticed that some Steinberg demos install a generic low latency ASIO driver that can try to replace your interface's ASIO driver in the DAW.

And they will stay that way, as I do not want to bork up my Waves installs. I think that overall the Waves plugin architecture is a delicate train wreck in motion, and I don't care to upset the balance by deleting anything. Waves can kiss my a**, but I do intend to keep using the plugins that I have bought. Besides, I moved that Waves folder to a secondary drive that has hundreds of GBs of free space. This topic was about getting the sh*t off of the [C:] drive, so mission accomplished for me!