Noel Borthwick

@FJ Lamela Some questions: Are the 7 plugins removed when you scan from cakewalk the same plugins from c:/vst32/? Do any of those plug-ins reside within a folder that has the name VST3? Are the removed plugins VST2 plugins?

There have been no changes to Plug-in manager recently. All it does is utilize the VST scanner for scanning but as has been mentioned numerous times, all scanning should be done from Cakewalk not plugin manager. We don't maintain or test scanning from plug-in manager and the scan functionality from there will be removed soon. There are many other improvements to scanning such as sandbox scanning that are only available from the Cakewalk preferences dialog. We'll look into why this happened but please use the standard preferences page for scanning, which has been the preferred way to do it for many years.

Please send the dump file for analysis. Your issue may not be the same problem

@Steve KatsikasThere is something strange going on with that project leading to a MIDI buffer overflow. I'll have to spend some time debugging it on Monday. This happens in older versions of Cakewalk as well. I went back as far as September and also tried SONAR which hangs with that project.

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?

@bvideoYou can read more about our patented plug-in load balancing here. A fundamental requirement of load balancing is for there to be 2 or more serial plugins that can be processed in parallel. Synths in the synth rack are SOURCES. The synth audio processing must take place individually for each synth before any further signal processing in the downstream circuit is performed. i.e. synths get fed MIDI data not audio and produce audio which is then sent to the tracks sourced by the synth. Its no different from recording audio or input monitoring in that regard. So load balancing doesn't apply here. Any parallel processing for synths has to be done within the synth itself by parallelizing the processing of its voices. This cannot be done by the host since it requires the plug-in vendor to do this. Its a double edged sword even for the plug-ins that attempt to do this however, since the threads in the plug-in start to compete with the DAW's threads and this can lead to other performance problems. I had a proposal many years ago to solve this problem but it requires cooperation with plug-in vendors to implement. For now the best way to do this if the synth doesnt support parallel processing internally is to have per channel instances of the synth and make one instrument track per channel. This way the DAW will manage the parallel processing since each synth voice will be farmed out to its own core. Of course this is a trade off between RAM and CPU performance because inserting multiple instances can take more memory depending on what samples are loaded etc. Hopefully the synth vendor internally optimizes this and shares samples between multiple instances of the synth. For TTS1 the extra memory would be negligible. TTS1 is pretty lightweight so I don't think it would be necessary to split into multiple instances typically.

@paulo There are some more WASAPI improvements in 2020.01 (esp for exclusive mode) so please try it there as well. What output device are you when using the mic in Cbb? This is important because both the output and input have to support the same sample rate and bit depth for it to work. The fix I am referring to has to do with how some devices deal with 16 bit audio. We had a case where a device would only work when the bit depth was set to 24 bit manually. This has been fixed in 2020.01 and such devices should now connect properly. Let me know if updating fixes this issue. If you are still having a problem PM me and we can do some more troubleshooting.

@Steve Moddelmog I looked at all (well several) of the dump files you sent. These are all 100% plugin crashes - the stacks are not even remotely in Cakewalk code so its not something I can analyze further. The crashes are all in a shared plugin dll that they are loading called Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin. I suggest that you get in touch with AAS and give them the same dump files. They should be able to analyze why the plugins are crashing since its within their shared plugin code. I know the AAS guys well so if they need any assistance from us ask them to contact me. Its likely some incompatibility or a bug in the plugin thats being exposed under some conditions on your system. I've included some relevant snippets from the dumps. One more thing suspicious in your dump files. I see that you are running outdated Microsoft runtimes for the VC redistributables. Here are the time stamps you have: mfc140u.dll *C:\Windows\System32\mfc140u.dll 14.16.27024.1 11/7/2018 1:49 PM VCRUNTIME140.dll *C:\Windows\System32\VCRUNTIME140.dll 14.16.27024.1 11/7/2018 1:35 PM The ones we redistribute are much later so I'm not sure why your system isn't up to date. Maybe you reverted the install somehow or another app put old files there. The versions from the Cakewalk installer are as below: mfc14u.dll 14.20.27508.1 3/8/2019 vcruntime.dll 14.20.27508.1 3/8/2019 Please do an install of the latest VC redists by following this link. After ensuring that you have more current versions of these files please redo the test and see if it crashes. I'm not sure if your crash issues are related but having old redist files can definitely cause crashes and other incompatibilities. 'Untitled_01312020_125802.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded '*\\?\C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin 64\Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin'. Module was built without symbols. Unhandled exception at 0x0000000054EE4660 (Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin) in Untitled_01312020_125802.dmp: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x0000000066B15180. 'Untitled_01252020_092413.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\explorerframe.dll'. Unhandled exception at 0x00000000A8FF834C (Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin) in Untitled_01252020_092413.dmp: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. ntitled_01262020_184418.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded '*c:\program files\common files\VST3\Chromaphone 2.vst3'. Module was built without symbols. 'Untitled_01262020_184418.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded '*\\?\C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin 64\Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin'. Module was built without symbols. Unhandled exception at 0x00007FFE4A80A839 (KERNELBASE.dll) in Untitled_01262020_184418.dmp: 0x20474343 (parameters: 0x000000007D5DF370). Untitled_01262020_185903.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded '*c:\program files\common files\VST3\Chromaphone 2.vst3'. Module was built without symbols. 'Untitled_01262020_185903.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded '*\\?\C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin 64\Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin'. Module was built without symbols. Unhandled exception at 0x0000000072754660 (Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin) in Untitled_01262020_185903.dmp: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x000000000078A180. 'Untitled_01262020_190505.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded '*c:\program files\common files\VST3\Chromaphone 2.vst3'. Module was built without symbols. 'Untitled_01262020_190505.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded '*\\?\C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin 64\Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin'. Module was built without symbols. Unhandled exception at 0x0000000071784660 (Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin) in Untitled_01262020_190505.dmp: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x00000000722E8180. 'Untitled_01262020_195535.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded '*c:\program files\common files\VST3\Chromaphone 2.vst3'. Module was built without symbols. 'Untitled_01262020_195535.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded '*\\?\C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin 64\Chromaphone 2 Shared.bin'. Module was built without symbols. 'Untitled_01262020_195535.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded '*c:\program files\common files\VST3\Ultra Analog VA-3.vst3'. Module was built without symbols. 'Untitled_01262020_195535.dmp' (Minidump): Loaded '*\\?\C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\Ultra Analog VA-3 Shared.bin 64\Ultra Analog VA-3 Shared.bin'. Module was built without symbols. Unhandled exception at 0x00007FFE7027A839 (KERNELBASE.dll) in Untitled_01262020_195535.dmp: 0x20474343 (parameters: 0x000000008AA21B50).

Another way to do this is to SOLO the MIDI track which will auto solo the synth audio track. Then bounce to track without a selection. The reason why it requires a selection of the MIDI track is the operation doesn't know which MIDI tracks you may want to include in the bounce. I think we can improve this by being smarter and auto selecting all associated MIDI tracks if nothing is selected, to avoid confusion like this.

This looks like a memory leak leading to this. Can you reproduce this by just creating a project and inserting Revo Pro?

Hi @Steve Moddelmog can you please send me a dump file to analyze? Here is info on how to capture a dump file for a hang.

You can reload the ASIO driver manually in Cakewalk at any time by pressing CTRL and clicking the Reset button. However when I have seen this happen this doesnt solve the problem. Some devices physically need to be power cycled. Its a hardware/driver issue.

That sounds like a local problem then independent of this thread - perhaps your machine identity changed.

Um no you misunderstood my answer. As I said activation is completely independent of the version installed today. IOW it doesn't check the currently installed version. If you are asking if a currently installed version will work forever the answer is no. There is no guarantee that OS changes won't break something and we don't support old versions indefinitely which is why we have periodic updates. As far as Windows 7 goes, at some point we will stop allowing updates because changes will be incompatible with Win7. We can't predict what will happen in the future but as long as BandLab assistant continues to work on Win7 activation should still be possible.

If your send me the dump file I can send it to Steinberg. It appears to be a crash in their plugin

Unfortunately wasapi shared mode doesn't allow us to tweak the buffer size to make it larger than the default from windows.

Activation is independent of installing a new version. You can choose to reactivate at any time from the bandlab assistant menu.

Was it running an old build of Cakewalk? Also what specfic error code did you get? The issue we're discussing here was a case that only affected new installs.

The most important thing is to note what the dropout code says. The help link in the dropout toast message lists the meaning for all the codes and possible resolution steps.

In case you missed it, we have a new early access build available. We plan to release sometime next week, so please post in the thread if you notice any issues. There is a brand new "Instrument track per output" feature that is useful for multitimbral synths like Kontakt, and also some audio engine optimizations and better engine load metrics.

@Kevin Perry deleting files shouldn't be necessary. Just choose refresh activation from BandLab assistant and it will automatically reauthorize the application. The original issue was caused by a server outage and would only have affected new installations. Were you installing to a new PC?

Picking a higher sample rate in the export dialog will not help at all if the original project is at a lower sample rate. The project isn't converted to 96k. All the export is doing is upsampling the FINAL output of the render, essentially processing and mixing all tracks at the lower sample rate and then converting the final result. This isn't very useful other than producing a file at 96K. If you want to take advantage of upsampling in plugins you should use the the plug-in upsampling feature which will add a upsample -> process -> downsample stage to all plugins you choose to upsample. Or have all the tracks in the projects at 96k.

not in the main release builds. You can however see which ASIO devices are installed on the system in the registry here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ASIO If you delete an entry under that key, Cakewalk will stop enumerating the driver. (back up the reg key before you try and delete it so you can restore it later)

It should be called speed step-down

Wow thats bizarre. The Windows scheduler continues to confound me when it comes to real time performance Could this somehow be related to hyper threading - perhaps threads are being assigned to virtual cores that have lower performance. Just hypothesizing I have no idea if that is true. Just for comparison do you see the same behavior in SONAR (in case you have it)