[SOLVED] Major freezing/hanging issues with an interesting cause and no obvious solution. Any ideas?

[AxlBrutality]

Just now, scook said:

Yes.  The bundled AD2 and Melodyne are not tied to the DAW in any way. They are the regular retail products.

 

Nice; thank you!  Now I just need to debate whether or not spending $65 on TruePianos is worth it, or what other comparable alternatives there are.  Off to post in the Effects sub.....this thread has gotten waaaay off topic lol.

[scook]

There may be an additional TruePianos discount for SONAR users. It is worth an e-mail.

 

[AxlBrutality]

8 minutes ago, scook said:

There may be an additional TruePianos discount for SONAR users. It is worth an e-mail.

 

Yea, I mean that $65 is already 50% off (it's on sale), but I'll definitely shoot them an email and ask.

[AxlBrutality]

@Noel Borthwick @scook @Starship Krupa

I sent this to @Ben Staton (who is working on this) as soon as I found this out, but I have a massive development for the OpenGL/GUI hanging issues and figured you guys might be curious (and Noel might want to be looped in).

For background, I have a second display...an LG32LF500b television connected via HDMI.  This is what I primarily open CbB on, as my laptop screen is nearly half the size and it's so much nicer having a bigger display.

On a hunch, I opened CbB and both VTM and Eiosis Deesser on my primary laptop screen for the first time in forever, and they worked perfectly.

I then opened CbB and inserted the plugins on my secondary (TV) screen once again, and the original problem reliably persisted once again.

I then crosschecked and repeated the process on my laptop's screen, and the plugins again ran perfectly.

So I was faced with the question....is the problem the TV, or is the problem the  act of running CbB/plugins on a second display at all?

So I then connected my wife's MSI Optix G27C2 to my laptop as an extended display.  The problem persisted on that as well.  Keeping the Optix connected, I once again crosschecked by running CbB and the plugins on my laptop/home screen.  They ran beautifully.

I ran one last test..I opened CbB on my home screen and opened up VTM, but then dragged VTM to the second display.  The freeze/hang was reproduced instantly.

It appears some OpenGL-powered plugins' GUIs have a problem running on a second display, period.

Why, I have no idea...as I've mentioned before, I have no problem admitting I'm no developer...but that seems like a pretty big development [lmao, no pun intended].

The saga continues.......lol.

Not gonna lie; I'm pretty proud of my detective work right now.  Lol.

Edited December 8, 2019 by AxlBrutality

[HIBI]

2 hours ago, AxlBrutality said:

It appears some OpenGL-powered plugins' GUIs have a problem running on a second display, period.

In my desktop, not crash but some plugins open on secondary display often display artifacts. So have to reopen it or move it to primary display. However, this might be irrelevant to issues what you are having because my graphics card is really old one.

[Noel Borthwick]

18 hours ago, AxlBrutality said:

It appears some OpenGL-powered plugins' GUIs have a problem running on a second display, period.

That's definitely a relevant observation thanks. It's likely what is triggering opengl to do whatever it's doing to hang the Cakewalk UI.

[Ben Staton]

Good news!

@AxlBrutality and I finally got to the bottom of this, and his issue now seems to be resolved.

I'm pleased to say that it wasn't a Cakewalk problem. Indeed, Reaper exhibits the same symptoms with the same plugins.

The instability was down to a gaming utility called Nahimic Sound Tracker, which is, I believe, installed by default on some MSI systems (an MSI gaming laptop in this instance). It runs in the background, and displays an in-game HUD showing where your opponents are based on any sounds they make:
https://www.nahimic.com/gamers/

Uninstalling it fixed the problem. They have 15 million users if their website is to be believed, so it's possible other DAW users are running into it too.

I strongly advise anyone running a DAW on a gaming rig to uninstall any unused gaming utilities, or at the very least disable them when running DAW software.

[AxlBrutality]

I want to thank @Ben Staton and @Noel Borthwick for their continued pursuit of this, as well as their patience and their tolerance of my frustration.

I also want to mention that in this year-long saga, Slate and MeldaProductions both abandoned me almost immediately and showed no interest in even trying to identify the issue.  But has been the Cakewalk team that was willing to pick this up again, and has finally apparently tracked this down.

In all fairness to everyone involved, this was the single most niche problem I've ever seen.  An MSI-only app, causing a conflict only with OpenGL plugins, only on secondary displays, even when not running/open itself (I don't even use Nahimic, lmao).  It's pretty insane, haha.

@Ben Staton deserves all the credit, cookies, and kudos in the world for catching the Nahimic process in the dump files.  It's been overlooked by an awful lot of people over the last year.

Obviously we're still tidying up some things and doing some testing, but it appears to have completely disappeared once uninstalling the Nahimic 3 app.  Keep in mind, on my end it was an actual Windows 10 app, so it didn't show up in my Programs list in Control Panel.   I had to find and uninstall it from the Start menu.  Anybody with MSI systems should double check there and make sure...I'd imagine it could eventually cause issues even if your workflow seems fine now.

[Noel Borthwick]

For the record this is a 100% third party problem that affects other DAW's on affected systems, not just Cakewalk. Future note to other plugin developers who are quick to blame Cakewalk

@AxlBrutality were you able to verify that your Cakewalk LP plugins no longer need the ini file setting to override open GL after you uninstalled Nahimic?

[AxlBrutality]

50 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

For the record this is a 100% third party problem that affects other DAW's on affected systems, not just Cakewalk. Future note to other plugin developers who are quick to blame Cakewalk

@AxlBrutality were you able to verify that your Cakewalk LP plugins no longer need the ini file setting to override open GL after you uninstalled Nahimic?

Yup; literally just finished that test up and messaged Ben.  LP plugins work perfectly in a full project, under load, when opened on my secondary display, with OpenGL re-enabled.

I'm so freaking excited right now; you have  no idea.

For those who are curious...it was tested in Reaper nearly a year ago and the problem didn't occur.  What we didn't realize is that it was an issue only on secondary displays...apparently I had opened it up on my primary display, because it had worked perfectly then.  Little things, man.

Update ( @Noel Borthwick) The  last piece of the puzzle....I now  finally get to play around with MAutoPitch, as I have confirmed it is working as well.  All known problem plugins (Slate VTM, Eiosis DeEsser, LP EQ, LP MB, Meldaproductions MAutoPitch) are a full go!

Edited December 9, 2019 by AxlBrutality

[Noel Borthwick]

Great to hear that we were able to help resolve this issue for you. A systematic process of elimination is the best remedy when you have system specific issues like this because it can be easy to draw the wrong conclusions. 
If you could contact the plugin vendors you were in touch with who claimed it was a Cakewalk bug that would be great, so that they don't continue to spread misinformation to other users
We'll also try and put together a KB of known third party problems and troubleshooting techniques that might assist others.
Now go make some music

[bvideo]

I had the problem of my  Korg M1 (64-bit VST2) opening properties all blank/white in an existing project. I tried Korg Wavestation (also 64-bit VST2), and the same thing happened. I use the Intel onboard 630, no MSI, no gaming software, only one monitor. The project is fine in Sonar latest Platinum. I worried!

The project was last saved by Sonar X2. I resaved it from Platinum, and then those VSTi's worked OK in Cakewalk. Lucky me to have Platinum still around.

[Noel Borthwick]

Tip for the future. Open the project in safe mode by pressing Shift while opening. Then click Yes to All.
The project will open intact with all plugins but with any open plugin windows will be closed.

[davet]

Did this Nahimic process show up in the Windows Task Manager Startup screen? 

 

[JonD]

46 minutes ago, davet said:

Did this Nahimic process show up in the Windows Task Manager Startup screen? 

 

Good point.  Disabling all unnecessary processes in Startup (and then a reboot) is always the first thing to try when troubleshooting any problem like this.

Edited December 10, 2019 by JonD

[AxlBrutality]

2 hours ago, davet said:

Did this Nahimic process show up in the Windows Task Manager Startup screen? 

 

Not as an open program, no.  I'd imagine it was listed a background process, along with about 50 other things.  Nobody knew to suspect it specifically until Ben noticed it in the call stack in the dump file (where it had also been previously overlooked) and threw a hail mary.

@JonD

True, but that really would have only narrowed it down to about 2 dozen or more processes.  And we had no reason to suspect that a background process was the issue. /shrug  Hindsight is always 20/20, I suppose.

Edited December 10, 2019 by AxlBrutality

[UltraPowerPony]

So... I think I've found something interesting and kinda "fix". Had problems with Goodhertz plug-ins, host freezes instantly when trying to playback the project with plug-in window opened. So, anyway, was experimenting with graphics card drivers - nothing.

But, at some point my AMD Control Panel was opened with Cakewalk and Goodhertz Lossy plug-in at background. So, at the AMD panel I noticed something weird - 90% GPU usage and 60C+ temperature lol. So, here's the problem - when this plug-in (and some others) are inserted in project and their window is opened, they use a lot of GPU for some reason. And when I hit play, it just can't handle it.

Ok, the "fix". I've been using this app called Dxtory (v2) for games video recording and taking screenshots. It has some really deep compatibility settings and frame rate limiter. I was using it for old games, in which frame rate could go up very high (like 300-600fps) and something like Doom 2 could get GPU up to 65C.

So, my thought was "if it can limit frame rate of video games, maybe it can do this thing with plug-in window". And it did. First I tried 30fps. And it worked. GPU load dropped to 30-40% and I was, finally, able to play the project with all those "broken" plug-ins. Then after some time GPU load dropped to 0% and occasionally was getting up to 25%.  Also tried other values, up to 59fps. Still worked. I don't know why and how exactly. Just find a way to limit frame rate of openGL apps, with Dxtory or something else.

[eurekarem]

On 5/28/2019 at 3:32 PM, msmcleod said:

I had this issue with Jamstix 4 when it first came out, but only on my laptop.

The issue was due to an incompatibility with the NVIDIA driver.  Making Cakewalk use the onboard Intel graphics instead fixed it, and I've not seen this issue since.

How did you force Cakewalk to use the onboard graphics?  

Thanks in advance.

[msmcleod]

3 hours ago, eurekarem said:

How did you force Cakewalk to use the onboard graphics?  

Thanks in advance.

It was through the NVIDIA control panel IIRC.

The version of the panel will be quite different depending on what version of NVIDIA card you've got though.  Best to refer to the user guide for the version of the card you've got.

[Anya du Toit]

I only got Cakewalk today and it's very nice so far. But when I took my headphones out of my laptop Cakewalk suddenly froze and the mouse pointer is still loading. I cannot click my windows to shut down or restart or close the tab. I can put my laptop off and on but when I put it on the page is still frozen and the mouse pointer is loading. I cannot exit at all.

How do I fix this? Please, does anyone have any solutions?