Cubase crash prob

[Guest]

Hi chaps.

I wonder if any of you wise and knowledgeable souls can help.

I am running Cubase v.7. on a fairly hi-specced system. Just this last week it has started with an irritating problem. I click on export audio, the little rectangular box comes up with the bar that moves across and gives you a percentage as it exports the file. However, it stays on zero then gives a nasty crash message. Unfortunately, this means I have to restart Cubase. This doesn't happen on every project but it was perhaps every 4 exports last evening. The day before I don't think it did it and the day before that it was doing it alot.

I can't think of anything different about my system. I have alot of stuff going on plug-in wise but there's 64gb or ram and so I don't think that's the prob as there's always been alot going on. It is really irritating. Any thoughts?

Also, it is telling me that it has logged a .dmp file giving details of the crash. Can anyone advise as to how I might view and read the .dmp file? or do I just send this to Steiny?

Many thanks.

[BJG145]

I don't think you'll get anything useful from the dump file. DAW crashes are often caused by a particular VST. Looking at the projects which crash on export and the ones that don't, is there a specific plugin in common...? If there's a project that crashes consistently on export, maybe you could try removing all the plugins to see if that fixes it, then one at a time to isolate it.

Could also try Cubase safe mode - see here...

https://www.steinberg.net/en/support/knowledgebase_new/show_...

[Guest]

I don't think you'll get anything useful from the dump file. DAW crashes are often caused by a particular VST. Looking at the projects which crash on export and the ones that don't, is there a specific plugin in common...? If there's a project that crashes consistently on export, maybe you could try removing all the plugins to see if that fixes it, then one at a time to isolate it.

Could also try Cubase safe mode - see here...

https://www.steinberg.net/en/support/knowledgebase_new/show_...

Cheers for the reply and suggestion! Can't identify a specific plug in. Has happened on a few different projects.

Today though, cranked up computer and been going 3 hours and no probs.

Now, I am technically retarded so please bear with me and don't laugh if this is a daft question but...

I was wondering, cos I leave the computer on all the time, including overnight often, whether all the stuff I work on and load up during the day - tons of energy sapping VSTs, well I am wondering if this causes a bit of a ram blockage? Cos it stays in the ol' ram right?

Is that a silly question?

Just a though and the only thing I can think of at this stage.

[BJG145]

I wouldn't rule it out; shouldn't really happen, but who knows. Computers generally benefit from the odd reboot, especially after a crash, so running complex projects 24/7 it'll probably get a bit addled.

[Guest]

it'll probably get a bit addled.

A bit like me

[Scramble]

I was wondering, cos I leave the computer on all the time, including overnight often, whether all the stuff I work on and load up during the day - tons of energy sapping VSTs, well I am wondering if this causes a bit of a ram blockage? Cos it stays in the ol' ram right?

I find if you leave a PC on for more than a few days, even when just running non-music software, then things start to go wrong, and it's worse when you throw audio software in there. So I always make sure I re-start every few days at the very least to clear up any RAM mess. In fact, these days, as I find Cubase 7/7.5 a little flaky with some VSTs, I will re-start the computer whenever I want to work on a project.

Mind you, I always have about 5-7 programs running at once. If you don't run anything else then you should get less problems, but I would still start again a lot.

Don't know if that's related to your mixdown issue, though, haven't had a problem with the Mixdown myself since Cubase 3 or 4.

[James Perrett]

It would always be worth looking at the memory usage in Task Manager. If one program seems to have increasing memory requirements over a few hours (or a few days) then it probably has a memory leak and would benefit from being restarted regularly. Web browsers seem to have problems in this respect and I wouldn't be surprised to find Cubase also suffers from similar issues.

[Guest]

Interesting. I think I will try restarting more over the next few days and see what happens. No probs today thus far!

Thanks for the help chaps.

[RKS]

Never had any export or RAM issues with Cubase SX 3, 5 or 6.5 but since I work off a laptop the thing gets switched off fully very regularly.

I did have a phase of using the hibernate feature a lot once and that did cause some general stability issues but that was for a few different programs.

[CS70]

I've had my share of crashes, and every DAW is probably quirky in its own way (which makes perfect sense as they are all different codebases), but my standard procedure when crashes happen is as follows:

1. swear for at least 30 seconds but no more than a minute; the loudness depends on my mood, the length depends on how much I care about the work in progress.

2. close the entire thing and go playing Tetris Battle on Facebook for some time (from a few minutes to the rest of the day). Tetris Battle is very zen and restores your mental composure

3. reopen the bugger (restarting the machine if it doesnt work the first time). If the project does not open, I pray that it's the version "3.3b with new blend reverb and vocal riding" and I try hard to remember what I had done from the version "3.3a etc". If I didn't save any previous version, I may do a rage quit and restart from scratch - this time remembering to save a copy every few actions.

4. If it opens, I summon my zen and try to play it. At this stage, I *expect* crashes so the zen from Tetris Battle is very relevant here.

5. Once the crash is confirmed (not a quirk of the machine as it was in the first crash' state) I immediately disable *all* plugins and rerun the project. Every time the project crashes again, see point 3.

6. If everything works with no plugins (sounding off course quite odd at time), I re-enable the plugin support overall but disable each one after one; then I try again.

7. Then go into the individual plugins and methodically reactivate one, try. If it works, save; repeat.

8. Once you get the plugin that crashes, you look at the setting that had taken four hours to find and note them down - the delete and re-insert.

For the grace of whatever thing you use as god, don't try and save a project when it's half-crashed (say the sound engine stops but the GUI seems to work). There's a big chance the save itself will fail or will leave the file in a corrupted state. Close, carefully read every dialog box and say "no" to every proposal to save your work, and prepare mentally for a session of "what the heck did I do last" plus a large number of repetitions of "I should save versions more often".

Be zen. Tetris Battle helps.

Plugins seem to be responsible for crashes, in my DAW, in say 80% of the cases. The DAW itself (copy/paste logic, track cloning logic, bus loop handling logic, doing stuff while the sound engine is running or not) go for the rest. It's safer to do changes when the sound engine is not running - after all, you're relying on programmers knowing what they are doing with concurrent modification of the same chunk of data - and the fact is that most programmers don't, really.

If you're using BitBridge (you know, in Windows, by looking at the processes), there's a large probability that's the reason of the crash (or better, plugins running over it). That may narrow your search a bit. Also, sometimes BitBridge hangs - doesn't close correctly when the DAW crashes. Kill the instance. When the DAW is not running, kill everything that has to do with it. Gentle shutdown on failure is, again, an art that few programmers master - and in fairness, many of the traditional development platforms and OSs don't make it easy.

Other things to look at, are automation lines.. again disabling/enabling automation overall or individual tracks - a project crashed once at the studio's pc which had many Ozone automation lines, and it wasn't fun - but do it methodically and you'll find out the culprit.

Save as.., save as.., save as.. "Save as.." is your best friend. When done with a project and before packing for backup, I usually delete no less than 20 versions... and I should have more.

Remember the immortal words:

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Good hunting! Now, where was version 32d?

[tex]

Check temperature as 64gb of ram could get pretty hot. Check the power supply usage as well as that ram will be using a lot of power which can lead to occasional instability.

[Dynamic Mike]

I've suffered similar in Cubase 6.5 except mine gets to 99% in the 'export audio mixdown' box & then crashes. Sometimes exporting in realtime fixes it, sometimes saving to a back-up folder fixes it, sometimes nothing fixes it. For some reason freezing tracks & offloading VSTI's makes no difference to the load once this has occured. In extreme cases exporting every track individually, saving numbered track pre-sets & re-importing them into a new project is the only option. The only common factor in the tracks this occurs with is Halion. It's the main reason I won't upgrade to C7, I think I'll be looking elsewhere.

But mostly I just do what CS70 does.

[The Elf]

If I was a gambler I'd put money on this being tied to a specific plug-in. It will be a slow process of narrowing it down...

[Mixedup]

If I was a gambler I'd put money on this being tied to a specific plug-in. It will be a slow process of narrowing it down...

+1. Though doesn't need to be too slow. Start by loading the least demanding project that's causing this issue. Then you can narrow it down with a 50:50 approach... unload the plugins on the first 50% of your channels and try exporting. Does it still happen? If so, you can try the next 50% and repeat. If you find it, you've narrowed it down to only a few channels. When you get to only a few channels it's relatively easy to track down. If you can't do it in this way, it's probably not a plug-in... or at least not a single one.

One thought... sometimes you can have a plug-in that only has upsampling switched on when bouncing off-line. Eg I think Cytomic The Glue can do that. That might be overloading things when bouncing but not on playback?