"Bad" crashes with RC staying in Taskhost Window for minutes

[PeteInNeedOfABeat]

Hi all,

I decided to open a new topic because I think my problem with RC is more than a "normal" crash.

I call it a "bad" crash: RC (3.0.5) crashes (on Win7, 64-bit), I click on "close program", but it's not really closing, it stays in Task Host Window for about five minutes.

I found out about this because the first time a crash like this happened, I tried to re-open the program again. It looked like it loaded but it never started.

So I took a look into Task Host Window and there it was, still running. Not eating any CPU but still taking up some RAM.

I can kill the process manually as often as I want, it just stays in there for about five minutes, then suddenly disappears.

I've had audio software crashing on me before, but never with this type of behaviour.
It's a real workflow-breaker because I can't do anything for minutes, just wait.

At first I thought this might be related to some vst-plugin I was using, but over time it crashed with three different plugins by three different developers and all of them never crashed before in my main DAW (Ableton Live9).

Last night it crashed during a three-track-session that was only using soundfonts.

I already sent Attila Crash-Reports, but we couldn't really figure it out.

I can't even reproduce it on my own machine, sometimes it doesn't happen for a week, sometimes twice in a row in the same session.

So I'd like to ask you: Has anybody here experienced this problem with Rapidcomposer on Windows before?

Or even better: Does anybody know how to stop RC from crashing this way?

Sunny greetings,
Pete

[musicdevelopments]

I hope others will comment. I wonder how often this occurs.

This happened to me 2-3 times. This is a rare crash that is difficult to reproduce. I know I will catch it sooner or later.
What happens is that the program consumes memory, continuously allocating more and more memory until the system starts to map virtual memory to hard disk. At this point the program (and Windows) stops responding.
In 64-bit an error like this causes big problems while the 32-bit application would stop after allocating 4 GB.

BTW do you have any Melody Generators in the loaded composition?
MG uses a recursive decision-maker algorithm, similar to chess programs. I suspect that may be the reason.

Thanks,
Attila

[nexussynth]

i wonder if the problem i have been having with drag and drop progressions freezing/not working (no error report is generated though) could be related to running out of memory on my 4GB 32 bit PC. is there a way to see how much total ram RC is using at any given time? some of my vsti are memory intensive like Kontakt and ARIA GPO.

[musicdevelopments]

Yes, running out of memory on a 4 GB PC is possible. Normally RC does not reserve that much.
You can check it by typing taskmgr.exe into the windows search field. Look for RapidComposer.exe under Processes. "Working Set (Memory)" shows the amount of memory allocated by the program.

[PeteInNeedOfABeat]

I hope others will comment. I wonder how often this occurs.

This happened to me 2-3 times. This is a rare crash that is difficult to reproduce. I know I will catch it sooner or later.
What happens is that the program consumes memory, continuously allocating more and more memory until the system starts to map virtual memory to hard disk. At this point the program (and Windows) stops responding.
In 64-bit an error like this causes big problems while the 32-bit application would stop after allocating 4 GB.

BTW do you have any Melody Generators in the loaded composition?
MG uses a recursive decision-maker algorithm, similar to chess programs. I suspect that may be the reason.

Thanks,
Attila

Hi Attila,

not sure about the Melody Generator. I was more looking at the plugins that I thought caused the problem.

Will look out for the Melody Generator the next time a crash like this happens and report back.

Sunny greetings,
Pete

[PeteInNeedOfABeat]

I hate to say it, but I had more "bad crashes" last night.

It happened during a three-track-session with RC in Standalone.

Two tracks had soundfonts, one was a Guitar-Vst (Demo of RealGuitar4 by musiclab, I tried this one because RC had already crashed on me when I used Ample Sound AGMLite).

Task Host Window showed that total RAM was at 2,70 GB (I have 16 GB of RAM and 2,4GB is already in there when I start my system, so I think I'm far from running out of RAM).

No Melody Generator in that Session. Lead Guitar used one of Yellukhan's custom phrases with some Track Variations and manual editing applied.

Then I thought: Maybe if I link RC (in Standalone) to Ableton via LoopMidi and let Ableton do all the plugin-handling, I'll get around this problem.

It worked for about five minutes then RC crashed and stayed in Task Host Window for minutes.

I even stopped playback in RC before I went into Note Editing because I thought: Maybe RC crashes only when I try to edit something in realtime, while it's playing.

Well, I did some some edits while RC paused and it crashed the moment I pressed "Play".

At this point I don't even think it has something to do with certain Plugins or the way RC communicates with them.

I already had a "bad crash" with a Session (in Standalone) that was using no Plugins at all, just four soundfonts (crashed while I played around with Fingerpicking Generator while RC was playing).

So right now it looks as if my last option is to wait for a fix.

[davidsl222]

First off I like RC very much. It's really a great program and idea.

That said I'm having trouble with crashing on both of my iMacs. One is a 2009 with 8GB RAM running El Capitan and the other is the latest iMac with 32GB RAM running Sierra (unfortunately.)

First, on both of my machines, RC crashes when I try to add the VST for Omnisphere and Kontakt. This happens 8 out of 10 times when adding the VST in settings and 10/10 if I try to add one of the VSTs to a track. I've been working around it by not using either of those VSTs.

Today I'm having a different issue and can't start the program without it crashing. The steps I took before the crash were 1. added an audio track and imported audio to an existing project. 2. deleted a track. 3. Deleted a second track - then crash. The problem is now I can't reopen the program because it crashes every time I start it and it tries to reload the last project.

Is there a way I can open the program without it trying to load the last project?

Thanks for the help.

[davidsl222]

An update to my last post.

I changed the extension of the file that RC kept trying to load on start up and that worked to get it going again.

I really like this program. I hope that it will get to be more stable in future updates.

David

[musicdevelopments]

Hi David,

will you please send me the OS X crash dumps? The crash reports would help me to fix these issues very quickly.
I am wondering what is going on because I haven't received a problem report for OS X for a long time.
When the program does not start, or crashes during starting, please hold down the 'control' key when you run it, and keep it holding down until you see the "Ctrl key held down..." message. That will skip loading the last composition.

Thanks,
Attila

[PeteInNeedOfABeat]

Hi all,

I'm just reporting that with 3.1 and everything above (currently using 3.12) it got a lot better for me.

Been using the program for a good month, only two of these "bad crashes".

So the problem has not really disappeared but at least RC is in a state where I can work with it for hours without having problems all the time.

Feels like it's a step in the right direction.

Sunny greetings,
Pete

[musicdevelopments]

Thanks for the feedback, Pete