BR: Rack presets memory overload

[Samb]

Just when I was feeling smug because I never have any trouble with any bugs in Tracktion, this happens. Steps to recreate it are as follows:

1. Turn off the paging file - I'm on windows XP home sp2 by the way.

2. Open a new edit in T2.

3. Create a new rack with a sampler with a large sampleset in it - I used sfz with the nskit soundfont.

4. Add this rack to the list of presets and then close it (edit - by close I mean delete it).

5. Add stuff to your edit so that it uses nearly all of your memory ( enough so that opening the rack you've just created would take you over your total memory).

6. Open the rack preset you've just created.

This freezes T and causes all sorts of GUI problems. If you close T immediately without trying to click on anything else it's usually fine when you open it up again, but if you do click on other things it can cause a total freeze up.

Can anyone else confirm this?

[Lunch Money]

Let me try it-- I have another thing to test and confirm for another thread once I'm done reading KvR's latest and greatest; however before I do:

1a. sfz is one of the only plug-ins I ever have issues with. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that this is an sfz issue and not a Tracktion issue.

1b. There may be something about the way sfz loads soundfonts and keeps them in memory that isn't compatible with the way racks are working. So it may end up being an 'issue' that needs fixing, rather than a bug.

2. Doesn't it seem at least reasonable that a crash could occur upon loading up a huge memory-gobbling plug-in once you already know your memory won't be able to handle it?

Mostly, although I use sfz, I don't have confidence in it. It needs an update even more badly than Tracktion does.

Greg

[Watto]

Doesn't it seem at least reasonable that a crash could occur upon loading up a huge memory-gobbling plug-in once you already know your memory won't be able to handle it?

That's what I was thinking...

Mostly, although I use sfz, I don't have confidence in it. It needs an update even more badly than Tracktion does.

Conceding ground on that point, eh?

[Lunch Money]

I already admitted, 3 months is a bit long since the last publicly available update. I just post in so many threads, and so frequently, that you might've missed that one. <chuckle>

[Watto]

lol - I was only stirring anyway, as you know full well - you ain't silly!

[Lunch Money]

I couldn't reproduce it, and what's more, I couldn't make Tracktion crash even by trying. I closed all other apps, put 30+ ambiences on active tracks (to jack up CPU) and a whole bunch of SFZ to jack up memory. And then I loaded Opera, which takes up a HUNK of memory, because I was going to be snarky and say, "Is it Opera's fault that it didn't load?"

But...

Opera loaded, and Tracktion didn't crash. <laff>

e-to-e disabled itself, but I didn't crash.

NOW, I still need to try one more time. Even though I turned it off and Windoze didn't give me a warning, I suspect that it's still using my page file right now. I need to give'er another shot after rebooting. Dog needs a walk first, though.

Stay tuned to this channel.

[Lunch Money]

I was right, my paging file WASN'T disabled yet. However, upon trying it again (from the beginning, following the steps exactly)--

When I got to the part where I open the rack preset, the sfz simply wouldn't initialize, meaning that there IS some sort of safeguard in Tracktion (or maybe it's the OS... I'm not savvy enough to say for sure) that will check to see if it's running low on memory.

Curious, I deleted the rack again, and instead just kept adding plug-ins until they stopped initializing. For example, it would get to the point where I would add "4front bass module" and it would be fine. Then I'd try to add another, and it would fail to initialize. So, I'd try a different plug-in (in this case, Stepchild) and it would load fine. And another, and another, and another.. until finally I couldn't add any more Stepchilds.

Backed it up to where I added the 'last' of the Bass Modules, and deleted it. Added a Stepchild first, and THEN tried to add a Bass Module, and it worked. Backed it up and kept adding Stepchilds until my memory was more used up, and then finall I couldn't add ANY Bass Module at all.

In other words, when you don't have sufficient memory, Tracktion simply won't load the plug-in, whether it's in a rack or whether it's just to a track. It just fails to initialize and gives you the symbol.

I dunno what else to say. I couldn't reproduce it, and I couldn't get Tracktion to crash from being out of memory or CPU no matter what.

I sort of wanted it to, so that I could have been the guy who could have been the trouble-shooter who discovered the "racks don't offload plug-ins from memory upon deletion" bug (thus sharing the glory with Samb in being a great bughunter), but they DO offload upon unconventional deletion, and they WILL fail to initialize without sufficient memory.

Of course, you didn't imagine it, Samb... obviously something's up. But I can't reproduce it.

Greg

[valley]

probably sfz. It sounds great, but I've had it murder both T and FL at various times in the past.

FWIW, turning off the awap file if there is even the smallest risk that you will get down to the last 10 Meg or so of your system RAM, is a REALLY bad idea. Once you get that low, the box that pops up to warn you about low ram can push you over the limit. If you've never seen the Windows "insufficient memory to show this error error" dialog, you might want to keep it that way.

[Samb]

Well, I've done a bit more in depth testing (didn't really have time yesterday, to be honest ) and I've discovered the problem is not sfz and it's not even racks, it's basically trying to do anything in T that uses more memory than I've got. This never produces a warning from T or windows and always causes the GUI to start disintegrating and then some kind of more or less severe crash - it varies.

You've convinced me it's not T (how could I ever doubt it ), could it be a problem with my actual memory? Sisoft sandra says it's working OK, but it's hardly high quality.

[Lunch Money]

I wonder if you've disabled the warning service or something?

Any time I got close to using up my memory, I got warnings from Windows. I imagine Windows puts up some sort of flag that Tracktion then calls; hence, Tracktion wouldn't initialize any more plug-ins because it had been 'told' by Windows that memory is low. This makes sense for the sfz example, too. sfz will NOT load a soundfont when there's not enough memory. So, sfz is ALSO not knowing that it's out of memory.

I therefore tend to believe it's the OS that's failing you right now-- either you've done some BlackViper (or other source!) service mods or some sort of TweakXP-type thing that has stripped Windows of its ability to warn you that your memory is getting low.

An alternative for you in the meantime, to disabling your pagefile:

Set up a static pagefile. Obviously a pagefile is less preferable to RAM for every single reason imaginable. However, it's preferable to getting critical errors. A static pagefile will cause less defragmentation and require fewer resources from your computer to maintain.

To make your pagefile static, just choose 'custom setting' and set your minimum and maximum size to be the same number. 150% of physical RAM is generally what's recommended for when you have less than a gig of RAM. Once you hit a gig of physical RAM, you generally won't need your pagefile any bigger than that.

Greg

[Samb]

Yeah, it's definitely possible I've disabled the warning service - I've tweaked a number of things that I have no idea what they do, or what the risks are (I just can't help myself, I think "Hmm, I wonder what will happen if I stick my wet fingers in this live electrical socket?" ), but miraculously my computer has been running as smooth as silk up till now. I had the same idea with turning off the paging file and it has been working fine for months until yesterday.

So, does anyone know how to turn window's warnings back on?

Thanks for all your help.

[valley]

could it be a problem with my actual memory?

It's a little unlikely that flaky RAM would behave exactly as you describe, bit I guess not impossible.

Sisoft sandra says it's working OK, but it's hardly high quality.

For real memory checking you are better off using a low level app like memtest ( http://www.memtest86.com/ ), and leaving it running overnight.

We had a computer at my workplace that had a flaky DIMM. It happened that the dodgy area was in a higher order memory block, and it ran stable as you like until a large amount of memory was in use. at which point it would start throwing up intermittent problems. I spent ages debugging the program we were running 'cos I was convinced that I was doing something stupid with a pointer somewhere. I fiddled with BIOS settings, recompiled sections of the linux kernal, and until eventually I couldn't think of anything else to try other than memtest. Sure enough one of the two inmstalled DIMMs exihibited errors under load.

[Lunch Money]

re-install Windows?