u-he

The MIDI Guru · Post by **The MIDI Guru** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:11 am

The preset "HS Organs R Us" in the "Howard does Z2" directory consistently crashes (locks up) Windows. This happens in both Cubase 4 and Live 6. I'm using Zebra 2.1.

Can others duplicate this?

--Jim Aikin

zircon · Post by **zircon** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:32 am

I haven't encountered any problems with that patch on either of my two Windows XP machines with Zebra 2 installed (one is SP1, one is SP2 - both use Intel processors). Sorry I can't be of any help! Have you tried the same patch in a different host? I do remember Urs saying at one point that nothing in Zebra 2's code should cause crashes in Windows itself, but perhaps there is something being overlooked here.

The MIDI Guru · Post by **The MIDI Guru** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:39 am

Well, Cubase 4 and Live 6 are different hosts, and it crashed Cubase consistently, three times in a row, with exactly the same symptoms.

It's possible I have a corrupted copy of this particular file ... but even if that's true, it's still a DSP bug, because the synth should check for errors when loading parameters.

I suppose I could try it in FL Studio and Tracktion, but I'm tired of rebooting. Maybe tomorrow.

--JA

Notron User · Post by **Notron User** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:43 am

I've had problems with HS moregon in live 5.2 on an old athlon xp2100 with win2k. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. With an earlier build the host would lock up. But with 2.1 I can at least get out of Zebra without taking down the host.

I've shut down my music computer tonight. But I'll play with HS Organs R Us tomorrow.

On the plus side there are other synths out there that seem like once they error out then thats that. I won't mention any names (Vaz Modular) but with some synths once they error out, you can't reopen them in the same host session.

I'm pretty sure that tonight I closed Zebra in live (after HS moregon gave me problems), switched to another plug (firebird) then went back to playing a preset from the Analog Stripes folder (Urs Moogy?) in Zebra 2.1 w/o incident.

I'm willing to cut Urs some slack. Because aside from this problem (caused by Howard Scarr's wonderful presets), Zebra has been a lot less troublesome than, say, anything from the Komplete 4 pack I have. (Though to be fair they do say K4 requires WinXP on the tin (Which was battered after being shipped 45th class from Switzerland.)

zircon · Post by **zircon** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:48 am

Whoops, I missed that line somehow. Anyway you may find this thread of some value; another user encountering crash problems with Z2.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=162850

spritex · Post by **spritex** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 7:12 am

Jim, what is your CPU model? It might be important to know.

The MIDI Guru · Post by **The MIDI Guru** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 7:14 am

It's a Pentium 4, 3GHz. XP Home SP2.

Notron User · Post by **Notron User** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 2:56 pm

I just tried "HS Organs R Us" and found that it locked up my computer (live 5.2's CPU meter was reading 144%).

spritex · Post by **spritex** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 9:09 pm

Actually, it crashed here as well

(P4 2.8C don't know if it matters).
Strange.

ACHTUNG: THIS THREAD IS FORBIDDEN TO ALL WHOSE NAME IS "URS" UNTIL THEY COME BACK FROM ANY HOLIDAY

beej · Post by **beej** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 9:56 pm

No problems with that patch here on the Mac version...

tylenol · Post by **tylenol** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:08 pm

Guess this is a PC thing...these presets work fine on the mac. Both of the organ plugins are fairly CPU intensive (live said 17%, on a core duo) but not cripplingly so, and comparable to some other complex zebra2 presets.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 12:48 am

spritex wrote:ACHTUNG: THIS THREAD IS FORBIDDEN TO ALL WHOSE NAME IS "URS" UNTIL THEY COME BACK FROM ANY HOLIDAY

Agreed. I can't help here anyway, I don't have a pc around...

I'd say: Just avoid that one preset! Ask Tasmaniandevil what he finds out about it. No-one knows more about Z2 than him.

Later,

Urs

Howard · Post by **Howard** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 1:59 am

Notron User wrote:I've had problems with HS moregon in live 5.2 on an old athlon xp2100 with win2k.

Hmmm... both those organs (and none of my other sounds so far) use an MSEG in mono mode with very fast Attack (for paraphonic "percussion"). Might be a little bug in there?

tasmaniandevil · Post by **tasmaniandevil** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:14 am

Urs wrote:I'd say: Just avoid that one preset! Ask Tasmaniandevil what he finds out about it. No-one knows more about Z2 than him.

Haha, will take a look tomorrow.

Cheers,
tas

tasmaniandevil · Post by **tasmaniandevil** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 2:16 am

Howard wrote:Hmmm... both those organs (and none of my other sounds so far) use an MSEG in mono mode with very fast Attack (for paraphonic "percussion"). Might be a little bug in there?

Yup, looks like you are already on the right trace. With the Moregon preset it seems to be occuring a little bit more randomly, sometimes I can play it without problems and sometimes the Cubase vst-meter shows a cpu-overload. The Organs R US is going to cpu-overload mode as soon as you hit a second note on the keyboard (but it doesn't seem to be because of the mseg-mono-mode, you can change it to poly and it will still happen). I tried making a new preset with only one osc-module and a similar mseg modulating a few parameters. I could save, reload and play it without problems at first. But after closing and reopening Cubase it showed the same weird behaviour as your two presets immediately. Sometimes it helps to shortly disable Zebra2, select another preset and reenable Zebra2 to be able to play normally and sometimes Cubase will go silent and spit out an error message so that you will have to close Cubase. But it will in no case totally crash the system. You always have control over it, you just need to close and reopen Cubase sometimes. I guess we will have to wait until Urs is back in a few weeks to take further tests on the issue.

Cheers,
tas

u-he

KVR Audio

Corrupted Preset