SO4 Sample One XT - (Major Issue)

[THE INTRANCER]

I'd normally post this in one of the Studio One threads, but it's quite a serious issue and it's happened on two separate occasions, tonight and last night, whilst composing a new track. I know many here have recently upgraded and wondered if anyone is experiencing the same. Basically using Sample One XT, will lock up my entire I7 920 Quadcore 8 Thread system during the course of using it, forcing me to press the power reset button. Studio One 4.1.1 doesn't crash to show any Exception Errors, it remains open but isn't accessible once you've managed to escape to the desktop. I have widgets which measure CPU usage and it appears that thread number 8 of my system is locked at around 98% and intermittently drops and returns to that whilst the other threads dance around the 20 to 40 mark. I can't even access ( Windows 7 ) Task Manager whilst in this state.

So, you may be wondering if I was doing anything crazy to cause this, well no... I simply recorded a sample and started adding additional effects it has below and adjusting it's dials, to which point, I don't think the sound was actually being processed whilst turning them... carried on playing the keyboard triggering the sample I just recorded and bam,complete lockup. Waited about 5 minutes to see if it would recover...nope...

So I rebooted, and logging in again.

In the process of loading up Studio One Pro 4.1.1 again, before it actually started, the pop up notification which is shown below appears. Something related to 'Calls', which I really don't know for certain (maybe Presonus does if it's related), what it relates to. I didn't experience Sample One in previous versions causing this (not that I recall ever using it in my tracks from the past 4 years, 4 years exactly today when I bought Studio One 2.6), but then Sample One is pretty much a completely new beast now.

Two big lockups, only happened whilst using Sample One XT... other than that, everything else seems to be fine...

[AdvancedFollower]

It's extremely rare for software bugs these days to freeze up an entire system. Modern operating systems isolate user processes from each other and from crucial system processes. If an application misbehaves in some way (due to a bug), it gets killed off by the operating system, without affecting the rest of the system.

This means freezes and blue screens are likely either caused by driver issues (since they run with a much higher level of permission) or faulty hardware, such as bad RAM, cooling fan failures etc. I would look in the Event Viewer, especially under the System tab, to see whether there are any problems (look especially for "Error" and "Critical"). Also, there are stress test programs you can run to make sure the RAM, CPU etc. are operating normally. I recommend AIDA64, which I believe has a 30 day trial. If all looks normal, search for updated drivers for things like the audio interface, video card etc.

[THE INTRANCER]

It's extremely rare for software bugs these days to freeze up an entire system. Modern operating systems isolate user processes from each other and from crucial system processes. If an application misbehaves in some way (due to a bug), it gets killed off by the operating system, without affecting the rest of the system.

This means freezes and blue screens are likely either caused by driver issues (since they run with a much higher level of permission) or faulty hardware, such as bad RAM, cooling fan failures etc. I would look in the Event Viewer, especially under the System tab, to see whether there are any problems (look especially for "Error" and "Critical"). Also, there are stress test programs you can run to make sure the RAM, CPU etc. are operating normally. I recommend AIDA64, which I believe has a 30 day trial. If all looks normal, search for updated drivers for things like the audio interface, video card etc.

It's a pretty strange one, but from the technical side of my system and it's components with other demanding software and the paces I put it through with intensive 3D rendering projects, video editing, photoshop, gaming ect... it performs as expected. Win 7 64 Bit-Intel I7 920@3.57GHz, Gigabyte EX58 UD5 Mobo, Huge HSF Zalman CNPS10X Extreme, 16 Gigs of Kingston ram and a Focusrite Pro 14 audio interface. Still using my original Nvidia Palit GTS250 DX10 1Gig Graphics card...and it's all in a solid Coolermaster Scout Case, with 3 harddrives. Quite an old system but still pretty solid and reliable... Just posting that as reference...

Sample One XT, seems to be behaving if it's open by itself whilst messing around with it...but there is something off with it when you get into more complex song construction. But I've not been using Studio One 4 for long enough to do any real investigation, so I can only really come up with an initial theory based upon my understanding of music software which I've been using since the early 1990's and PC's since the year 2000.

It could be related to this and low latency monitoring (as highlighted in this thread) and something has changed in an update since, or it could be something relating to Buss's which have been used, causing an internal infinite loop or overload within Sample One XT and that of the audio interface... Could it be a buffer issue...humm..

https://forums.presonus.com/viewtopic.p ... 5e#p188784

[zzz00m]

I have had DAW crashes due to issues with other plugins, where the DAW does not exit, and cannot be killed in task manager.

But in many cases, instead of rebooting, i just turn off my audio interface for a few moments. That usually lets the DAW exit. My theory is that some sudden crashes don't fully clean up and may leave a thread hanging onto the audio driver, so resetting the interface allows it to exit.

[THE INTRANCER]

I have had DAW crashes due to issues with other plugins, where the DAW does not exit, and cannot be killed in task manager.

But in many cases, instead of rebooting, i just turn off my audio interface for a few moments. That usually lets the DAW exit. My theory is that some sudden crashes don't fully clean up and may leave a thread hanging onto the audio driver, so resetting the interface allows it to exit.

Thanks.. yeah..that's pretty much what I think is the issue. I've had loss off audio whilst playing Battlefield games which have crashed so disconnecting and reconnecting is a method I've tried to restore it, but it doesn't always work being a Firewire based audio interface, with a USB based interface, there's more chance I've found. So if I find if it happens again with Sample One XT, I'll give that a shot. I've found the error message I posted above to be unrelated to Studio One 4, upon rebooting.

So, something is up with Sample One XT, which I've still to figure out. If I'm able to restore the audio should it reoccur, there may be more info to gather if it fails to work and it provides an error report of some sort.

[GreyLion]

I'm assuming that you already know this, but just in case -- You do have your Focusrite plugging into a TI Firewire chipset in your machine, right?

[zzz00m]

I've had loss off audio whilst playing Battlefield games which have crashed so disconnecting and reconnecting is a method I've tried to restore it, but it doesn't always work being a Firewire based audio interface, with a USB based interface, there's more chance I've found.

I'm using a FireWire interface that is a bus powered FireWire 400 (6-pin), connected to a PCIe IEEE 1394b adapter with a TI chip. I just use the power button on the front panel of the interface to switch it off/on and that usually works for me.

[THE INTRANCER]

The Pro 14 audio interface I have connects directly to the motherboard port at the back, there's no switch on it, and I'm not using any PCI FireWire cards. It was an interesting reminder when I looked as the specifications of the mobo I have which was a mid to high end spec, and not the cheap sub £100 kind that were common place in 2009 during the advent of the new I7, I5 generation. https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA ... -rev-10#ov . Interestingly there's 3 FireWire 400 ports...

I do have to say though... that I've never seen a plugin lockup my entire system though...I kinda expect to lock up my PC system when I'm building and rendering several billion polygonal cityscapes.

[GreyLion]

Looks like your mobo does have a TI chipset. Soooo.... This is looking more and more like a painstaking troubleshooting process as outlined by AdvancedFollower above. With a likelihood that it's just a bug in S1 or PresenceXT. Have fun!

[synth guru]

Since you're the only one reporting it, sounds like a personal system issue.

[THE INTRANCER]

Looks like your mobo does have a TI chipset. Soooo.... This is looking more and more like a painstaking troubleshooting process as outlined by AdvancedFollower above. With a likelihood that it's just a bug in S1 or PresenceXT. Have fun!

Well, I encountered it with Sample One XT rather than Presence XT , but I did scan through the presonus forum and found this thread which seems to highlight a freeze problem.
I've not had any freezes in the past 12 hours of Studio One 4.1.1 being active, but I do have a theory of what could of caused it. I'm using an external synthesizer which is able to send midi on up to 4 times as many instances from pressing one key, which is essentially part of the layering system it has onboard. My thinking is that there has been an overload from the ports to Sample One XT in terms of midi data sent, and thus bringing down Sample One XT, which has subsequently frozen the audio interface.

I've not explored this theory yet as I've been too busy producing...

Here's what some others have experienced https://forums.presonus.com/viewtopic.p ... 6d82505275