Extremely unstable sandbox: is it only like this for me?

[Apprentisorcier]

I've been using Waveform 11 Pro for the past few months, mostly for hobbyist personal projects, and there's something that nags me since the beginning, and that's the feeling of brittleness that the software gives me, mostly in relation to the performance of the sandbox.

First of all, there's this thing: the sandbox crashes 100% of the times when my laptop goes in standby. This in itself seems pretty huge as an issue, and I wonder if it only happens to me.

Then there's the very long time it takes to restart (when it does restart) after I do so: sometimes it takes 30 seconds, which is probably longer than the whole of Waveform takes to start on my machine.

Then there's the arbitrary nature of the restarts: sometimes I press "restart sandbox", the thing spins for a couple of seconds and then stops, giving me back contro... but the sandbox is still off.

Then there's the moody nature of the sandbox with respect to some plugins: yesterday for example I realised that if I add Roli Equator 2 on a track and the sandbox crashes, I'm no longer able to restart it. I tried looking at the log file and there's NOTHING about what is causing the crash (or even a log line tracing the crash), but I experimented removing one plugin at a time and Equator was the culprit. Needless to say, in standalone mode Equator gives me no problem.

In my previous project, it was the free version of Steven Slate Drums that seemed to cause a lot of crashes. Other than after exiting standby, I still get quite a few even with just a couple of tracks with Kontakt plugins in.

I'm now working on a project with a short number of tracks, and I'm hesitating in actually working in a way that reaps Waveform's full potential, because I'm terrified that if I add the wrong plugin the sandbox will become unusable (or "unrestartable") and I'll spend hours trying to debug what the hell is happening.

I considered working without sandbox but I haven't tried yet: if every time I get a sandbox crash that means I would get a full crash in Waveform without sandbox that would be catastrophic.

This seems to me honestly too annoying to be something that's common but I'm interested in knowing how things are for other people. How does it fare for you?

[Apprentisorcier]

Gah, in the time it took for me to write this post, the sandbox crashed with my 4 tracks with Kontakt in, and nothing happening on the laptop (because I'm typing on a different PC). Nothing at all in the log file other than "Showing log file". Jeez.

[spoontechnique]

Thanks to the backup system, full crashes are no longer that catastrophic. The sandbox system is relatively new, so I've been treating it with caution on important projects. I only add plugins to the sandbox if they cause a crash. I think this method works better than using the sandbox for everything. Some plugins are rock solid and never crash. I'd think it's a waste of resources to sandbox stable plugins.

As for the sandbox crashing when your laptop goes on standby, that sounds less like a Waveform problem and more like a standby problem. You could try changing your standby/sleep settings, but I'd think most heavy-duty programs would run into issues with standby. Video games, video editing, anything serious would probably not do well dropping in and out of standby. Why not start a fresh Waveform instance every time you wake your computer?

[pough]

It doesn't seem to be true that a plugin that crashes the sandbox would crash Waveform if it wasn't sandboxed. In my experience some plugins only crash when sandboxed. I've found that the sandbox is best used only for plugins that really do crash. Right now, for me, it's pretty much none of them.

SynthMaster crashed Waveform recently when I was swapping presets to find the right bass sound. I'm not sure if I'm going to sandbox it or just not try so many presets so quickly.

[JohnNoizz]

I can confirm this, with sandbox on, it will crash many more times than without it, and if you use the experimental sandbox parameters it will get worst...

[terrynoakes]

Gah, in the time it took for me to write this post, the sandbox crashed with my 4 tracks with Kontakt in, and nothing happening on the laptop (because I'm typing on a different PC). Nothing at all in the log file other than "Showing log file". Jeez.

Do you have the latest Kontakt version, I had the occasional crash with previous versions. But none with latest.

[Apprentisorcier]

Do you have the latest Kontakt version, I had the occasional crash with previous versions. But none with latest.

Yes, I'm on 6.4.2

[Apprentisorcier]

I can confirm this, with sandbox on, it will crash many more times than without it, and if you use the experimental sandbox parameters it will get worst...

Yeah, I can see this. By the time I had written the original post, for some reason the sandbox had become all but unusable on my machine: all of a sudden it seemed impossible for it to restart without crashing a few seconds later. No logs or anything.

I started moving plugins out of the sandbox until there was only one left, and then I took that one out: at that point it made no sense for me to use the sandbox and I disabled it altogether. In all of this, not a single log line was there in the log file to show me what was going wrong.

I haven't done a lot of work since, but the work I did seemed to show things running smoothly without sandbox.

I see there are bug fixes going in in the new betas, so hopefully it will become more stable, but for now it really doesn't seem ready for prime time. I had two projects in a row where its stability became progressively worse to the point where Waveform became unusable. I also think that unless the sandbox becomes multiprocess it won't make a big difference, as there will still be so many plug ins ran by the single sandbox process that its benefit will be marginal.

[pough]

I see there are bug fixes going in in the new betas, so hopefully it will become more stable, but for now it really doesn't seem ready for prime time. I had two projects in a row where its stability became progressively worse to the point where Waveform became unusable. I also think that unless the sandbox becomes multiprocess it won't make a big difference, as there will still be so many plug ins ran by the single sandbox process that its benefit will be marginal.

By "it" do you mean Waveform or the sandbox? I wouldn't think that the sandbox is meant to be used in most instances, only when a plugin actually crashes Waveform for whatever reason. And hopefully the plugin maker can be talked into working on a solution which will allow the plugin to eventually be let out of the sandbox.

I wish that Waveform by default would have the sandbox on but the plugins non-sandboxed and then recommend sandboxing any plugin that crashes Waveform. That makes more sense to me. Having them all sandboxed just means they're less controllable (no thumbnail, no faceplate, complicated sidechain...)

[aMUSEd]

I’ve had to deactivate the sandbox because once it has crashed it makes it impossible for Waveform to load plugins again without a reboot of my Mac.

[joolz666]

Since I "upgraded" to 11.5 two days ago, the sandbox has crashed with *every single plugin* I've used. It'll initially function, but as soon as I change any settings on the vst GUI - BAM! - the sandbox crashes. Waveform can still function if I delete the plugins, and reset the sandbox thing, but I put in another plugin and - POW! - same issue. Grrrr.

I'm new to Tracktion and recording in general and don't really know what the sandbox does or what its function is. Is there a way to disable it? Failing that, I may have to attempt to reinstall Waveform 11...

[terrynoakes]

I'm new to Tracktion and recording in general and don't really know what the sandbox does or what its function is. Is there a way to disable it? Failing that, I may have to attempt to reinstall Waveform 11...

I think you can disable sandbox in settings/ plugins

[pough]

I'm new to Tracktion and recording in general and don't really know what the sandbox does or what its function is. Is there a way to disable it? Failing that, I may have to attempt to reinstall Waveform 11...

You can disable the entire sandbox. You can alternately choose specific plugins to be sandboxed or not. Got to Settings -> Plugins for sandbox options.

The sandbox makes it so that when a plugin crashes, it doesn't also crash Waveform entirely.

Some plugins will crash the sandbox but not crash Waveform when they are not sandboxed.

[spoontechnique]

I only activate the sandbox for plugins that have caused a crash or fail the Pluginval utility tests. This seems to be best practice, as crashes are now a rarity for me.

[GoRhino]

Not sure if this is entirely on topic but I use both Waveform 11.5.2 Pro and kontakt 6 (whatever latest version is). Always a bit heart in mouth as to if/when Waveform will open any project with lots of instances of kontakt and lots of samples. I am trying to use purge and maybe fewer instances of kontakt. Therefore I am looking into multis in kontakt. I made one in stand alone (five separate instruments from Session Horns 2 Pro) and saved it. This loads without difficulty in stand alone (a bit slow, but it is nearly 3Gb of samples), but no dice in Waveform as a vst - just crashes and freezes. Any ideas?