Ableton Forum

Could the community / Ableton Live Headquarters get together and get this sorted?

Its been a known issue, for over a year.. But it's not easily reproducible, most of the time.

It's totally random when working with T-rack plug-ins.. and it does not happen that often. But using Sampletank VST's is totally unstable..

I can sometimes reproduce a crash:

- Open a new Midi track
- Insert a Sampletank VST: Philharmonik, Sampletron, Samplemoog, Sonik Synth.. etc
- Now go to the plug-in browser window and double click another Sampletank VST, to overlap the existing VST in the Midi track..
- Crash..
- Now when restarting and when the live set is recovered: trying to Save.. shutting down Live.. changing the VST.. deleting the midi track : results into crashes.
- The Project file is rendered useless, unless you have old saves..

Had the same problem with a project that crashed over and over again when changed the midi track with another vst. To fix this problem in windows I had to delete the directory's where my ableton cache was located C:\Users\(your users name)\AppData\Roaming\Ableton. When you delete this directory and you open ableton you get ableton like a fresh install and need to reactivate the program. But it fixed my problem and I could use the project without any new crashes. I think some data is getting corrupted in your cache and settings directory sometimes...

There was an update on this recently posted by someone at ableton. Apparently ikm have identified and accepted the problem and are working on a fix. I've checked the download area for recent updates but the most recent version of Sample Tank is 2.5.4 which was released in April.

Good to hear that IKMultimedia has acknowledged this problem, that's a small step in a good direction. I really like there plug-ins, if only...

@Pitchcontrol: I had other saves of the crashed project, I've made it a habit of mine, a long time ago, to save under different names. But the tip comes in handy for future use and others, I'm sure!

It's just frustrating that the best sounding VST's, that I have, cannot be utilized. I bought them when they had a bundle/group buy deal, that's a while ago! I have yet to get to enjoy them, without crashing...

Fingers crossed for that Sampletank update then!

I just posted a thread on the IKM's new official forum asking about this. Feel free to pile on.

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/forum/viewt ... f=12&t=166

Ohh yes. Sampletank crashes so much it's pretty much unusable. In particular, when you play a looped arrangement, it doesn't take long to see everything grind to a halt.

KainProject wrote:Good to hear that IKMultimedia has acknowledged this problem, that's a small step in a good direction. I really like there plug-ins, if only...

Unfortunately, it's been quite a long time we are in this situation and nothing seems to happen :

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... 2&start=45
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... g#p1190986
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... g#p1196827
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... g#p1151125

I know this doesn't help you because you have multiple VSTs that use sampletank, but personally I was able to make Philharmonik stable by using seperate midi channels routing into Phil and only using one instance of it. That gives 16 instruments, which might not be enough for you.

But for me at least it usable.

Also I heard that running Live as Administrator helps. Im not sure if its true, but I have it set to run as admin anyway, and no crashes with Phil now.

It is true.

I had to stop using T-Racks plugins under Ableton because they would crash consistently.
The most annoying bug comes from having any T-Racks plugins in the project and looping. Sooner or later the audio engine will crackle/pop/stall and meltdown, causing the whole project to become unstable and need to close host / reboot. It does not matter what Ableton version, which T-Racks update, setting/buffer size I used, it would always crash.

Stopped using T-Racks in my projects and boom, barely any crashes ever.

PLEASE ADDRESS THIS Ableton / IK Multimedia...the plugs are great, let us utilize them in stability.

By the way if you google sampletank crashing logic or cubase you get the same issues. I had a load of issues with IK plugs in the past. I sold them on in the end.

Frustrating as they are good plugins.

I remember this topic coming up a lot for as many years as I can recall. And it always ended up in Ableton saying its an IK problem. Which makes sense as this is the only plugin maker that has had this kind of threads popping up for almost half a decade now.

This all means nothing without a quote from Ableton, here's one from today:

[nis] wrote:Just another quick note:

dwieser wrote: Effects being used are Amplitube (AU)

There's a still unresolved incompatibility issue with Live and IK Multimedia plugins, which can only be fixed by IK M. In case you experience heavy CPU spikes or crashes, try to remove Amplitube from your Live set and check if that helps.

Best,
Nico

Apparently its not just just Live that crashes. Really it says that IK doesn't deserve money because they dont give a damn about their customers actually being able to use the software we paid for.

seattletruth wrote:Really it says that IK doesn't deserve money because they dont give a damn about their customers actually being able to use the software we paid for.

Unfortunately, that has been my conclusion as well.

I'm hoping that they are really working on a fix, and will have a pleasant surprise ready after all this time, but at the moment it really seems rather bleak. It's been months, years even. Like I wrote in the other thread, turns out IKM support can't even reply whether there's a fix on the works or not.

I really cannot recommend IKM plugins at this time. Especially if Live is one's main DAW software.

hoffman2k wrote:I remember this topic coming up a lot for as many years as I can recall. And it always ended up in Ableton saying its an IK problem. Which makes sense as this is the only plugin maker that has had this kind of threads popping up for almost half a decade now.

This all means nothing without a quote from Ableton, here's one from today:

[nis] wrote:Just another quick note:

dwieser wrote: Effects being used are Amplitube (AU)

There's a still unresolved incompatibility issue with Live and IK Multimedia plugins, which can only be fixed by IK M. In case you experience heavy CPU spikes or crashes, try to remove Amplitube from your Live set and check if that helps.

Best,
Nico

Curiously I came to exactly the same conclusion yesterday when I realized that removing Amplitube 3 solved most of the hideously frequent crashes I've been dealing with.
Also, investigating alternatives to Amplitube just highlighted, again, how ridiculous it's RAM usage is.

beachball wrote:It is true.

I had to stop using T-Racks plugins under Ableton because they would crash consistently.
The most annoying bug comes from having any T-Racks plugins in the project and looping. Sooner or later the audio engine will crackle/pop/stall and meltdown, causing the whole project to become unstable and need to close host / reboot. It does not matter what Ableton version, which T-Racks update, setting/buffer size I used, it would always crash.

Stopped using T-Racks in my projects and boom, barely any crashes ever.

PLEASE ADDRESS THIS Ableton / IK Multimedia...the plugs are great, let us utilize them in stability.

Exactly this problem since god knows when. I hate that i have to use other plugins because T-Racks are a ticking timebomb in Live arrangements.

Once it has crashed, after restoring, the project is then very unstable and will, even without using the T-Racks, crash all the time.

By Abes request, i emailed IKM over a year ago and nothing has been fixed.