M4L Stability (POLL)

[Stromkraft]

I tried granulator 2, instant haus, drum synth from max4live. Saved the project (all liveinstruments, effects + max4live). Later, the project cannot be opened 50% of the time, live crashes after max4live splash screen "serious error". I could live with this if this was a free product. This is not funny and a very unprofessional error handling from live and m4l.

I just created a song with those very plug-ins and it crashed once on open in the current beta 9.1.7b4, but not multiple opens in 9.1.6. Other projects I have with Dub Machines, Convolution Reverb, Autobeat and other M4L devices do not crash in neither, though a handful times in the last 6 months there has been a crash after quit. Barring the odd plug-in to get rid of I haven't had one crash during the time when I actually produce music, which I'm very grateful for.

You don't state your platform, nor the versions involved concerning Live and Max. What are they? Have you supplied the report pack that you get when you choose "get support" from the help menu to Ableton? It's easier to help customers if they ask for it. I never hesitate when I have any issues. Just tell them what you need.

It's very frustrating when technology stops working. I've just come to accept that music technology relies heavily on set up and is somewhat delicate and I therefore try and keep my head calm and analyze the situation and ask for help should I need it. I refuse to accept subpar tools, however. No-one should.

[Stromkraft]

Here's two issues I do have with M4L devices: The Convolution Reverb stops audio when tweaking a parameter and the Virtual Instruments use a lot of CPU, maybe 20 times more than built-in instruments during shorter periods. So one kick can steal all CPU.

It's very possible both these are so because my computer is quite slow, but if your CPU has a lot of other tasks to do it might also be slow. Perhaps Max4Live Instruments is for 6-core Mac Pros and its ilk.

Beyond Dub Machines and Convolution Reverb I only need MIDI devices, so I don't suffer much. I can't use either of these playing live, however.

[apren]

Win 7 64
Live 9.1.6 64 and Max 6.1.3

When i try to load a M4L device, Live crashes (most times) witn the message "A serious program error occurred". Ableton close automatically and can't open until i reboot the computer.

Is desperate to work well, and that I avoid using VST, because Ableton is not stable with many. Only is stable if you using their own devices, without VST nor M4L devices.

Regards and we pray.

[apren]

Hi, Friends.

The problem is solved. In my case, Avast caused the crashes. I unistall it, and install Microsoft Essentials, and now Ableton runs fine!! No more crashes.

First, i changed the power supply (sometimes lost the usb power and the midi controllers stopped working), but this not solved the Ableton crashes.

After this, i updated the graphic card drivers (Nvidia GTX660) and my impression was that the program was more stable, but not if what I say is logical.

Finally, and analyzing some crash reports of Windows when Ableton crashes, i come to the the conclusion that Avast was forbidding access to some files, and i tried to disable the antivirus. From this moment, Ableton is completely stable.

Hope I can be of help to some windows user. I was driving me crazy with so many crashes (every day, repeatedly).

Regards!

[Stromkraft]

The problem is solved. In my case, Avast caused the crashes. I unistall it, and install Microsoft Essentials, and now Ableton runs fine!! No more crashes.

Great catch apren! Glad you nailed it! I use AVG Free on my Windows machine.

[Reimund]

never heard of avast and have never installed it on my windows 7 64bit machine. yet i have all those crashes with m4l.

[Stromkraft]

never heard of avast and have never installed it on my windows 7 64bit machine. yet i have all those crashes with m4l.

You've heard of anti-virus on Windows? Apren's example here is the one for researching your issues so that you may overcome them.

I've had 2 recent periods of general instability, after more than 1.5 years of stability with Live 9. I overcome the issues by re-installation and removing hacks (UberMap) as well as following advice from Ableton support. I've also identified bugs (in both the beta and the release) and reported those to Ableton.

Instead of just nagging at Ableton us users should be more vigilant and co-operative for identifying the issues that are there. Obviously, if we can't solve this we need the support from Ableton. But it's futile to view Ableton as responsible for all issues we might have. Sometimes they are and sometimes they're not.

The problem for us is that a bug may exist in Max For Live, Ableton Live, in the Max device itself, in a library that the device depends on in system components that are directly involved in the operations of the previous. Nevertheless, we're not typically helpless and we can apply logic and test our assumptions in a systematic way in order to hopefully find what combinations may cause instability.

That's not to say Max For Live isn't in need of great improvements. But even as it is, M4L is very useful. You just have to be economic in its use and commit the output.

[Reimund]

sorry,it was not my intention to attack apren in any way. i appreciate that he is trying to find a solution for the m4l crashes. i just wanted to point out that i have many crashes with m4l in live 9.1.6 64bit and windows 7 64 bit yet i don`t even use avast. from the comments on the forum it is clear that many users with the combination live 64 bit+windows 7 64 bit experience these crashes. and yes, i think that ableton is responsible to fix such a bug that affects not only a few users but appararently all those with the said combination.

[Stromkraft]

i think that ableton is responsible to fix such a bug that affects not only a few users but appararently all those with the said combination.

So do I, but just because Live goes down doesn't mean the cause is with Ableton (Of course it would be nice if Live didn't go down just because a device or plug-in crashes).
They are in a unique position with their co-operation with Cycling74 to develop fixes, but those who experience these issues are well-advised to give Ableton and Cycling74 quality cases. Typically that is projects that exhibit these problems or clear instructions on how to provoke a crash.

You have any suggestions how I can reproduce an error of this type in Windows 7? Are there crash logs in Windows?

I think we can depack the Live status report live creates when creating a support case. Even if I can send this to Ableton, sometimes I want to know a little bit myself before I do that, so a good thing to be able to read these.

[Reimund]

hi stromkraft,
yes, i can send you a crash report during the weekend (now i`m still at work). for me it crashes everytime when i load live for the first time and then load a more complicated m4l device like. e.g. time and timbre. interestingly, when i re-load live after the crash most of the times the m4l devices, including time and timbre, load without crashes.

[Stromkraft]

hi stromkraft,
yes, i can send you a crash report during the weekend (now i`m still at work). for me it crashes everytime when i load live for the first time and then load a more complicated m4l device like. e.g. time and timbre. interestingly, when i re-load live after the crash most of the times the m4l devices, including time and timbre, load without crashes.

I don't want to read your crash reports specifically. I'm not overly familiar with analyzing these for other people, perhaps not for myself either. I'm just curious. If you want to make your crash reports available I suggest you post at Pastebin or similar and link to these. Crash reports are typically too long to post here IMO.

I'm more interested to see if you can provoke these kind of crashes in a newly installed Live 9.1.7 Suite on Windows 7 and if so see if I can find a clear cause.

Unfortunately I don't have Time & Timbre. I own Dub Machines and I also use Convolution Reverb and a few other devices, most of them MIDI. As I've said before my M4L instruments seem to use too much CPU for me to warrant using such.

The best way to get somewhere I think would be to identify an Ableton Live set including Max devices that would likely provoke instability. Perhaps share this via Splice?

Chances are that multiple variables cause similar crashes, making it hard to find common characteristics between sets.

While not involving M4L, I had a set with Waves plug-ins that caused crashes when installing Live packs on my machine (otherwise causing no trouble whatsoever). Something like that, but with Max devices.

[apren]

Hi, Stromkraft and Reimund.

Reimund, what i mean is that any intermediary between Windows and Ableton may cause the crashes. I come to this conclusion checking the Windows event viewer, that gave me a clue that "something" forbade the correct access to the archives that I pretend load (max4live, in this case). Then i thought "mmmm, can to be the antivir...". The fact is that sometimes the devices loaded fine, but rarely.

I put it in the forum more than anything because I solved well, and can always serve somebody, it does not involve "the total solution". However, I will write to Ableton team if this can help to solve the problem of all people.

I understand that they can not solve all our problems, no longer respond to any mail me when i send report crashes, and i feel ignored. Think they should seek a middle ground between fully meet each client, and ignore them.

On the other hand, i buy Ableton to use slave Reaper (Reaper rewire master) because among the features says something like "compatible rewire", but Reaper and Ableton crashes ever i tried it. Overall, not all combinations tested before affirming, and this is a problem recognizing from both companies, but they tell me they do not know if they found the solution to the problem. If i had read in the Live features "Ableton is fully compatible with rewire, less Reaper master, which gives problems", would not have bought the program at the time. I think they should be careful with these things.

Moreover, not all are critical and they do a great job. I love this DAW, and i may bring creativity beyond with other programs.

Greetings.

[Eanna]

Hi, I too suffer the instability of M4L devices. Particularly, it seems, the larger devices - but sometimes it could be any (I think).

Makes me doubly careful to hit Ctrl-S regularly!

I've trimmed my system down as much as I can possibly get away with, and still have a useable PC that can connect to the net.

When some (no real pattern) MaxForLive devices are loaded in the Set, Ableton 'freezes' occasionally too. Using ProcessExplorer, I've discovered that Live.exe is spiking to 99-100% CPU for maybe 5-10 seconds at a time, then recovers for maybe a minute or two, until the next freeze. Live itself doesn't crash, and like I say, there's no real pattern to when this event happens, but I believe that MaxForLive devices are the common denominator.

I've cleared out every old/unused ASIO and Midi driver from my system, except my Focusrite Scarlett and SonicCore Scope drivers, aggressively disabled Windows Services, disabled real-time scanning in Microsoft Security Essentials, disabled Windows Update, did all the other bits that S|C recommend for smooth-running Scope, uninstalled and then reinstalled both Live and the Max Runtime, and wrote a little batch script I can run as Administrator that kills other services that I occasionally use (like the Dropbox app and the NVidia Control Panel software), and while it may have alleviated the frequency of occurrence, it still hasn't fully gone away.

One thing I did not do is save the Live Set after the freeze happens. So, I'm not sure if restarting Live would mean that the freezing no longer happens - or if there's something written to the Live Set that would cause the freeze to reoccur when I load the set again. I'm always afraid that I would corrupt my Live Set if a freeze happens - instead, I just exit Live and choose not to save the Set. And yes, this has made me very diligent with CTRL-S when working in Live.

And I do get the crashes too. Crashes that aren't OutOfMemory issues, crashes mostly when loading devices (esp. MaxForLive devices) that are complex.

I understand that a straw poll such as the one in this post aren't scientific - but the same percentage of Windows users have Stability of M4L that don't. Regardless of the sample size, or who might be answering, that is not sustainable! In the face of direct competition from Bitwig, Ableton have to prioritise this.
Like, in a Beta Release, is there any flag we can pass to the Live runtime to get it to omit deeper messages?
And would getting an SSD for my Sample drive be a good idea to help alleviate the crashes I get when loading M4L devices that use loads of samples?

There's some synchronisation bug happening here. Heck, if they want a PC to aid with replication, I'll ship them mine!
Maybe those of us that do experience M4L crashes have some common issue? I'd be willing to supply system specs of what's running when I do have crashes, enumerate loaded drivers, whatever...

And no, I haven't yet sent Ableton a crash report. I am gonna devote tonight / tomorrow to working some pattern, any pattern, (even if the pattern is "There is no pattern") and annotate my crash dumps with info that I hope Ableton will find usable and useful.

This instability simply is not sustainable. I'm a programmer by day, a deployment engineer - if the software we deliver in my workplace acted like this...... well, it did after one release, and yes, I worked an 87 hour week that week..........

Win7 32-bit.

[Because789]

If someone missed that post:

Ableton developers pointed out in the beta forum that there is one crash situation on Windows which they do recognize (and are working on - so it was reported):

At M4L initialization (that is: when you start M4L for the *first time* since Live was open, so with the *black* Max for Live logo popping up) things can go wrong.
In particular on Windows 7 OS. M4L requires some windows dll library to start. With large M4L devices those libraries may be called before being fully loaded, causing a Live crash. It is a matter of timing (therefore the unpredictable aspect).

# Procedure:
A workaround (not a solution), as they suggested, is to load the simplest Max for Live device possible first.
For instance load the basic (empty) "Max Midi Effect" device, which you can find in Live browser under Max for Live // Max Midi Effect.
Wait then a few seconds. Yes it sounds stupid, but they said it allows all dll's to be loaded. This has the effect of starting up Max for Live engine with no such issues.
After that it should be possible to load complex M4L devices without crashes.

My own experience kind of confirms this workaround does indeed help. I still had very sporadic issues, but much better.

viewtopic.php?p=1652340#p1652340

[Eanna]

Thank you Because789, I appreciate that.

I have move my postings on this to the post you linked Because789...