How to make Ableton more stable!

[hoffman2k]

But that doesn't make it the plug-ins' fault - most of these plug-ins do not crash other hosts (i.e. Logic, Reaper, GarageBand). And most of them didn't crash Live 6 or Live 7.

So yeah, going back to Live 7 is one possibility. Or wait for the Abes to fix Live 8. But Live 8's been out for well over a year now and sadly, I'm leaning more and more towards the "use another host" fix...

yup! really makes you scratch your head when the plugins you've bought and have been using without issue up until v8 suddenly start crashing live and interrupting your flow.

example: i can still only use z3ta+ in live 7 - hitting arrow keys/shift/ctrl/etc while the z3ta+ gui is open makes live 8 close/crash without notice. submitted bug reports, contacted both ableton & cakewalk support - no one has a clue what the issue is or if/when it will get fixed - yet it works like a charm in live 7.

Incidentally those problems started when a fix came for some NI instruments not being editable with the keyboard.
I recall a lot of fixes happening related to keyboard input. Are the latest beta's still crashing like that?

[cotdagoo]

Incidentally those problems started when a fix came for some NI instruments not being editable with the keyboard.
I recall a lot of fixes happening related to keyboard input. Are the latest beta's still crashing like that?

I wish I'd kept an old copy of an earlier release of 8 to test this on.

As it stands I've been installing every beta release since live 8 begin beta testing and since it's release and have reported this bug in in at least the last 5 releases/betas. I believe since 8.1.3 I've been reporting z3ta+ issues and been told by support there's no eta as they can't figure out why it's crashing. I've tested on 2 separate computers, different soundcards, buffer settings.. the only thing I haven't been able to do is try another OS (like Win7) beyond XP sp3 as I'd have to request another unlock to install live, and currently have 2 authorizations in use for my desktop & laptop installs. So pretty much just sitting on my hands and trying to report crashes when they release each beta.. and of course loading live 7 to use z3ta

I wish I'd owned z3ta prior to beta testing v8 though, as I would have reported it long ago - but only jumped on board when the $20 sale was on. I haven't had too many issues with any other plugins.. but knowing that z3ta works flawlessly in v7, and how many issues others are having with various other plugs that worked fine in 7 - it certainly begs the question: how did things get so badly screwed up in v8?

[davepermen]

Not sure why you said "not really". I can't see how we differ in opinion. I never suggested plugins can't crash and bring down Live. Plugins can be the buggiest thing in your setup. You still won't know before you tried it.

And I'm almost sure I posted a similar idea about just plugins crashing in another similar thread. Either that or I deleted it from a too lengthy reply. It would indeed be cool if it didn't bring down the host.

The general point was to report any crash, be it just Live, with plugins and with 3rd party applications. That is the only way to get it more stable. That Massive NI bug didn't get fixed because nobody mentioned it.

hm i guess i massively missread your post, then.

but the last part is not exactly true. it's not the only way to get it more stable. disabling plugins is a way to possibly getting it more stable (worth testing). and if so, one has to contact the plugin developer for faster support.

but yeah, we agree the most important thing is to not cry for yourself but actually report trough the official places, and reply if they ask for details. the more help they get, the more easy it is for them. win-win for both involved.

[davepermen]

the only thing I haven't been able to do is try another OS (like Win7) beyond XP sp3 as I'd have to request another unlock to install live, and currently have 2 authorizations in use for my desktop & laptop installs. So pretty much just sitting on my hands and trying to report crashes when they release each beta.. and of course loading live 7 to use z3ta

to test it on a different os, you don't need to unlock it. just get a 30 day demo key.

and how could it bork up? well, much changed between the versions. there is much non-documented behaviour of vsts (actually it's mostly undocumented, so each implementation has to try to work with each plugin, often rather manually. it's the same chaos as internet explorer 6 made with web page compatibility (for those who know a bit web development).

do you have a specific crash or a certain frequency? i'll check if i get crashes with the demo of z3ta..

[cotdagoo]

the only thing I haven't been able to do is try another OS (like Win7) beyond XP sp3 as I'd have to request another unlock to install live, and currently have 2 authorizations in use for my desktop & laptop installs. So pretty much just sitting on my hands and trying to report crashes when they release each beta.. and of course loading live 7 to use z3ta

to test it on a different os, you don't need to unlock it. just get a 30 day demo key.

and how could it bork up? well, much changed between the versions. there is much non-documented behaviour of vsts (actually it's mostly undocumented, so each implementation has to try to work with each plugin, often rather manually. it's the same chaos as internet explorer 6 made with web page compatibility (for those who know a bit web development).

do you have a specific crash or a certain frequency? i'll check if i get crashes with the demo of z3ta..

yeah i could do the demo.. but then that requires me creating/resizing existing partitions to create a boot drive for an additional OS, installing that OS, installing the demo, installing z3ta and crossing my fingers that it's just an XP problem.. i'm not about to go to all that hassle when i've already been diligent in reporting bugs on my current system setup for the past 3 versions with no end in sight.. i feel i've done my part here and it should be up to the company who's new version suddenly makes my plugin useless.

yup, there was plenty done to bork things up - but you really don't expect that with a 'mature' software at it's 8th revision, at least i don't. the last thing i expect is for their near-perfect release of 7 to turn into a shitshow when it ages another year.

the thing is.. z3ta+ hasn't been updated in years.. so that variable hasn't changed. the only thing that has changed is live moving from v7 to v8. call me crazy but i can't see how one works perfect and the other not.

specific crashes:
- load z3ta, open gui, hit arrow key - live closes/crashes *poof* my screen is empty
- load z3ta, open gui, hit shift key - live closes/crashes *poof* my screen is empty
there's a whole lot more keys that'll crash it too - i just can't spend the time trying every key on my keyboard to see if it'll crash

it's only when z3ta's gui is on the screen and in focus.. if i click on live's transport i'm able to hit arrow keys, shift keys, etc.. but as soon as i click back to z3ta and try it, live crashes/disappears.

[davepermen]

okay, could reproduce the crash on win7. so you don't have to try that.

but zeta beying old and non-updated actually makes it a bigger problem than when it's updated. as said, for ableton it would be testing thousands of vst plugins. for a plugin developer it's testing around 5 major daws. so if zeta would actually be still in development, they would be able to quickly test and find out the bug. thats point 1. point two is, it's about impossible for live to see why it gets killed by zeta, as the vst is a 100% blackbox for the host, and it just gets killed. pretty hard to debug for them.

so for ableton it's 1000ds of plugins, and each one is hard to debug. for zeta, it would be one bug report, and they could debug it with their toolset, see exactly where their vst crashes, and could fix it.

so in this case it would help to get zeta doing their part. live can't fix the bug in zeta. they can just hope they can build up enough fences around it so that no bug kills it anymore. so most likely ableton can't fix that bug. it can just try to prevent it to escalate all over the app (and for this, as said before, individual processes would be way to go, but that is a complete rewrite of the whole application, a source of tons of new bugs by itself ).

at least no need for you to test it.

oh, and, i made a bug report, of course

[cotdagoo]

okay, could reproduce the crash on win7. so you don't have to try that.

but zeta beying old and non-updated actually makes it a bigger problem than when it's updated. as said, for ableton it would be testing thousands of vst plugins. for a plugin developer it's testing around 5 major daws. so if zeta would actually be still in development, they would be able to quickly test and find out the bug. thats point 1. point two is, it's about impossible for live to see why it gets killed by zeta, as the vst is a 100% blackbox for the host, and it just gets killed. pretty hard to debug for them.

so for ableton it's 1000ds of plugins, and each one is hard to debug. for zeta, it would be one bug report, and they could debug it with their toolset, see exactly where their vst crashes, and could fix it.

so in this case it would help to get zeta doing their part. live can't fix the bug in zeta. they can just hope they can build up enough fences around it so that no bug kills it anymore. so most likely ableton can't fix that bug. it can just try to prevent it to escalate all over the app (and for this, as said before, individual processes would be way to go, but that is a complete rewrite of the whole application, a source of tons of new bugs by itself ).

at least no need for you to test it.

oh, and, i made a bug report, of course

Well at least that susses out the OS thing. A few people had reported not being able to crash it in XP sp2 and Vista/Win7 - but seems something else might be the issue.

You're correct about the vst being a 100% blackbox within the host, initially I was told by support that a plugin I hadn't loaded was responsible for the crash - but was corrected with this explanation:

One of our developers already investigated this issue and created a tech report for the responsible developers. The point where the crash happens in the software code is clear now but not the reason why this happens.
The reason why we supporters always thought that other plug-ins or even drivers where responsible for these problems is also clear now: the crash dump output in the affected code area is suppressed for some reason. Therefore we see only other problems in the sent crash packs but never the z3ta+ issue.

So after that I actually called Cakewalk to inquire about the status of the bug I'd reported a week prior - and they were unaware of the issue, and apparently unable to reproduce the crashes.. so not too sure what's going on. I'll keep following up, but glad to know it's not something isolated to my system or OS now.

Still I find it odd that it works in v7, and not v8.. and the only thing I can think of that might have caused such a problem is the 128 parameter limit being removed in v8 since z3ta hasn't changed anything in how their plugin operates or how it interacts with different hosts.

wow, that got off topic pretty quick..

so yeah.. it's good to submit bugreports lol

[davepermen]

i don't use vsts per se, so it's only that and live, and it crashes instantly. no clue, how they could not reproduce it

i don't know, but i guess they've rewritten big parts of the vst engine. but it would be nice to test drop the old code in, but most likely that would not work together with the rest of live 8. software development can be a bitch..

[pokeyoats]

But that doesn't make it the plug-ins' fault - most of these plug-ins do not crash other hosts (i.e. Logic, Reaper, GarageBand). And most of them didn't crash Live 6 or Live 7.
yup! really makes you scratch your head when the plugins you've bought and have been using without issue up until v8 suddenly start crashing live and interrupting your flow.

example: i can still only use z3ta+ in live 7 - hitting arrow keys/shift/ctrl/etc while the z3ta+ gui is open makes live 8 close/crash without notice. submitted bug reports, contacted both ableton & cakewalk support - no one has a clue what the issue is or if/when it will get fixed - yet it works like a charm in live 7.

YES, YES, YES - This EXACT problem is happening to me too - and sometimes, when you've been working with a lot of automation and are using the control key a lot it is easy to jump into the Z3TA and accidentally crash everything with an errant CTRL click...

[xzusa8ky]

Eliminate your dodgy (maybe cracked) plugins, and then see what your performance is! If that helps, perhaps then you can stop blaming Ableton for all your problems...

Thats WOW! How will you know what this guy got installed or NOT! Typically bad vibes answer! Fact is that Live crashes with and without cracked software FACT! And yes i know what i am talking about!

[bodhi71]

How to make Live more stable

USE VERSION 7.0.18 !!

^ That is so not funny. Just made me realize my frustration of buying Live7 and going through 15 updates until a stable version emerged, and what do I do? Jump right to version 8 as soon as it's released.
Somehow I believed that stability was already embedded in version 8, only with more features.

[seattletruth]

To the OP--

How is cripling your software so that you cant use the instruments that you spent thousands of dollars on supposed to be a "solution". Are you crazy?

It's pretty stable for me though. Barely EVER crashes (and with lots of plugins)

[Khazul]

So yeah, going back to Live 7 is one possibility. Or wait for the Abes to fix Live 8. But Live 8's been out for well over a year now and sadly, I'm leaning more and more towards the "use another host" fix...

Have to agree, and only stick with it because lives workflow for creating stuff is way way quicker even if I do sometimes have to restart the damn thing several times an hour on some days - seems to depend on what live features Im using heavily and possibly on what plugins Im using, but as certain plugin and feature tend to go with certain types of production - then hard to tell...

Just allways seems to go to hell when working on a remix, which usually means lots of audio in complex pro warp mode when normally I dont use that mode much - grrrr!

(Which reminds me, since I consolidated all the audio files - it seems to have stopped crashing on a current project - fingers crossed etc).

[hoffman2k]

Just allways seems to go to hell when working on a remix, which usually means lots of audio in complex pro warp mode when normally I dont use that mode much - grrrr!

8.2.2b2 Release Notes

Improvements and feature changes
----
- the "Peek" button on the Axiom Pro now works as a momentary control

Bugfixes
----
- updated Complex Pro libraries to prevent a potential crash
- fixed Transport button behavior for the Akai MPK61 and 88
- fixed a crash that could occur when opening very large Live Sets
- fixed a crash that could occur when a clip referencing a sample was in the clipboard and when pressing the Edit button (in the File Manager or Clip View) to set the sample offline and then on again
------

[Hermanus]

Report any crash to ableton team is the way for sure.

The tech support is always there to answer your questions.

I had a project that was not sounding the same with 8.2.2b1 and b2
A rack with an EQ8 and a macro with the filter type change was in cause.

I'm glad to know it was bugged in 8.2.1... I just deleted the mapping and good to go.

I know LIVE8 has a lot crashes on its own but I have to admit one important thing in the crash process:

The computer itself!
Live7 works like a charm on a 2Ghz dualcore cpu
The same computer is a bit too short with performance for live8.

DO we have to blame ableton for that?
My answer is: "HELL NO!"

Don't blame ableton, blame the video game industry that always pushes the hardware limit forward. /joke

As long as I don't upgrade my computer [laptop or desktop], I can still work with 8 at home.
I keep live7 for live gigs.

So here is an happy user

have a good weekend