Ableton Forum

I want to upgrade from live lite so I am currently testing the demo of live 8.04 to see how well it handles my new vst package (Komplete 5). So far it is very frustrating as live becomes highly unstable and will often crash whenever an instance of Kontakt 3 or battery 3 appear. What is the trick to getting these two VSTs to work without those annoying DFD ram messages?

The most common error message is something like "DFD memory too low" (I click ok and then this message) "a serious program error has occurred, live will now shut down"

This problem is easily duplicated on both of my computers (4 gig ram and dual core) - vista 32 bit and XP SP3.

I've tried lowering the DFD ram settings as recommended by NI, disabling multiprocessor support, enabling capture mouse from host and have installed the latest NI updates. I've experimented with freezing tracks but when trying to freeze a Kontakt track it crashes with "A serious program error has occured". I'm unaware of any other tricks.

I loaded the trial of Sony Acid Pro to investigate this further. Kontakt and Battery plus all the rest seem to work perfectly within this daw and with no glitches of any kind during high cpu loads and multiple test tracks which suggests the problem is in live 8 and not the VSTs. (bummer)

I'm a fan of live and its user interface and want to upgrade to the full version of live 8 if i can get the demo to stop crashing.

Has anyone had the same problem and if so what did you do to fix it????

Isn't DFD direct from disk?

I use Kontakt and Battery every day in Live 8, they don't cause any crashes for me. I am on a Mac, no experience with these plugs under Windoze.

sparklepuff wrote:I use Kontakt and Battery every day in Live 8, they don't cause any crashes for me. I am on a Mac, no experience with these plugs under Windoze.

I've used those and other NI stuff in windoze without issues.

yep, rocking kontakt 3.5 and battery daily in live 8.5 beta with no current issues at all....kontakt used to crash live back in the days of 7, early 8 betas, but it's been a while since i've had any problems....

-M

After a little more testing of the demo with some random midi data, it seems the crashing problem mainly arises when there is a medium level of complexity ie. multiple vst tracks already present (between 5 -10 tracks).

I really don't understand why this is. When opening a new, blank project within live I can immediately add up to 5-10 instances of kontakt and battery before it crashes. (Great, it kinda works...sort of) However, if there are already a series of vsts present and I then add an Instance of Kontakt, it crashes with the usual "serious program error has occured".

What a quirky program Ableton is proving to be. The fact is all my VSTs work perfectly in Acid Pro demo and I'm ready to buy a full version sequencer now. I'm quite reluctant to change platforms as it's already taken me so long to learn how to use live lite but this problem will prove to be crippling to my future studio work if I go ahead and buy version 8 of live.

Strangely, no one seems to have any clue as to what could be happening

krishnabear wrote: Strangely, no one seems to have any clue as to what could be happening

I can tell you exactly what's happening- you're running out of RAM. Ableton's 32 bit- you have 2 GB of RAM available for programs. Plus, only the newest version of Kontakt (3.5) and Battery (the 3.0.5 public beta) have extended memory addressing, and there only with x64 OSes and hosts.

jBridge or LaaTiDo might be what you're looking for:

http://jstuff.wordpress.com/jbridge/
http://www.musikbanken.se/TechLaaTiDo.aspx

ew

I too was having issues on my lappy until a year or two ago when I upped my RAM from 2 to 4(although my system can only use 3 ). What I do now is to have SiSoft's Sandra Memory Usage module running and I hit the refresh button everytime I open up one of those huge Kontakt libraries to check how much free physical memory is available. That way you'll know if you're close the edge before you fall off.

Thanks ewistrand,
That is a really good tip. I'll do some research on the jbridge program and see if that makes any difference. Although running an extra program on top of ableton feels like giving ableton a pair of crutches because it is simply not beefy enough to handle this issue.

My feeling is if I want to produce anything with complexity I may need to look at 64 bit and have as much ram as I want. Sadly there is no support for this with ableton. I don't understand why...

I'm so glad I'm researching this well, rather than rushing in and buying a headache for my studio.

I'll also do some research on cakewalk which is the only one I am aware of that supports 64bit. But there is no session view just like in acid pro.