Ableton Forum

Hi all, I am a valid owner of Live 5.0.3 and Operator. My files have begun to crash more and more over the past couple weeks, as Ive been upgrading on the version releases and having larger files. I've been having all the same problems mention in this forum: random crashes on startup, when closing the app, moving stuff around in arrangement view, slecting presets from the operator, and/or just doing NORMAL STUFF. It got to the point where I couldn't work on a song for more than 5-10 mins wihtout a crash and a restart. I compared all my problem sets (not all caused crashes) and determined it to be the Korg MDE-X from the Legacy Collection. I opened a crash-prone file up, removed the MDE-X, and then did a Save As giving the set a new name. This immediately killed all my problems with all of my crash-prone files. As soon as I removed the MDE-X my performance went thru the roof (a good thing), and I could not get Live to crash just as I had like 5 mins before. I did this in a pretty organized way too - checking and causing my files to crash on purpose first, then removing the MDE-X, Save as, and having them not crash. It seemed to have work like magic. I dont know if it is computer/plug-in specific or what, but that plug-in was defintely causing problems for me, and it was hard to ever know that it was the cause. So if youre having crashing problems with 5.0.x and you have an MDE-X in there, try killing it and re-saving. If you don;t have an MDE-X in there, try testing out your files by removing one plug-in at a time, resaving, and then play with it. I'm guessing most of these crashes we're all getting are from problem plug-ins - either that theyre cracked (my MDE-X was), or theyre just not vibin with your hardware or Live 5.0.x. It doesnt seem uncommon after looking around. I sent my logs to Ableton the yesteday but havent heard back yet. I figured this all out before theyve gotten back to me so im curious to see what they say. But any of you out there with a similar incident, please LET ME KNOW IF THIS WORKED FOR YOU TOO.

/mark

It would be interesting to know more about your setup. In cases like these it is often good to pay attention to what operating system you use, which version of the plug-ins in question you are using, etc. Some problems are decidedly OS and version specific.

For example I have been using the Korg MDE-X effects (the Audio Unit versions) quite a lot with Live 5.0.3 in Mac OS X 10.4.x without crashes or other problems. Have you registered your Legacy Collection to get the latest updates? That might help.

if you read his post, you'll notice his plugin was a crack.


I have to admit that i too used a crack of KLC and it did indeed screw up my system. no surprise there.

I wanna buy KLC1 tho. It sounded great.



.lm.

Heres what Im running:

P4 3Ghz
1Gig ram
M-audio delta 1010 sound card
128mb pci express video
Live 4.0.3, Operator (both legal and registered)

I was indeed running a cracked version of KLC. So I'm not totally trying to pretend I wasn't, but I guess I'm asking the question more to find out if the crash is from the crack or my setup. I actually would be willing to buy this software after all of this because I totally love the FX (not to mentioned have been using them), but I don't want to spend the money to find out it was my system and not the crack. Im not sure what version of the MDE-X it was (not home). I'll re-post later. By the sounds of it it is from the copy I;m using, but I want to make sure because I havent had the problem with any other plug-ins - free, cracked, or bought. Thanks for your replies.

-M

Hey Cone, what did you mean by the 'the Audio Unit versions'?? Thx...

musikgod wrote:Hey Cone, what did you mean by the 'the Audio Unit versions'?? Thx...

Audio Unit or AU is a mac only FX/Instrument plug in, like VST or DX.
But Mac Only.

leisuremuffin wrote:if you read his post, you'll notice his plugin was a crack.

Sorry, I missed that part. It was one very long paragraph and I thought I got all the relevant information. Obviously not. So do we have a policy of not advising people who use cracked software? Never mind, that would be just fine with me.

Yeah, Audio Units are a Mac OS X only type plug-in devised by Apple. Both VST and AU versions are in the MDE-X package.

In theory you could get better performance from AUs than VST on the Mac, but that depends on the plug-in host. Cubase apparently still doesn't support AU, and maybe it never will. But Live is both VST and AU host on the Mac, which is great. I've suggested that the Windows version should similarly offer native support for DXi.

I have used MDE-X as both VST versions in Windows XP and as Audio Units in Mac OS X with Live 4 and Live 5, and I have never had a single problem in actual use. The authorization was broken by Tiger, but it was fixed by Korg. I can check the latest version number next time I'm on the Mac, if it's relevant.

Cone wrote: In theory you could get better performance from AUs than VST on the Mac, but that depends on the plug-in host.

Why do you think so? I have no indication for that. I would say that VST is slighty faster because AU has a higher call overhead, but that isn't significant. Please proof me wrong.

Frank

Frank Hoffmann wrote:Why do you think so? I have no indication for that. I would say that VST is slighty faster because AU has a higher call overhead, but that isn't significant. Please proof me wrong.

You caught me there, it was pure speculation. I should have added a "maybe" in there...

My theory was that Audio Units might be more tightly integrated into Core Audio and enjoy some kind of optimizations that VSTis don't. By the same logic VSTis could offer better performance than AUs when used with ASIO.

Would it be possible to compare the VSTi and AU versions of the very same plug-in somehow and reliably measure the throughput, or do you suppose any differences are negligible?

Cone wrote: My theory was that Audio Units might be more tightly integrated into Core Audio and enjoy some kind of optimizations that VSTis don't. By the same logic VSTis could offer better performance than AUs when used with ASIO.

No, there is no advantage at all.

Cone wrote: Would it be possible to compare the VSTi and AU versions of the very same plug-in somehow and reliably measure the throughput, or do you suppose any differences are negligible?

Well, sure. But I don't expect a measureable difference, because most time is spend in the dsp part of a plug-in.

Frank

Frank Hoffmann wrote:No, there is no advantage at all.

OK. Probably the same applies to VST vs. DXi on Windows then.

Somewhat related: I just noticed that Steinberg announced a new version of the VST SDK at NAMM. It is supposed to pertain specifically to Intel Macs, so it would be great if the forthcoming Live 5.2 / 6 were be compliant with it.

musikgod wrote:Hi all, I am a valid owner of Live 5.0.3 and Operator. My files have begun to crash more and more over the past couple weeks, as Ive been upgrading on the version releases and having larger files. I've been having all the same problems mention in this forum: random crashes on startup, when closing the app, moving stuff around in arrangement view, slecting presets from the operator, and/or just doing NORMAL STUFF. It got to the point where I couldn't work on a song for more than 5-10 mins wihtout a crash and a restart. I compared all my problem sets (not all caused crashes) and determined it to be the Korg MDE-X from the Legacy Collection. I opened a crash-prone file up, removed the MDE-X, and then did a Save As giving the set a new name. This immediately killed all my problems with all of my crash-prone files. As soon as I removed the MDE-X my performance went thru the roof (a good thing), and I could not get Live to crash just as I had like 5 mins before. I did this in a pretty organized way too - checking and causing my files to crash on purpose first, then removing the MDE-X, Save as, and having them not crash. It seemed to have work like magic. I dont know if it is computer/plug-in specific or what, but that plug-in was defintely causing problems for me, and it was hard to ever know that it was the cause. So if youre having crashing problems with 5.0.x and you have an MDE-X in there, try killing it and re-saving. If you don;t have an MDE-X in there, try testing out your files by removing one plug-in at a time, resaving, and then play with it. I'm guessing most of these crashes we're all getting are from problem plug-ins - either that theyre cracked (my MDE-X was), or theyre just not vibin with your hardware or Live 5.0.x. It doesnt seem uncommon after looking around. I sent my logs to Ableton the yesteday but havent heard back yet. I figured this all out before theyve gotten back to me so im curious to see what they say. But any of you out there with a similar incident, please LET ME KNOW IF THIS WORKED FOR YOU TOO.

/mark

KORG VSTs are cpu gulpers

So you felt the urge to quote all of the original message to state that.

It is somewhat true for the Korg VSTis, though it is not so terrible considering what they do. The MDE-X effects are quite lean on the CPU.

leisuremuffin wrote:if you read his post, you'll notice his plugin was a crack.


I have to admit that i too used a crack of KLC and it did indeed screw up my system. no surprise there.

I wanna buy KLC1 tho. It sounded great.



.lm.

It's not worth screwing your DAW up by using cracks for the purposes of evaluation (unless you have a "trash" OS installation for this purpose or some sort of drive imaging tools for backing up your pristine OS partition).

Korg do provide downloadable demos of their plugins so there's no need to installed cracked versions (unless your intention is to steal the synths for your own use) ...

Korg Legacy Digital Edition is cheap as chips *(unlike the original KLC1 with the MS20ic controller)*. Fortunately it appears Korg will be re-releasing the synths only version of KLC1 without the controller keyboard called "Analogue Edition" which hopefully will be priced similarly. The MS20/PolySix (and Legacy Cell) are utterly superb sounding instruments and a pleasure to have in software form. I can't think of a single tune where I haven't used at least a few MS20's in it since the release of KLC1. Korg's MDE-X effects are superb too ...

If you're using stolen/cracked software in conjunction with legitimate software and you are experiencing problems then really who have no grounds for complaint ... you're on your own.

Cheers

yeah, well, i did intend to steal the korg stuff and i was not surprised at all when it stopped working and generally mucked things up until i deleted them.

.lm.