Ableton Forum

I just got Live 6 (full). I installed it on my my PC, which is more than powerful enough for Live or just about anything else and has no bad hardware. The OS is WinXP Pro which is fully up to date. I had Live 5 and so I uninstalled it and cleaned the Registry and then did a fresh install of 6. After it was installed and I went to launch the program for the first time it terminated itself during the plugin scan. What I need to know is how I can find out which plugin is conflicting with 6. I did not expect any problems because 5 always scanned my plugins quickly and efficiently and never conflicted with any of them. The plugins are the same now as they were with 5. Since this is the first boot of 6, changing the name of my VST folder is not going to accomplish anything.

What happens every time is that 6 will start up and go into the VST scan and then after a minute or so it just terminates itself and disappears without so much as a popup. I've seen this type of thing with other DAWs before, but I was always able to the see the names of the plugins go by and I could see what was loading when the DAW terminated. But with 6 I cannot see the names scroll by. Actually, when the scan starts the names go by slowly enough to read and you can see them but then they speed up and I can no longer read the names and then it terminates. Other apps have a log that can tell you which plugin caused the termination but I do not see one here. I checked 6's INSTALL.LOG and the Windows event viewer but neither of them offered a clue. My plugins folder is 9.7GB (a lot of it is freeware, I've been collecting for a while but all of the plugs worked fine in Live 5 and in other apps) and I don't want to have to move it all to another hard drive and then open the computer to disconnect the drive so it does not get scanned and then reverse the whole process and move it all back again - not knowing if the problem is even fixed. I did uninstall, reboot, and reinstall 6 to no avail. As of now I cannot even get to the Live program and I am quite frustrated at this point. Any suggestions?

Thank you.

u need to ask urself am i ever going to use 9.7gb of plugins????

that is seriously excessive. but each to their own...

unfortunately to stop it craching, ur going to have to remove them (temporarily) go thru each one of them to see which one is crashing live at startup. normally live is pretty good at checking them and shouldnt crash - it will just let u know that one of ur plugs has been disabled bcos of blabla.

that should keep u busy for a while!

Hi

This used to happen to me with Pro Tools, whatch the bottom left hand corner of the ableton live screen (when its loading up) and you will it going through all the plugin the one it crash on is the problem remove it from you plug in folder and re-install that plugin.

well thats what worked for me anyway.

UPDATED - I changed the name of my VST folder temporarily and I got into the GUI. I did not think that changing the name at this time would accomplish anything since Live had not yet completed a scan or got into the GUI, but I guess that what it did do was enough for it to set a default VST folder (thank God!). Of course I still have an isuue with at least one plugin but it's a lot easier to troubleshoot in the GUI where I can see what is being scanned. Angelo - I know what you are saying but I could not do that outside of the GUI, I could not read all of the stuff that was flashing by. But now that I can scan from within the GUI I can see them. I'll let you guys know which plugin(s) were causing the problems for me as soon as I figure it out.

Doesnt Live disable a previous crashed plugin next time it boots up?

PROBLEM SOLVED. After spending all morning experimenting with trial and error loading of my plugins, I finally narrowed it down to the one that Live didn't like. It was Cycling '74 Max/MSP. I removed the Max/MSP folder from my default plugins folder and now Live 6 works fine. I cannot say if Max/MSP will clash with all installations of Live 6 or if it was just the particular combination of apps on my machine but I am just glad to get the problem solved. I initially got Max/MSP with the intention of learning the program to build my own synths and effects but decided that I did not like it and instead I am purchasing Synthmaker. I downloaded the demo and I like it a lot, and I am saving the money to make Synthmaker my next purchase. So I am not concerned with having to remove Max/MSP from my default plugins folder and I will simply install it outside of the folder, and if I ever want to use it in another host I will just direct the host to the new folder. I already know that Live 6 is the only program that has a clash with it so there are no worries.

Now - I do have to say that at this point there is a bug or something within Live 6. Not because of the clash with Max/MSP, because that may only be on my computer for whatever reason. And all DAWs have a plugin here or a plugin there that they don't like so we expect this to happen and can work around it. The problem here is the way that Live handled it - the way that it would terminate with no warning or error message, leaving you with no idea of what the problem is, is extremely frustrating. During the process of getting all of my plugins scanned into Live, I ran into a few others that Live didn't like. VAZ Modular 3 was another one (and also, like Max/MSP, another modular synth environment that I got as part of my effort to learn to create my own synths and effects - I wonder if the modular thing is part of a pattern or just coincidence here?). With any DAW there are usually a few plugs that it just does not like and I can accept that and not hold that against the host. But Live was very erratic in the way that it behaved when confronted with a plugin that it didn't like. On a couple of them (VAZ was one) it gave me a popup message that named the plugin and gave me the option of disabling it within Live or rescanning it next time. I generally disable plugins in this situation because I value a stable host over all else. So that behavior on Live's part is perfect. I could not ask for anything better when the program clashes with a plugin. The problem is that Live was not consistent. Sometimes it would do that and tell me the plugin and give me the option. On a couple of other occasions it just gave me a more generic error and closed down with no clue as to why. Another time I got a "serious error" but again there was no real info. And of course the worst ones are the ones where Live just disappears without a peep. Those are the ones that make you have to spend hours as I did this morning, moving plugins around and loading them in small groups until you narrow in on the one that is causing the problem.

I review audio software locally and so I install a lot of demo programs on my computer (Live is mine though and not a demo). I have loaded most of the latest crop of DAWs - Sonar 6, Acid 6, Orion 7, FL Studio XXL 6 - and none of them required anything near this much time and effort on the plugin scan and they were loading the exact same plugins on the exact same computer. All of them had a couple of plugins that they didn't like but all of them dealt with it a lot better than Live 6. On both Sonar 6 and Acid 6 I had to launch the new app a total of three times before all plugins were fully scanned and bad ones stopped from loading, but it was all done transparently and without mysterious terminations and was done within half an hour for the whole procedure including installing the app. I started installing Live one evening and did not have it up and running until lunchtime the next day. This is especially disappointing because Live 5 was always the DAW that had the least amount of problems with plugin scans and was the second quickest one to scan and load after changes were made (after FL Studio 6 XXL). So I definitely did not expect this with Live 6. I am glad that I finally got it going and I certainly am not mad about it and am looking forward to exploring the new features. But like I said I am disappointed with the plugin scan behavior. I hope that Ableton can get it sorted out in coming revisions. A new DAW - and especially one like Live with its nice small footprint - should not take hours to install, 9.7 GB of plugins or not.