Well, I am a very frustrated customer of Native Instruments and Steinberg. I recently installed Kontakt 3 onto my machine. I've been using Cubase 4 for some time now. I did an update to 4.1.2 a week or so before installing Kontakt 3. I updated Kontakt to the latest version, being 3.1.011 or somesuch. Kontakt 3 is great. Things load faster. The performance views show great potential. The new wave editor is a welcome sight. It is absolutely fantastic... as a standalone. If I use it in Cubase, I can't finish a single project. Within a few minutes, all the audio from Kontakt will cease, and shortly after that, Cubase crashes. Every time. The time it takes to crash is different each time. I have one project with a single drum kit (preset) loaded, and that works dandy. I've scoured the forums both at Cubase.net and the Native Instruments forum, and haven't found anyone with quite the same problem. Similar problems, but not quite the same. Technical support is lacking... I'm just left here with no help.
The result is frustration. Immense frustration. I smashed my mouse, which later made me feel quite irrational and awkward. I just spent $1560 on a new computer, $400 on Kontakt, and $800 on Cubase, and I'm sitting here with something I can't even do a mixit with. I feel like I've been had. It's like responding to an email from a fake ebay account, or "winning the lottery".
I've looked at the CUBASE.LOG file, but it doesn't make any sense to me. I've tried changing the output configuration to mono channels, stereo channels, fewer channels, and nothing seems to really work. I think tonight I'll uninstall the both of them, install the original Cubase 4 and original Kontakt 3, Update Cubase to 4.1, see if it crashes, update to Kontakt 3.1011, see if it crashes, update Cubase to 4.12, see if it crashes. It is a shame to have to do all this. I work in computers, and I understand that this is a consequence of being with the latest and greatest, but professional applications should have a more rigorous beta testing phase.
Furthering the frustration is not knowing what is causing it. Is it Kontakt? Is it Cubase? I lean toward Kontakt, as Cubase crashes only when using Kontakt. This is a blow, as I seriously just bought Kontakt. What a drag. I feel like I just got mugged by a gigantic faceless robber.
Anyone else have problems like these?
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Written February 19 2008 , Tags: freeze, crashes, Cubase, Kontakt
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could it be something related to VST3?
link you might wanna check the forums at KVR as well. You may have a nice shiny new computer, but what about your soundcard? If you find that its freezing like that, try messing with the buffering in Cubase and set it to a higher latency and see if it still is happening, like if you are using 256 samples, set it to 512 or higher even if you dont like th latency, see if its more stable.
Kontakt also has its own settings for buffering, which you may want to mess with. I really like Kontakt 3, it has been 10x as stable as Kontakt2, especially in Live. Cubase was just too buggy to depend on, especially having to save multiple files for projects with worry about corruption. Good note about the VST 3 thing. It had occurred to me that VST 2 plugins run in a wrapper. Since Kontakt runs so well as a standalone, I am pretty sure it is something to do with the plugin interface. I will check KVR.
I have experimented with buffers to some degree. Even as high as 1024, this error still occurs. I use a MOTU 828mkII over firewire. I also ruled out hardware, as everything works fine in Cubase except Kontakt. I can run a project for hours and hours without this happening, but only minutes with Kontakt. I've fiddled with Kontakts DFD options as well as its buffer settings. I've read that other people have had problems with the combination of Kontakt 3 and Cubase 4.1.2 specifically. Most of them rollback to 4.1. Perhaps I'll have to do the same... What a headache. There is a thread over at the cubase forum in which steinberg are getting a serious kicking for releasing sub beta products and then ignoring/being pisspoor slow at responding to customer support questions.
Seems theres issues with VST3 and old plugins & freezing tracks. The list could go on: i sympathise with you. you wouldn't buy a plane and then expect to have to go to a forum when it crashed into the ground.
software companies need to make profits, cut on beta testing and you end up with a dud product especially before the ubiquitous bug fixes. my advice is to maybe go back to kontakt 2 until they do some updates. that or go and kidnap steinburg's son. gah. computers fucking piss me off. it's a kind of love/hate relationship I guess but sometimes they piss me off more than I would like to let them. I feel your pain dude.
While I think kidnapping would have results, I did FINALLY figure out what the issue was, sort of. I noticed that presets worked fine. So then I loaded up the patch I was having consistent crashes with (my mixit patch). I had one instrument set to time machine. Now, this was in a drum kit. So, it was one zone, in one group, with only that zone in the group. This group had the source set at time machine. Time Machine's speed was set to 20.2%. Another group/zone was set to Tone Machine, with the speed set at 2.2%. In the instrument, all the sources for all the zones are set to follow the pitch wheel 100%, with a 60ms smoothing. If I play the loop without using the pitch wheel at all, it will play indefinitely. If I use the pitch wheel, I WILL crash within a minute or two. Not right away, although sometimes. This will not replicate in the standalone mode.
My thinking is that when the pitch wheel goes lower, this drives the speed of the loop that Kontakt down, and with the speed set so low, the sample is less than a cycle, and everything freaks out. So, I have a workaround. Still, one of the things I love about Kontakt is being able to mess things up so much. It would be nice if they built in a failsafe. For example, if the sample went too low to play, it would just plateau at the lowest point it could play. It would be a minor frustration when you were working with the software, but it would present a recently saved project from ruining your mixit time... Also, it would be reasonable. Not ideal, but workable. No expects an upright bass to play the same notes as a violin, but that limitation is known. If you ran into the limitation, you could work with it... So, all in all, I'm a little less frustrated, but still think it is something that needs to be addressed. Further, a lot of people are having a lot of problems with Cubase 4.1.2 and Kontakt 3. Do people have this much trouble from all DAWs? Is Logic this bad? I read some similar things about Sonar when researching my problem... Live seems pretty solid. Also, how do they beta test a DAW? saMsKi, I work in computers. This is an everyday thing. It simply amazes me. It seems like computers/software are the only industry that is exempt from good business practices. If you buy a Lexus and one of your headlights is out in a week, do you think they quote some "dead headlight (pixel) policy"? No, they replace your headlight. Insanity.
Are you on a Mac?
I hear PCs are better. yeah, I work with computers myself...have done for many years but I've been trying to get away from doing so as much these days, for these very reasons. They sure know how to spoil your day!
 i know why its doing that
atum, what have you got? I'd really love to know why this is happening. Even if I cannot fix it, I'd like to know the reason.
PS- I'm on a PC. Self-built. mlbot said: "Are you on a Mac? I hear PCs are better." ha! oh my god! were not talking about acid pro here , were talking about software originally written for apples. i think i know what atum is thinking: link
atum said: " mlbot said: "Are you on a Mac? I hear PCs are better." ha! oh my god! were not talking about acid pro here , were talking about software originally written for apples." i think you mean "originally written for atari's" link Page 1 | 2
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