Scope crashing after switching projects every 3 or 4 times

krizrox · Post by **krizrox** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 8:18 am

I've been sort of living with this for a while now. Getting kind of annoying so I thought I'd see if anyone has a suggestion.

Running the latest Scope 4 with Sonar Producer, Win XP Home with all tweaks known to man. Asio drivers. Various mixers, plug-ins, etc.

Every 3rd or 4th time I switch projects in Scope, I get a Windows error message saying something to the effect that Scope has crashed and needs to be restarted. I have to close down Sonar and reload Scope and then Sonar again. Then I can go another 3 or 4 times before Scope will crash again.

Not sure what causes this or what to look for. Could it be a memory issue (maybe some buffer filling up after 3 or 4 times)? Some wierdness between Scope and Sonar (ASIO drivers or something)?

Any thoughts are welcome. Thanks.

Post by **hubird** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 9:06 am

you're an experienced audio engineer, so this may sound stupid, but changing a Scope project without closing the sequencer first (i use Cubase) normaly leads to problems.
Unless you 'de-activate the audio' of it, but I don't know if Sonar has such choice.
Hope you get it fixed anyway

BingoTheClowno · Post by **BingoTheClowno** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 9:28 am

Run Dr.Watson in the background, at least, maybe, you can obtain some more information.

dbmac · Post by **dbmac** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 11:53 am

Whenever I switch from a large Scope pro to another I go to a new project (totally empty on my setup) or startup project first.
I get the impression that moving from one large project to another doesn't allow the dsp to reload cleanly. Often the project won't load (dsp capacity exceeded blah, blah), or some devices don't work properly. This never happens if I go thru the startup first. It's a pain, but I've gotten used to it. It may be because I have two CW cards, I don't know. Scope is so mysterious.

/dave

Herr Voigt · Post by **Herr Voigt** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 6:13 pm

Very good tip, dbmac! It's interesting for me, too.

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 6:14 pm

Scope sometimes crashes for me if I'm loading Mod III or Vectron or a project with one of those in it. But only on those two devices. Weird. Are you using either of those?

krizrox · Post by **krizrox** » Sun Aug 08, 2004 4:07 pm

On 2004-08-06 10:06, hubird wrote:
you're an experienced audio engineer, so this may sound stupid, but changing a Scope project without closing the sequencer first (i use Cubase) normaly leads to problems.
Unless you 'de-activate the audio' of it, but I don't know if Sonar has such choice.
Hope you get it fixed anyway

It does? Why? When I was using TripleDAT exclusively for my recordings I was always able to change projects in Scope without it crashing. Perhaps it's something related to Sonar but I can't imagine what. Or the ASIO drivers. Seems silly that I would have to shut down Sonar before changing projects in Scope but maybe you're right. I've tried closing the Sonar project window before switching in Scope and that didn't seem to help.

I'm not using anything in the project that should be considered extravagant. Usually, just a mixer (like the 2448) and various effects - no synths. Nothing that is taxing the system by any means.

The fact that this is happening every 3rd or 4th cycle seems significant to me. Like perhaps a buffer is filling up or something. If it was completely random, that would be something else, yet again. But I have a feeling this might be easily diagnosed. The Dr. Watson suggestion might help too. I'll look into that (actually, I've never used Dr. Watson before).

Thanks for the input.

krizrox · Post by **krizrox** » Sun Aug 08, 2004 4:11 pm

On 2004-08-06 12:53, dbmac wrote:
Whenever I switch from a large Scope pro to another I go to a new project (totally empty on my setup) or startup project first.
I get the impression that moving from one large project to another doesn't allow the dsp to reload cleanly. Often the project won't load (dsp capacity exceeded blah, blah), or some devices don't work properly. This never happens if I go thru the startup first. It's a pain, but I've gotten used to it. It may be because I have two CW cards, I don't know. Scope is so mysterious.

/dave

I'll try this too. I also have two cards (XTC & Pulsar).

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Sun Aug 08, 2004 4:13 pm

On 2004-08-08 17:07, krizrox wrote:
On 2004-08-06 10:06, hubird wrote:
(...) changing a Scope project without closing the sequencer first (...) normaly leads to problems.
(...)
It does? Why?
(...)

cos you're pulling the audio drivers from under the sequencer's feet... this is no problem with WAV drivers, as long as the program doesn't play. With ASIO, close the sequencer before reloading the project!

No idea why it crashes after a couple of projects though... I work a little like dbmac, I close SFP before loading another large project.

interloper · Post by **interloper** » Sun Aug 08, 2004 9:00 pm

Seems definitely like a dsp allocation issue. Whenever I load the last big project with a Minimax in it, it blows out the driver. Usually going to 32kHz and back to 44.1 helps. Otherwise, dumping the Max and dropping it in again sometimes works.

But I've got 3 boards, and sometimes the load doesn't spread too well, as most devices are keyed to the Scope board.

I will try loading the startup project though, just to see if it helps. Interesting...

interloper · Post by **interloper** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 2:49 pm

It worked. Nice one, Dave.

samplaire · Post by **samplaire** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 11:42 am

On 2004-08-08 17:13, at0m|c wrote:
cos you're pulling the audio drivers from under the sequencer's feet... this is no problem with WAV drivers, as long as the program doesn't play. With ASIO, close the sequencer before reloading the project!

Good comparison, at0m|c! It's like an important factor is missing for Sonar in comunicating with your Scope card. When you close the SFP your sequencer has got no floor and, what is the most important, no audio clock. Observe the asio settings in Sonar (I hope there is something like it) and you'll see Sonar is slaved to CW card - and if it's missing - there is no lead to be wired to.

krizrox · Post by **krizrox** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 9:29 pm

Well, the plot thickens.

Spent a little more time with this problem after reading some of your suggestions. What I found out is that this problem has nothing to do with Sonar. SFP still crashes when changing projects with no other program loaded. So it's definitely either a Scope issue or a WinXP tweak issue. My WinXP is tweaked good. Can't imagine what could be causing this.

Any more suggestions?

[ This Message was edited by: krizrox on 2004-08-24 22:30 ]

Post by **garyb** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 9:37 pm

that's very strange(and nasty). of course, a heavily tweaked os could cause strange problems, but so does corrupt data....

krizrox · Post by **krizrox** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 12:51 am

Yeah - I should go one step further and also state that loading a blank project before switching to another one had no bearing. It still crashes after 3 or 4 cycles.

It's an annoyance - not a show stopper. Still seems like it should be easy to diagnose. Maybe will try the Dr. Watson thingy next. Maybe that will shed some light on what's wrong.

wolf · Post by **wolf** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 2:11 am

hi,

as already suggested, always restart the whole scope app, before loading new (big) projects, especially when using more than one board. Everything else leads to problems.

best
Wolfgang

krizrox · Post by **krizrox** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 8:37 am

On 2004-08-25 03:11, wolf wrote:
hi,

as already suggested, always restart the whole scope app, before loading new (big) projects, especially when using more than one board. Everything else leads to problems.

best
Wolfgang

I suppose that's a solution. Still, I'd prefer to live with the annoyance as opposed to having to shut down Scope every time I want to switch projects. I guess it's not much of an issue if you're always working on a single project but here in my studio - during the course of a session, I might be switching projects quite often.

It just seems strange that I can do this (consistantly) 3 or 4 times with no problem and then - boom. Crash. If it happened every time I switched projects, I'd be a bit more concerned. Will continue to dig for a solution

Thanks all.

dbmac · Post by **dbmac** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 9:27 am

I've noticed another situation that will cause SFP 4 to close, or fail to load properly: when another application is loading at the same time as SFP. I used to have a USB midi driver that loaded at bootup and always conflicted with the SFP startup project, generating the same Windows error you describe. I can cause the same result by opening a Wordpad .doc, or even the Windows file browser while SFP is launching - sometimes the Windows "shutdown" error, sometimes SFP starts (tray icon) but is unresponsive.
So I'm careful now to be patient while SFP is loading. Is it possible you have some app or driver starting simultaneously with SFP?
This doesn't seem likely from your description of the problem, but I thought I'd mention this anyway.
Good luck bug hunting.

/dave

bassdude · Post by **bassdude** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 5:40 pm

krizrox, are you switching between projects using recent projects option or by opening manually. Things I would try:-
1. Only use "open"
2. Make the scope.ini file read-only

If this is no good:-
Basicly wipe the slate clean and re-install windows and scope from scratch. While you're at it why not do what I do:- Setup a dual boot system (not windows dual boot) with identical configurations so if one boot partition starts exhibiting these wierd unexplicable problems you just re-boot into the other one, load your projects and continue on like nothing happened and then fix the problem later. It's a great backup if you get stuck mid-session.

It also makes trying out upgrades and service packs a little less stressfull.

[ This Message was edited by: bassdude on 2004-08-25 19:13 ]

krizrox · Post by **krizrox** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 8:35 pm

error post disregard

[ This Message was edited by: krizrox on 2004-08-25 21:38 ]