DP8 launch crash [OUCH!! UNRESOLVED]

[Shooshie]

I have a couple projects that have some IL Drumaxxx tracks. (I think they now have a beta 64-bit version.) Big Tick Rhino, IL Morphine, and several others. I suppose I could live without them, but I didn't really have any burning need to go to 64 bit.

Do you know if your system will work without crashing in 64 bits? If so, that might be your burning need! But it will be kind of scary if you go to 64 bits and this behavior continues.

I haven't been following too closely, because your circumstances are not in my realm of experience, what with the 3rd party driver and continued use of 32 bit plugins. I updated to 64 bit plugins and dropped those I could not update, simply to prevent that from ever being a variable in my work equation. I also stay with MOTU devices for the same reason, but one could hardly expect others to do that.

Out of curiosity, if you drop the audio interface entirely and use only the Mac's internal audio, will you get the same crashes?

Shooshie

[stubbsonic]

First of all, thanks to everyone who is following this. Your moral support has been really helpful. I know you know what it is like.

Here at 3 weeks, I'm still not fully functioning, but have some updates.

I've removed all traces of RME (per their detailed manual uninstall instructions-- which I can post if anyone is interested).

I went through and removed ALL my plugins and put them back methodically to find the damaged files. It turns out that Pianoteq (the plugin I use probably the MOST) is damaged, so I can't use that for now.

I've spent hours trying to get my Native-Instruments stuff back to operational. I removed some prefs and lost authorizations. Lost a drum library, but otherwise I'm ok.

Things seem to be stable with no RME driver loaded, and no Pianoteq AU. Works in either 32 or 64 bit. I don't mind sticking with 64-bit, going forward. I think most of what I need is now in that mode.

Waiting to hear back from Modartt support for how to uninstall/re-install PT5. I also have PT crash reports I can send them.

I'm anxious about re-installing the RME driver, since it has hosed things twice. I'll stick with the older driver, since I don't know what was causing the conflict with the new driver.
I also don't know if the damage to Apple's MIDI server will resurface when I reinstall the Fireface MIDI driver.

So that's where I'm at. When I get closure, I'll post here. RME says no one is reporting troubles. Sounds like this was a fluke... a poopy fluke.

[mikehalloran]

RME says no one is reporting troubles. Sounds like this was a fluke... a poopy fluke.

That's not what I am hearing. I can't find the link at the moment but you are not alone.

[bayswater]

RME says no one is reporting troubles. Sounds like this was a fluke... a poopy fluke.

That's not what I am hearing.

What are you hearing? I was close to replacing my ailing 828-3 with a RME Babyface. Up to now I heard nothing but praise. This thread has put that on hold.

[mikehalloran]

Supposedly, new drivers 11/8/2014 to deal with Yosemite problems. I haven't heard anything since. I just found this on Sweetwater.

RME has released driver version 2.03 for their USB interfaces including the Fireface UFX, 902, UCX, UC, Babyface, MADIface Xt and MADIface USB. This update fixes crackling and stutter effects on OS 10.10 Yosemite. It also includes other bug fixes. You can download the driver Here:
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_downloads.ph ... _driver_uc

[bayswater]

Thanks Mike. I guess I'll sit tight and see where this goes. Everything works for now, although I can't power up my 828 more than once a day.

[Shooshie]

Wow, I feel for you, Stubbs. This is about the most frustrating thing that can happen to a musician, no matter what software/hardware s/he uses. I miss your always-upbeat advice in the forum.

Yosemite has been one of the strangest upgrades I've experienced on the Mac. It has broken things, fixed others, but the strangest part is that it seems to change over time. Some of the things it broke for me originally are now working, albeit tentatively, while other things seem to come and go. The weird part is that I haven't knowingly done anything to cause these changes. Maybe my stirring the pot here and there, day after day for the past couple months, has cumulatively brought about changes gradually and non-linearly. It would be nice if those changes all converged on perfection, but they seem to go in multiple directions.

Anyway, my musings aren't advancing anyone's knowledge here, so I'll shut up momentarily. Good luck, Stubbsonic, and I sincerely hope you get to the bottom of this. My bets are on the RME driver being the culprit behind the whole thing. Just one more thing: about 2005, everyone was experiencing the most bizarre bugs that just wouldn't be squashed... except for me. My system was the model of perfection. Feeling a little left out (but not wanting to join that particular club) I decided to do a database of people's systems and settings. I made a questionnaire, posted it, and got about 50 responses, give or take a dozen. After collating the data, it was clear: everyone who had problems was using MOTU's latest driver. I, by chance, had not upgraded. I posted my driver, and people downloaded it. Their problems all were fixed. Moral of story: drivers can cause far-reaching problems. RME should issue a fix soon. They just don't want to admit it right now, before Christmas, and all that. It might impact their best season's sales.

Shooshie

[stubbsonic]

Thanks all.

It is making me feel a little trepidation about reinstalling the RME driver (even the old one), but I gotta move.

Got Pianoteq fixed. Kudos to them for including an uninstall script right in the application folder. Gotta love that! Reinstalled and everything was there (authorized and all). No issues.

So next, I have to reinstall the older RME driver and see if I can get MIDI and audio with no heartaches.

Here goes nothing....

[Michael Canavan]

IMO I still think it's very possibly not related to RME at all.
Also mike is bringing up issues with USB RME products, and you have the firewire 800, so unrelated issues remain only related by brand.

You say the Piantech AU caused problems, but still are anxious about the RME driver....... just saying.

[Shooshie]

Well, it would sure be convenient if that's the case. It would be a pain to have to wait until RME fixes the driver. Still, one wonders how any of this happened to begin with. If nothing is upgraded, will it happen again? I guess that's what Stubbsonic is worried about, and it should soon be apparent one way or the other.

[Michael Canavan]

@Shoosie I hear you, I'm just likely to error on the side of caution when it comes to assigning blame before rigorous testing. A personal anecdote on that would be the curious issue of MIDI beat clock and Ableton Live. I had absolutely crap timing with beat clock sent to a Dave Smith Evolver in Live. Logic did a little better than Live and DP was pretty much only sparsely affected.
After raging on Ableton's tech support about it, it turned out it was a badly written driver for a Logitech mouse I had that was causing the issue. Ableton had been ultra attentive in their Beat Clock support because their user base of electronic musicians are avid users of that feature, so Live polls the MIDI and USB ports at a higher rate than Logic or DP. Consequentially their timing was more affected by cross contamination from a bad Logitech driver. For days I was convinced after testing that Live was crap with Beat Clock.

I do know that RME are right up there as far as being rigorous updaters when a problem is detected, so if a certain plug in can be targeted as problematic that you use all the time then it's likely that plug in. Plus it's not always that an update is at fault. Case in point would be early problems in DP AU support that were 100% not MOTUs fault, as the AU spec had been tweaked internally for peculiarities in Logic's plug in implementation, without new documentation... It's possible that an update will expose a weakness in other code, and that weakness isn't something that should be worked around... Just trying to warn against finger pointing before all the ducks are counted, all the i's dotted etc.

[stubbsonic]

It's a fair point.

To be clear, I don't know what caused the issue.

The fact that I updated the RME driver, had an RME Total Mix display glitch and then one AU was broken (AAS Player). -- Then I cleared all that up, with the old RME driver reinstalled-- then updated the RME driver a second time, had an RME Total Mix display glitch, and had another AU break (Pianoteq), plus a non-working Fireface MIDI driver that had to be removed (DP would bit launch because of it, and AudioMIDI Setup reported it).

Those are clues/evidence, but not proof of the cause.

I'm holding off on re-installing the older driver because MOTU's tech might be able to tell me if there are some MIDI driver or MIDI server prefs that I could isolate before I reinstall.

Will report back.

On a related note, the first thing the RME tech told me to do was replace the Total Mix app with a brand new version which addressed the display oddity. (This in itself was odd because they have not included this newer version of the Total Mix app in their downloads page-- at least not in any obvious way).

Shooshie's theory that RME might be trying to keep a little quiet on any driver issues so they won't negatively impact holiday sales-- seems plausible.

[stubbsonic]

Just reinstalled the older RME driver, and it broke DP again.

Just as it did the last time the error occurred, AudioMIDI Setup took about 5 minutes in attempting to load the MIDI window then gave this message:

"The MIDI Server can't be opened.

Audio MIDI Setup couldn’t open the MIDI Server so you can’t view or edit your MIDI configurations.
If you recently installed a new MIDI driver, try uninstalling it and then open Audio MIDI Setup again. If Audio MIDI Setup works correctly after that, contact the driver’s manufacturer for further support."

I'll remove the Fireface MIDI driver, and hope no other collateral damage was done besides that. I might be able to use my old "road" interface for the time being. But hopefully it won't take me 5 hours to clean up this mess this time!!!

[stubbsonic]

Back to square one.



Hoping it was just the MIDI system, but as soon as I removed the MIDI driver and tried running the RME audio system, it went right back to the other problem crashing DP on boot as if an AU is damaged.

Another five hours to track that down.

Now I'm definitely at the point of needing to do some degree of clean install of the OS and reinstalling of some software. I'm feeling this in my guts.

I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll try to download a Mavericks installer.

I know these are first world problems. In the grand scheme, I have so much to be thankful for.

Not least of which is that I have a bunch of drives around and plenty of space to move files around.

[Shooshie]

Clean Install.

That's your only hope, I think. And be careful to test as you go when you begin installing drivers.

Yeah, you DO need a lot of drives for this. It's' a mess, but once you're through it, you will feel like you've lost 100 lbs. of dead weight.

Shooshie