PT7.1.1 Hanging problem, possible midi bug

Ok, first the tech listings, Pt 7.1.1 cs2 Mbox 1 Carrillon fw400, 160gb external drive Mac Pro 2.66, 250gb, 1gb ram, Mac OSX 10.4.8 Only ignition pack and digi plugins installed (latest from website). All setup recomendations followed apart from spotlight disable. Now down to the problem... I have been doing some test recording on my new macpro (awsome!!). I have been mainly testing the use of sampletank 2se 2.1 and midi tracks because my previous setup (ibook g4) struggled in this department. This is what happens, I set up a session using Sampletank 2se 2.1 on an instrument track and 6 midi tracks that each play a seperate channel in Sampletank (hq piano, accordian, solo cello, solo violin, fretless acousic bass, harp, female choir). All of this runs fine with less than 20% cpu use. I even had 4 audio tracks of guitar and vocals loaded with compressors and Tracks EQ and D-Verbs on one session too and all still ran fine. I played and recorded, saved the sessions and went to bed. When I came to work again the next day none of the sessions with Sampletank in them would open and caused PT to hang neccesitating(?) a forced quit. The session loader stops on the "restoring tracks" section. I have recreated this problem by following these steps, 1 open session with sampletank (empty) and 6 midi tracks (empty). Saved and then quit session. Reloaded with no problems. 2 add 1 virtual instument to Sample tank (hq piano first normally). saved and quit session. reload with no problems. 3 add a midi part to play virtual instrument. Saved and quit session. reload with no problems. I repeated steps 2 and 3 adding another instrument to be played by the a new midi part. At about 8 instuments and midi tracks when i try to reload the session it hangs on the restoring tracks part of the loadup. As you can imagine this is pretty annoying. Has anyone of the resident geniuses (genii) here got any light to shed on this problem. Many thanks in advance. Wayne

Ok, I have done further tests and it seems the culprit is indeed sampletank. I imported the midi tracks only to a new session and saved that. it re-opened no probs. then i added sampletank (empty) on an aux track and saved and saved. Again no probs. Then I set up 6 instruments in sampletank to be played my the midi tracks and saved the setup from within sampletank. This played perfectly. I then closed sampletank then closed the session. It opened again fine. I opened sampletank again and tried to reload the setup from before. At this point the whole thing locked up requiring a forced quit again. Am i being thick and missing something vital with my setup or is there a problem with Sampletank??? Seems pointless to ship it with the ignition pack if it don't work!!! wayne

Hi, I have been having these problems too: le 7.1.1.cs2, Macbook 2gz 2gig ram, ext firewire formac 250, digi oo2r factory, my projects have been corrupting mainly due to sampletank, i think. I have been able to access the files by either temporarily trashing the se2 instruments folder, or by trashing the stsprefs file (which means you need to re-register the plugin- this can be real fun after 20 times..). You can then access the file and reload the instruments (which sometimes cause protools to crash) and work on, but the problems will persist next time you save unless you empty sampletank of its instruments. No importing files and settings into fresh projects has remedied this either. Reinstalling sampletank doesn't make any difference, and moving it from internal to external drive didn't help. I have contacted both digidesign and ik multimedia many times over this issue and they have been, to be frank, unhelpful. They have suggested nothing to fix it and have suggested this is a fault on my particular system. I also have DAE playback errors when on a low hardware buffer (eg128) and running very few plugins. This only happens in projects using MIDI- generally sampletank or BFD- audio-only projects are always fine. Increasing the buffer doesn't always seem to stop the spiking of the CPU (and besides i need to have it low to record, obviously), and these problems persist for a few tries and then disappear, only to recur fairly randomly. This problem has also been unadressed by digidesign. So best of luck- I have devoted a lot of time to fixing this problem, lost a few projects, and have found no way to fix it. As both our systems are 'suported' I think we deserve some help, especially, as you say, when we are only using software shipped with our packages.. This has been named issue 77707, and we are to await a fix. I was told this over three months ago, anyway.. I'll let you of any further developments as this seems to have bugged yet-another project now! Geoff.

Hi Geoff, Thanks for the reply, I'm glad I'm not alone in this. If IK or Dgi have no answers, I'm a bit dissapointed. Although there must be thousands of other ST users working with no problems so I wonder what it is with our setups that causes the bug. Is your version of ST the free one from the ingition pack download or the full version from IK? I figured the bug was a problem with the new free version as my old (ppc) version ran fine. I was considering shelling out for the full version but not sure if I can trust it now. Have you found a reliable replacement for ST or are you still struggling? DIGI PLEASE SHED SOME LIGHT ON THIS!! Wayne

BUMP!! Not gonna let this get buried.

BU-U-U-UMP!!

Hi everyone! Same problem here, I've been searching the forum for a solution, but without success. Macbook 2Ghz 2Gb,MBox 2 Mini, I've updated to LE 7.3.1 and reinstalled ST SE last version several times, but again same problem. I have 10 MIDI tracks, pointing to a ST SE, 6 channels, with patches: Clear LP,HQ Piano, Strings Orchesta, Drive LP,Comp Vintage drum,Fingered brigde bass) (I cannot remember some names). MIDI tracks are not plain notes, they have volume and other effects. There's something wrong with ST, since if I put even 4 Xpand!'s in separated tracks, the tracks are restored perfectly (but I'm very used to play with Sampletank since my PC days, I don't want to change!) I just don't know how to take out any logs of the crash, since I'm new to Mac and Protools... Does anybody knows how to deal with this problem? Many thanks in advance, Nacho

Hi again, How curious, I've just seen that they have removed Sampletank from Ignition Pack 2....

And hi again... I've found another update numbered 7.3.1cs1 that solves one issue reported as: "Fixed: Intermittent Corruption After Saving. Closing, and Then Reopening a Session, Regions Were Missing or in the Wrong Location on the Timeline (Item #85755) - As long as the session remained open, it would still playback correctly and with all playlists intact. The problem would not be observed until the session was closed and reopened. - Any AutoBackup files created would have the same problem when subsequently opened " Maybe it could solve our problem... I'll try this update tonight and I'll report... Cheers, Nacho

Hi Wayne, nah man it's just the bundled ignition pack Sampletank that I'm using. I see IK claim to have fixed bugs for the new update of the full version, but I guess they just aren't worth fixing on our freebie version- we're not REAL customers after all.. Search these forums more closely- they are PACKED with users experiencing this problem, especially on Macbooks.. Come on DIGI don't just ignore us- GET THIS FIXED!! All the best folks, let us know if you get any closer to fixing this.. G.