Bug: SpectraLayers One 7 - Hard PC reboot after "Unmix Vocals"

Exact same problem, both in standalone and as a Cubase extension. Goes to BSOD and reboot.

I’m on Windows 10 1909.

Additionally, I’ve found that following the crash my system becomes entirely unstable, the audio interface drivers are corrupted and I get repeated BSODs with IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL and SYSTEM SERVICE EXCEPTION errors. Restoring the system drive from a backup has fixed things for now, at least. I guess I won’t be using SpectraLayers 7 until this issue is addressed.

I’ve tried and tried with this, but now given up.

I’ve been a loyal customer of Steinberg for well over 3 Decades

Just bought iZotope standard
For me it works better in the every day audio uses that I could put spectral layers to.

This is software that seems to have no home, a bit like the hovercraft, Brilliant idea , worked, but had little application in real life.
(We all drive to work in one, cross oceans in one , we could but we don’t)

Just turn things around for a minute imagine selling an audio app to edit video

It maybe “creative” and a great art concept but a professional photography every day tool ???

Just my opinion

Hippo

Ok. I have no way to see if this is related, but since the bug seems resistant to diagnose I will describe here one of the things I tried in order to fix my SL 7 issue, apart from what was mentioned here. Since at that point there was no visible way out, i went for the unusual, extravagant measures:
did a cleaning of “unplugged device data” together with a reprogram/clean of assigned IRQs…

Since only tested OK SL 7 after applying all those additional actions, I don’t really know exactly what indeed fixed things… That IRQL and corrupted audio interface drivers mention you posted today djangodeadman, brought my IRQ cleaning to memory.

just saying I really enjoyed the analogy :wink:

Although I don’t really agree and I think that spectral editing has a role - it works great in RX8 etc too. My own feeling is that SL is still a little underdeveloped (sorry Robin!) but as it matures I suspect it will become more and more invaluable.

  • probably the wrong thread for this however -

I don’t know if this helps, but I tried Timo’s repro as I also have an RME HDSPe so it’ll be the same driver. I was able to drag-and-drop MP3s and extract vocals without any issue on Windows 10 20H2, SL Pro 7.0.21 build 250, using DirectX 12. I could not crash SL, no matter what I tried.

It might be of interest to know that I don’t use discrete graphics. I used to use Radeons but since I last upgraded the motherboard, I just the integrated Intel graphics and this has been the most stable build ever. I found that both Nvidia and Radeon drivers caused problems with audio (DPC spikes), not to mention all the additional stuff that comes with them, none of which was useful for audio.

SOLVED (for me).

I faced the same problem. Under any CPU load, the computer would blue screen and reboot. This happened both with the use of the Unmix function, and with any other where the processor was required. After reading several articles on this topic on the Internet, I found a solution.
In BIOS, I removed all my own settings ever set on the processor and set the “auto” mode everywhere (default). In my case, earlier I raised the voltage level by 0.1 volts (from 1.2 to 1.3) (overclocking), now I put “auto”. And it’s all. It all worked. No more crashes.
I hope this information will help you or lead you to the right thoughts.

Thanks, that’s very helpful info. Hopefully others will be able to use this tip as well.

For others, doing a clean format+OS reinstall solved the problem as well.

For now I will watch the forum and look out for a fix in a future update. I’ve just about got my system stable again and don’t want to do a complete clean reinstall at the moment, having only recently been through that after an enforced motherboard, CPU and system drive replacement. Someday my curiosity may get the better of me and I’ll try it again, but I could do without the stress at present.

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Quite understandable djangodeadman.
However, do not overlook the fix posted by Scudoxx:

This fix points to the situation being generated by configuration of CPU conditions and states.
So, why not try and go to the BIOS settings and check everything is as stated. You don’t need an OS reinstall to get that solution.

///Furthermore I’d go check Windows power options, power plan settings. Particularly “Processor Power Management” and “PCI Express”. While there I’d also check “Multimedia Settings” and allow for max choices, since SL 7 is quite demanding on Display related capacities.
But those are not all the possible sources of CPU reconfiguration. Do you have a PC Optimizing software installed, like Game Boosters and alike? And surely must be other possible sources to single out…

Also important to note, doing a clean windows reinstall will not revert your BIOS, if it is indeed a BIOS problem.

Thanks for the suggestions.
What settings would you recommend formProcessor Power Management and PCI Express?

*Note that the suggestions are accompanied by an open question; for users to share what other software they know could affect CPU settings.

Basically you could set specific power plans for differing usage needs. Note that existing plans can be modified entirely. I have a High Performance plan, a Power saver, a Media Playing (where you don’t pause while the laptop lid is closed), etc.

For Processor Power Management --at High Performance-- you set the Min to 100% and the Max to 100% as well, so the CPU doesn’t go to to rest (watch your T°s afterwards) this also lowers DPC risks. */1
At Power saver plan you may set Min 0% (or 10% as I do) so to lower electricity consumption and T°s.
For PCI I always go for the less restrictions and max configuration, since at audio your system needs the less latency and the best information flow you may attain.

However, particularly in the last decade CPUs have wildly varying specifications. Each architecture has brought novel protocols and ways to improve processing, power efficiency, security, memory and single/multicore handling…
Which means your personal results may vary according to your system, hence test it for yourself. For that, you may take it to extremes and then carefully measure. We are finding out that SL 7 is quite a strict test, while performance environments like Live, Djing, Recording, have always been that way.

*/1 Intel’s Turboboost is known to cause DPC spikes in audio, so it is recommended to be turned of.

Thanks.

I solved this problem by disabling HiDPI

Sorry but disabling HiDPI made no differecne for me, re-launched cubase then still got a hard restart after I pressed unmix vocals.
I don’t see why we should be reinstalling the operating system and messing around in our bios, Steinberg should just fix this asap, it’s unusable.

Hi seanbrennan please see the other topic: SpectraLayers Pro 7 system reboot when unmixing Stems - #31 by davechambers

The solution is to fix your CPU voltage in the BIOS.
Turns out the systems showing this behavior have underpowered CPUs which can’t handle all the cores being used simultaneously at the max of their capacity. Fortunately it can be fixed by adjusting the CPU voltage setting (see replies in the post to see how, it seemed to have fixed it for everyone so far).

Thanks Robin, but I’d rather not be changing settings in my Bios and overclocking my CPU, it’s something that I don’t want to risk, especially given that this is the only thing on my PC that causes a hard crash.
For your info, my bios settings are all Auto.

Is this being fixed in future updates so we don’t have to change our computer settings as a workaround?

There will be a change of AI library in the next version (likely going from TensorFlow to ONNX), so the AI job will be computed differently, which could help with your issue, but beware that any job on your computer that requires full CPU cores usage might run into the same power issue.

It transpires that Unmix Stems was exposing problems with my CPU. These have now been resolved and I’m happy to report that I’m no longer experiencing blue screens when using the unmix functions in SL7.

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