CRITICAL Total-Lockup-Freeze, caused by 'Use Device WinRT MIDI' (Cubase 15.0.1)

Cubase
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1

For the passed two days I’ve been struggling with a recurring total-lockup-freeze of Cubase (no crash warning, no crash dump) when soloing a track during playback:

At first, I thought it was a problem of an .xml file getting “corrupted” because of a plugin causing a crash. I deleted Defaults.xml file in the Cubase 15_64 AppData folder and rebooted Cubase in which the problem went away.

I restored my settings of which some got removed because of Defaults.xml deletion - Preferences (restored via preset), re-enabling VST2 plugins, re-selecting my audio device, re-importing my Generic Remotes - and turning back on ‘Use Device WinRT MIDI’.

Everything worked, the problem went away… Until I closed and rebooted Cubase and the problem returned. Which to me, seemed like one of the settings I restored was causing a problem in the Defaults.xml file when closing and or opening Cubase.

So, I set out to a step by strep process of restoring 1 setting at a time, rebooting Cubase each time, and this is how I proved it has something to do with the ‘Use Device WinRT MIDI’ setting in Cubase ‘Studio Setup…’

  • I deleted Defaults.xml

    • booted Cubase

    • No problem.

    • Closed Cubase and rebooted it.

    • No problem

  • I turned on VST2 plugins

    • Closed Cubase/rebooted it

    • No Problem

  • I restored my preferences via a preset

    • Closed Cubase/rebooted

    • no problem

  • I restored my audio device settings

    • closed/rebooted cubase

    • no problem

  • I turned on WinRT MIDI

    • tested Cubase without closing first - no problem

    • closed/rebooted Cubase

    • PROBLEM.

  • I closed Cubase

    • deleted the Defaults.xml again

    • opened Cubase

    • No problem

    • Turned on WinRT MIDI

    • tested without closing, no problem

    • Closed/rebooted Cubase

    • PROBLEM.

  • I closed Cubase and deleted the ENTIRE Cubase 15 AppData folder to let it rebuild itself

    • On Safe-Boot, I selected Disable Preferences

    • No problem.

    • I enable WinRT MIDI

    • Test without closing, no problem.

    • Close Cubase/Reopen

    • PROBLEM

Further, I kept what I thought was the corrupted Cubase 15_64 AppData folder just to inspect and cross-compare…

I restored it, booted Cubase, immediately turned off WinRT MIDI - didn’t close/reboot Cubase - and the problem did not occur.

A few notes about the working case that I’m not sure if could be variables or not and I haven’t tested their exclusion:

  • Large template 250 tracks including audio, FX, group, MIDI, Instrument Tracks,
  • Some MIDI tracks have MIDI sends
  • Some plugins might have integrated MIDI features (although I did at one point do a test yesterday and removed all plugins from project, and the problem still occurred, and WinRT MIDI would have been enabled still)
  • This template has deep audio->group->group->FX tracks daisy chained in series - 3-4 levels with routing from and to multiple other tracks.

That’s all I have for now

paging @Psychlist1972

Side note:

The reason I enabled WinRT MIDI, was I was having a problem with MIDI input/output menu having the MIDI ports out of order as seen here:

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Restarting the computer, doesn’t fix it.

2

I’m just curious to know whether or not if your Windows 11 performed any updates shortly before this issue started happening ?

3

… Good question… I did have WinRT MIDI enabled for some amount of time and had been soloing/muting stuff. It seems kind of random…

There are other things I could have tested like is the soloing crash happening with all tracks or just some…

After an entire day with a sleep in-between of working through this, my troubleshooting battery is low…

4

You could try going to the Windows updates / View update history to see if any updates were installed recently. If you find something there I would be curious to know that updates code number.

5

The ones that show today I believe were after the problem had already occurred as I did a computer restart and update a few hours ago.

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6

Interesting, hopefully @Psychlist1972 can help you further.

7

I mean, I’ll just keep WinRT MIDI off, and deal with my MIDI ports being out of order on the Track Input/Output selection menu… or perhaps I’ll find a resolution to that - deleting the MIDI ports xml file maybe…

thanks for your moral support btw :wink:

edit

in regards to the improper out of order port names on Track Input/Output selection, deleting xml files (tried the entire Cubase 15 AppData folder as well) did nothing to resolve the name order issue.

8

FWIW, under the new Windows 11 MIDI stack, I have reverted from WinRT to MME (“Windows MIDI”) which seems to give me better port naming in Cubase. Below are my current settings – I don’t think there’s any advantage in using WinRT any more.

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9

The problem for me, is when I have WinRT MIDI on, it sorts the ports properly in the Track MIDI Input/Output selection menu - but - with it on, I also have this terrible freeze crash happening.

With WinRT MIDI off, the Track MIDI In/Out ports are randomly out of order.

I have a feeling it happened when I engaged ‘Use New Names’ in Windows MIDI services… not 100% sure on that though.

edit

I have a thread for this discussion as it’s unrelated to this thread:

*Thread update NOT SOLVED*: Channel MIDI Input/Out menu is out of order from MIDI Port Setup? - Cubase - Steinberg Forums

10

You don’t happen to have any Korg drivers installed by any chance, do you?

11

I did - perhaps I should check if they reinstalled…

edit

No Korg drivers in Installed Apps, nothing showing up in Devices/Sound Video Game Controllers

I do have a Novation driver, latest I believe.

My current MIDI peripherals are:

-Intelijell uMIDI (old version)
-Novation 25SL mkII
-iConnectivity MioXL
-Korg padKontrol (driver uninstalled)
-Nord Wave (no MIDI over USB, just editor)
-RME HDSPe AoX-D pcie dante card w/ MIDI

12

You could disconnect all your midi devices and reconnect 1 by 1 and see if one is the culprit.

13

In regards to the WinRT MIDI problem?

Korg USB isn’t plugged in (MIDI out into MioXL)
Nord Wave USB isn’t plugged in, nor has MIDI-USB anyway
RME HDSPe AoX-D I can’t really unplug…

That leaves iConnectivity MioXL which is my main MIDI interface, but theoritically should be fine as they’ve been on top of WIndows MIDI (and I believe @Psychlist1972 has/had one or tested them)…
… And the Novation 25SL mkII which is old and has a driver installed, and the Intellijel uMIDI which is oldish, from a small company, and my model is discontinued… So if a device is causing a problem, my guess it would be one of those two.

Doubt it’s the RME HDSPe AoX-D which I can’t unplug (but could maybe disable in Windows MIDI services?), but you never know.

14

I have an RME HDSPe RayDAT and the MIDI drivers have never given problems, so I think you could rule that out.

15

I had system freezes with Cubase when I tried to use MIDI RT a few years ago.

Eventualy after much headscratching and help from Vin and Pete I ran the MMCSS fix

I set the threads to maximum and boom…suddenly all my Midi RT ports were there and I had zero crashes/freezes.

Give it a try… I’d had no errors previously leading to needing this fix but this sorted it out.

16

Interesting, good read thanks, I’ll maybe wait on @Psychlist1972 to chime in.

17

It won’t do any harm to try it anyway as it won’t break anything in your system. Remember you need to re boot after running it, then Open Cubase up again and see.

M

18

After two days of this, I’m happy I just got everything functioning again, so I’m not taking any chances. :stuck_out_tongue:

19

Ah, sorry, i didn’t realise you’d sorted out the problem.

perhaps you should say ‘SOLVED’ in the title :slight_smile:

M

20

I’ve placed a “Watch” on this topic.

I just checked and I do not have WinRT enabled, so I’m hoping this is not applicable for me.

Can you confirm that ultimately the Default.xml does not appear to be the cause?

The sad part is that it’s possible that WinRT is also not the cause but a catalyst that triggers the actual cause. That’s the exhausting part of trying to keep things functioning correctly!

I had a considerable lapse in usage of Cubase since the deep dive trying to deal with the DPC issues. I am recently starting to get back into some prep work to start some remote recording projects.

Pete recently mentioned that most DPC issues are a result of drivers or VSTs, which is entirely believable, yet a bit frustrating, as there doesn’t appear to be much effort to publish any official data on WHAT VST/drivers/versions are problematic.

Does anyone know the status of the DPC every 15 minutes issue that we were discussing a while back? It seems unlikely to me that this would be related to audio or MIDI issues.

Don’t mean to derail this thread, so I can start another if needed.