Cubase 6 Crash on VSTi Load

I’m getting a Cubase 6 crash by undertaking the following.

Windows 7 Professional 32bit
Intel i7 920 - 3GB memory

  • Load Cubase 6
  • Select Production Project Electro Music
  • Open the device connection screen and set output for MR816CSX to 7 and 8
  • Open Devices - Virtual Instrument Panel
  • Load Halion Sonic (Full version 1.5 update) Sonic Dancer preset.
  • Test Midi input (Fantom G keyboard - USB Midi)
  • Halion Sonic plays OK
  • Load The Grand 3 (latest update 3.1 applied)
  • Cubase 6 crashes during load with Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Error Box
    “Runtime Error!
    Program F:\Steinberg\Cubase6\Cubase6.exe
    This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way
    Please contact the aplication’s support team for more information”

Crash is repeatable

If i do not load Halion Sonic 1.5 but load The Grand 3 on its own it doesn’t crash Cubase 6.

Has anyone got C6 and these two VSTi plugins so they can test.

Thanks

David

Update on C6 crash from further testing.

Crash does not occur if I start with a blank project and load the two VSTi in the same order.

Crash does occur if I load a different Production Project template (Dance this time) and load The Grand after Halion Sonic.

So possibly a template incompatibility or memory issue.

How can I check on memory free status?

Cheers
David

You can open task manager (ctrl/alt/del) performance tab to view your memory use alongside Cubase (don’t have cubase maximised or task manager will jump behind when you go to load an instrument etc.)

Thanks for pointer Grim. Im getting rusty I should have remembered that.
I’ll have a look at the reading there.

Cheers

David

Update

I have 3GB in Win7 32bit.

Memory reading at crash point appears to be about 80% although the Windows analyser does appear to show a split on standby memory over physical which I do not fully understand yet.

Anyone able to reproduce this crash or see any different memory readings?

Cheers

David

I don’t have The Grand to try it but do know that the Grand needs near to 635Mb & The Dance template plus Halion SOnic (demo) already sits at 2.2Gb on my system so I’m overly not surprised you’re having problems with only 3Gb & a 32bit o/s.

Thanks for observations Grim. Im begining to suspect a memory issue here as the crash is pretty instant during the Grand 3 load and always at the same point in the load.

The templates do however seem to be a bit memory hungry. Checking back to the electro production template I see it loads 5 instances of Halion Sonic.
I’ll take the tracks out one at time to see if the Grand will go further in the load process.

I can run a several instances of VSTi which include both the Grand 3 and Halion Sonic 1-5 if i start with a blank project and load as required which seems a bit more memory efficient.

I shall have to experiment with the ram saving features and order of loading to find the best balance here.

I’m also fotunate to have a separate 64bit machine I shall repeat the test on as soon as I have all the software. This has 6GB memory

Thanks again for feedback and observations.

Cheers
David

Yep…even if you run 32bit Cubase on the 64bit machine you’ll be able to open a fair bit more.

Update - Further Test and observation

Test 1
Loaded C6 with electro production template (5 Halion Sonic SE occurances)
Loaded VSTi Halion Sonic 1-5
Loaded The Grand 3
C6 Crash

Test 2
Loaded C6 with electro production template (5 Halion Sonic SE occurances)
Loaded VSTi Halion Sonic 1-5
Changed all occurances of Halion Sonic SE to Halion Sonic 1-5 using same sound presets
Loaded The Grand 3
No crash.

This appears to indicate to me if the C6 crash issue is memory related then Halion Sonic SE appears heavier/less efficient on memory use than the full Halion Sonic 1-5 and I would have thought it would be the other way around.

Hi Dave,
Have you been able to get to the bottom of this?
I have the exact same issues with my Win7 32bit 3Gb i7 920 system!
Lots of crashes when using VSTi’s.
Halion Sonic (SE), DFHS2.0, Addictive Drums…

I also experience trouble loading insert effects on audio tracks. I select them but nothing happens. Did you encounter that as well…

Any pointers?

Thanks!
Erwin

Hello,

you are running out of RAM at the moment.

Cheers,

Chris

Check your Task Manager. If memory usage gets anywhere near 2.4GB then that’ll be the problem.

This from Steinberg support:
You are using a 32-Bit operating system. In this case Cubase can address max. little bit less than 2 GB RAM!!! Reaching this limit can cause applications to crash unfortunately.

I’ve long given up trying to do anything with Cubase in 32bit :frowning: .

I also experience trouble loading insert effects on audio tracks. I select them but nothing happens.

Yes this is typical of hitting your memory ceiling.
64 bit o/s is best option if using memory hungry vsti such as those you list.

Thanks guys!
Didn’t expect this to happen…but let’s move on.

I checked my FF800 and Echo Layla drivers. They are 64bit compatible so OK.
However Waves and some other plugins are all 32 bit.

So:

Can I still install Cubase 64 bit on the 64bit OS and will I still be able to access those 32 bit plugins?
Or should I install Cubase 32 bit on the 64bit OS to ensure 32 bit plugin compatibility?

Thanks again!
Erwin

I was getting this kind of frustration a while ago when I was using Windows XP with 4GB of RAM.

I found out that in order to keep Cubase running smoothly I should not exceed 1.47GB of RAM in task manager. Everything above that would make Cubase unstable.

C++Runtime errors were very common.

The only solution is to upgrade your RAM and move to a 64bit OS and, if possible to 64bit Cubase. You will be amazed on how much you will be able to load even with 6gigs of RAM. :wink:

Ok here is the case:

If you install Cubase 64bit you will be able to access those 32bit plugins via a bit bridge. Cubase has one built in but it does not work so well, but there is also jBridge which works much better.
If you install Cubase 32bit you have full compatibility with 32bit plugins, however you cannot access more than 3GB of RAM for Cubase.

Your best bet (this is what I do anyway) is:

Install BOTH 32 and 64bit.

I use 64 bit for arranging when I need the extra RAM for heavy VSTi’s (PLAY,Vienna, Omnisphere, Kontakt) and
32bit for mixing where I want compatibility (Sonnox Plugins) and Ram is not a big issue(when mixing I am barely using 2-2.5 gigs of ram).

Hope this helps.

Awesome…I didn’t even know this was possible!


Thanks all, very helpful!!
Erwin