FIXED! Can NOT insert Halion in Nuendo6.5...

Well…

slowly it seems that I am loosing some faith in all that Software crap.

Today I needed to insert an instance of Halion in my current (and quite big) Nuendo project. It was not possible. It took me quite an hour. I lost time. Lots of time. Because I had to restart the Computer after each freeze, reopening the project (5 min at least it needs) … I just wanted to export a pre-release version of one song with a … yes… with a Clicktrack… the band is producing a video clip next week and for that they need a pre-final mix - with a clicktrack.

Nuendo always freezed when inserting Halion… if not - it freezed when I tried to open the Halion GUI… At one point (after 4 or 5 reboots) I was almost there. But then the complete GUI went funky and in the end I had an ugly crash.

See the pics please.

In the end I exported the tempotrack (had it already from preprod etc) and the mixdown, made a new 2 track Nuendo project, of course here Halion worked like expected…

I am using latest Halion 4.5 version (do not need 5, using Halion usually only for … ahem… Clicktracks…)

I have 32GB of Ram… Nuendo uses about 40% CPU (Asio Meter at 80%) and about 5,5GB Ram… No VSTis, 524 Tracks/Groups in the mixer, tons of plugins, of course.

The last album of that size (same band, 3 years ago) I mixed in Nuendo 5.5 with tons of jBridged stuff (Waves and UAD were not 64bit back the days) - without any single issue… Is the software getting worse? Does anyone care about code/stability? I have to say that I have all other kind of missfunctions regarding third-party crap. I updated Slate Virtual Buss Compressors and how nice - the plugins are not loading - or loading with Default settings… had to go back, safe settings to file, reinstall the update etc…
Same for Plugin Alliance… I LOVE those plugins… but in larger projects they are crap… I am not able to open projects the other day… always crashes… the report tells about one of those plugins - for example the Muse Mix EQ… then I have to remember that I inserted a Vertigo Compressor the night before… ok… removing dll and vst3 file… now I can open the project… removing the “one too much” plugin, saving, closing, re-placing the dlls, reopen… Ok, this is just a rant, nothing to do with Steinberg… but this is just such a PITA…




What are your computer specs? You’d hope that modern software takes advantage of modern operating systems/hardware.

There are things you can do to minimize headache (e.g. printing heavily edited tracks and memory intensive VST). Using Plugin Alliance and Slate here also without issue but I like to keep my sessions tidy.

i7 4930K
32GB Ram
Intel & Samsung SSD
Asus WS board (forget about the model ATM)

Smaller sessions are fine. CPU is at 40%, so why printing tracks… most processing is on groups anyway.

Regarding Slate and Plugin Alliance: This was just a general rant… has nothing to do with Steinberg… I had those issues on my old system as well, independent of Nuendo version.

OS? Re: printing tracks - I believe there is a windows limitation GDI objects which can cause graphic freezes. Check using Process Explorer or Task Manager with GDI objects enabled, from memory it’s around 10k objects which can cause graphic freezes (Graphics Device Interface - Wikipedia)

524 tracks ? of which not a single one already was a clicktrack ? :open_mouth:
:mrgreen:
Never mind, Brandy…just teasing :slight_smile:

Hey likelystory - sorry for not getting back to you yesterday - I was extremely tired and frustrated.

That GDI limitation is new to me, I read the Wiki article and well, this just described my symptoms. I will boot up soon and check this out. Thanks a lot for this hint! Oh and I am using Win7 64 bit… seems that this limitation is far less limited in Win8… 9.999 is not THAT much… depending on how programmers made the plugins as well or not? Ok - a lot of them are openGL now… Fabfilter for example… but they wrote something about “can be set in the registry”… ?

Well, of course I mix only with printed tracks - I was getting you wrong, I thought you meant rendering FX and stuff… I always start a mix by “save to new folder” - then I render all snippets and edits and stuff to have contiguous files to keep the project as “small” as possible…

Haha, Thomas :slight_smile:) Yees and of course I usually kick out the clicktrack because of that :slight_smile:
I am talking about kicking out the VSTi… of course I keep the midi track :slight_smile: I usually need later - for creating playpacks containing the orchestration etc… for live-use etc… In the end I usually load Halion again and done…

Most of the time I use the internal metronome with woodblock samples or even the stock sounds… it does well to me - EXEPT that since day one I hate the fact that I am not able to contain the click/metronome in an export… Quite nasty! Not a showstopper but a lot of extrawork when I need to prepare playbacks or the “can you just make us a version with only click and instruments, with no drums? Cause we have a new drummer now”… If the tempo is fixed and there are no metric changes setting up a midi track is about 10 sek… but when you have all those metric changes… 3/4…6/4…4/4…7/8… etc … quite “some” work to put a midi track with accentuated downbeat beside a 10 min song…

You can increase the number of GDI objects in win7 in the registry. Open regedit and in “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\GDIProcessHandleQuota” you can set it. The values allowed there are between 256 and 65536. After changing the value you have to restart. But do not set it to 65k because this is the system wide limit and you do not want to let Nuendo use all GDI objects, or? :wink: I think a value of 15000-20000 or so, would be fine for you.
Hope this helped.

You guys are just AWESOME!!!

Thanks a lot, that GDI thing was the culprit - and I fixed it!

I opened the project- Nuendo used about 8.000 GDI objects… now insert Halion… dang… 10.000! And those GUI issues…
I modified in the registry - to somewhat about 20.000 - wow - now it works!!

I had similar issues in the past from time to time - having those GUI issues in bigger sessions… till I closed plugins and re-opened the mixer etc… maybe this was caused by the GDI thing as well.

I NEVER heard about that before… Sorry for blaming Steinberg for that. But for days I was struggeling with stuff which slowed down my workflow and killed my vibe and creativity… It was just too much issues.

Good to hear it’s been fixed.

Mh…interesting… I just opened a really small project… 3 min song, drumrecording… lets say 20 tracks… over 5000 GDI objects for Nuendo…

Tweaking that Regedit Thing should be a part of the “Steinberg Tech Support” Page - the one were some butter and bread basics about configuring a DAW are listed… this is a good resource and I never went wrong with that page… I do not have the link ATM… but 10.000 is not much as it seems… so it could be a go-to thing to tweak that Regedit thing if you have to deal with larger sessions.

…or they could even include that registry key modification during the install procedure.

Never heard about that gdi thingy before either. Thanks for that guys, and I’m glad that you got it sorted out Brandy !

I think normally the (default) 10000 GDI objects should be enough. Only in some cases this can be a problem. But information about this and eg a little utility-program to change this value would be nice.

Ok, THIS is why forums exist. Riwe just posted a concise and accurate slice of “who knew?” info that solved a major problem for another user. Totally great!

Props to you, brother!

You’re welcome! :slight_smile: