More Issues with SAM not working

Nuendo
1

Ive already been having issues with SAM not working that have been preventing me from being able to to work, teach, or even be able to make anything of my own when inspiration hits.

SWITCHING FROM NUENDO 11 TO 12 HAS BEEN THE WORST SOFTWARE DECISION I’VE EVER MADE.

Nuendo splash pops up > Gets past the licensing (which was a relief because its basically 50/50 at this point) > Gets all the way to the end and then pops up a window telling me my time-based licenses are expired and lists all of the sounds and VSTi that come with Nuendo 12 and says they’re all deactivated because of this licensing issue.

I open a new project to see if this is some glitch, since Nuendo doesn’t usually open at all when the licensing issue occurs. Nope. The soundbanks are missing and the VSTi are all blacked out and direct me to pay for whatever licenses.

I tried opening SAM but it stays on the loading screen.
I close Nuendo and decide to uninstall N11 (I tend to leave the previous version for awhile out of fear uninstalling will get rid of some shared file I need).

Then open Nuendo12 again… Now it wont sget past the licensing phase of initialization before saying there’s no license and closing.

So far, restarting the PC has worked but that is absolutely NOT a solution!
Dante, the internet, and the SSL controller section of the console all basically hate each other and want to fight over the ethernet NICs and whatnot so restarting the system can sometimes create more issues. The RedNet PCIeR driver has issues with memory allocation on AMD chipsets, and neither us at the studio, Focusrite Pro, nor Audinate has been able to pinpoint what sets off the memory allocation issue so far, so it can be a coin toss just rebooting sometimes.

None of that should be a major problem, since this PC is in the control-room where it is supposed to remain running at all times with Nuendo 12 running at all times, preferably with Nuendo 12, Spectralayers 8 Pro, and WaveLab 11 Pro running as one complete workstation.

I was planning to buy up all of the soundbanks, VST, and VSTi Steinberg offers too but this poop has be questioning right now whether I even want to stick with Steinberg at all.

2

I wish I could help with your specific setup, but all I can say is that the SAM system has been working fine on both my devices so it isn’t a case where it just flat doesn’t work, but something with your setup that it is mad about. Very frustrating I’m sure. That said I have a few general suggestions:

Stick with Nuendo 11. The license on the eLicenser still works fine. I still have 11 on my desktop and it loads up no problem. Near as I can tell the “upgraded to Nuendo 12” text is just such that you can’t use it to do another upgrade, but it hasn’t stopped from being able to hand out a Nuendo 11 license. Since 11 worked for you and 12 is giving you crap, I’d just step back to 11. While 12 has some neat new features I can’t think of anything that would be critical vs 11.

You should consider reinstalling or completely rebuilding your PC. The kind of issues you are having should just not be occurring, and are something I’d consider completely unacceptable in a pro setting, or even at home. All our servers at work (I’m a sysadmin by trade, not an audio engineer) are things I feel 100% comfortable rebooting when needed. I expect and demand that they be able to come back up successfully any time, every time. If they can’t, that needs fixing. With the state of hardware and software these days, that isn’t a big ask. OSes are stable enough that they should be able to get bounced with no fuss.

My home system is the same, I can reboot it any time and want and thanks to SSDs these days the process is so fast it is hardly an issue. Maybe 30 seconds from reboot to being ready to launch programs. It’s not enterprise grade hardware either, just a normal enthusiast system.

So between the reboot issues and the SAM issues it really seems like there is something wrong on your computer and that should be the focus of your efforts to solve, not SAM itself. Get your system nice and stable and then see if that fixes the issue. Trying to chase an issue on a system with problems just makes your life harder than it needs to be.

Along those lines, it sounds like maybe you should look at dumping the Focusrite. The sole most important thing I find to DAW stability is a good audio interface and if this one just causes you issues it might be time to toss it, though I understand that sucks and is expensive. Personally I’d recommend you grab RME’s Digiface Dante if you are a Dante shop. RME charges a lot for their stuff but having tried it myself I can say there’s a reason: It just works. Their drivers are exceedingly stable, their interfaces do what they say they do. I ditched my Focusrite 6i6 for a UCX II (and an ADI-2 DAC) and I do not regret it one bit.

I hope Steinberg can help you find a solution, but understand that, speaking as someone who does tech support, it can be difficult to find the problem on a system with many issues. For now you might want to drop back to N11 if it was working well for you and longer-term I’d look at replacing your interface, and rebuilding your PC. A pain I know, but probably less of a pain than all the issues you are facing now.