OmniVocal and multiple VST3s crashing Cubase

Cubase
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1

I’m on 2025 Dell PC workstation, 64GB RAM, running Windows 11 pro 25H2, attempting to use Cubase Pro 15.

Big CAVEAT Up Front - I’ve been Microsofted: MIDI “Updated” along with all of its hysterics.

At first we thought OmniVocal (not MIDI) was randomly, intermittently crashing (freezing) Cubase, then using Windows WinDBG.exe we could see in the Cubase Crash Dump file, that Cubase froze because it seems OmniVocal froze because a Native Instruments FX, “Choral”, on that voice channel had gone missing (separate issue with Native Access). Reinstalled Choral, and then the next crash was random freeze due OmniVocal (OV) with the message:
*** WARNING: Unable to verify checksum for OmnivocalBeta.vst3

Was told to send support request not to Steinberg but to Yamaha (not expecting answer). Three more randomly timed crashes same day all point back to OmniVocal again; and I’m not even working on the same channel as OV, just out in the weeds editing and Cubase suddenly freezes (not what I’d call normal operation). Microsoft PC Manager reports I’m only using 24% of my 64GB RAM, and my project is only 4MB large file (or should say 4MB tiny) so it’s not a memory issue, is it?

The next crash error source came out of left field due to “BBC Symphony Orchestra (64 Bit).vst3” with the message embedded in the crash dump file:

*** WARNING: Unable to verify checksum for BBC Symphony Orchestra (64 Bit).vst3

Hmmmm, I hate to say I see a pattern here, but I would suppose software that hosts everybody-in-the-worlds VST3s, would have a wrapper, a software error wrapper to handle all the unforeseen stuff that somebody else’s code throws. AND, you know that subprogram at the invocation of Cubase or any DAW that scans all the VSTs and rejects the ones that are “bad”. Apparently, the scan is not 100% accurate; otherwise, problematic VSTs would not be loaded or am I in my perfect world again.

Would love to dig into their interface code but I’m only visiting here for one lifetime.

And yes, I did the kabooki dance of restart Cubase, restart Computer, restart the day, even reinstall, but … this is where I am. Looking to finish my project but am guessing I will have to do midi and audio exports, find a new DAW, pick one of the new professional AI midi-to-LyricalVoice generators and move on; BUT, I’d prefer they fix the great product that they already have - it’s just a little tidying up and it will do. And all that not to re-mention the present MS MIDI nightmare that is promised to be nirvana once done. Thank goodness for having a spare computer available that is NOT connected to the network and NOT getting MS updates.

Does anybody ever get any feedback for having pressed the “Send log files to Steinberg” button? I’ve collected quite a batch.

Unleash the checksum Hounds!

2

This warning is not the crash and you shouldn’t be concerned about it. Only the people who have access to the source code of the listed module will see a different resp. no message. Everybody else will see these Warnings. Several of them to be precise.

Sending the crash and log files will not start a support ticket. The files are rather sent to an automated crash handling system. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get anonymized along the way.
That’s why those of us, who can interpret a crash dump, encourage others to upload the .dmp file to this forum.

3

Yes, you are in your “perfect world again” :wink: .

Cubase does scan new plugins for compatibility with VST3 specs and puts those that fail them on the blocklist. That does not mean that a plugin cannot crash, because Cubase cannot test all code inside the plugin naturally. And as a VST3 plugin is essentially a shared library that runs in the same memory space as Cubase itself, e.g. any memory access error will lead for the whole program to crash. There is nothing Cubase can do there…

Except (and this has been requested before) if plugins ran in another process, i.e. “sandboxed”. Some other DAWs, e.g. Bitwig, optionally do this, but as always in life it comes with some disadvantages, mainly a little bit more CPU overhead, and some plugins that do inter-plugin communication might not work as expected or less efficient.

Btw, if Cubase crashes due to a plugin, it often will tell the name of the plugin in the Safe mode dialog on next startup (at the top, under the line “The application was terminated with an error in the following file”).

If that is not the case and the path points to the Cubase executable itself or some other dll, further digging is needed.

4

A crash report is always anonym. Steinberg doesn’t have the ability to answer these logs.

Maybe, this indicates a file system corruption. A reboot could help, sometimes.

5

Anon makes good sense, thanks for the clarification. I’m sure y’all would not want to air dirty laundry by posting stats on those reports - can’t believe my system is that much of an outlier.

Reboot? (cumulatively, now at hours wasted on reboot time)
I could make money off the times I have rebooted, reinstalled, reinvestigated, re-synonymized, and rehashed this problem (and these are fresh installations on a new computer).
Yamaha’s response was not much better.
And Microsoft with their glorious MIDI2 upgrade, well, I think we have a few programmers that need an upgrade, or maybe their management wanted to release that beast before it was tamed.

6

Still, you haven’t sent the crash report file here. You can upload it directly to your message when you use the forum in a browser. No idea if it works via email as well.

7

So its a new month, and a new project I’ve been working on in Cakewalk SONAR Platinum 2016 for 3 weeks, no crashes. I exported to MIDI and brought into Cubase 15.0.21. To get away from my seeming hangup with OmniVocal or other VSTs causing the constant freeze-ups; this project is only 11 MIDI tracks, no audio, and no VSTs referenced; YET, after I loaded the file, adjusted the voice patches, played it through once, saved the file, and then went to play again, IT JUST FROZE UP.

I found other “crash/freeze for no reason” from some other past posts but could not find the solution.

I could not interpret the WinDBG interpretation of the freeze-crash dump file.

Cubase 15.0.21 64bit 2026.5.8 12.27.55.989-freezedump.dmp (3.0 MB)

Thanks,

Any insights would be helpful, as it is unusable with constant crashing. Last time I merely just dragged the boundary on a track to make it larger and WHAM - frozen and then I had to have Task Manager Kill the process.

I’ve re-installed to no avail.

I’ve attempted to use 2 other major DAWs and had no crashes with them, but I just didn’t bond well with their workflow; so I revert to my old Cakewalk SONAR Platinum and continue working without problem crashing.